White Curlers on Dope
White curlers on dope.
By Rob Hoffman on February 22, 2018 at 6:24 AM
https://blog.timesunion.com/hoffmanfiles/white-curlers-on-dope/43368/
“Russian Olympic Curler Fails Drug Test After Doping Scandal” (Source: MSN.com)
I want you to drink that in for a minute. A curler for the Russian Olympic team was caught “doping.” If “curlers” are going to start using steroids, then I want all shuffleboard players at the next tournament at Del Boca Vista, Phase 2, tested as well.
While it should be noted that a Russian athlete being caught taking performance enhancing drugs is hardly a headline, in fact, it’s sort of along the lines of seeing a headline that announces that there’s been another mass shooting, the fact that the “athlete,” Alexander Krushelnitzky was a member of the Russian Federation’s curling team, and felt it necessary to “chemically enhance,” in order that he become a more skilled “curler,” makes the average irrational American “Hockey Dad,” or “Soccer Mom,” seem like model parents with proportional approaches to their children’s competitive endeavors.
Hmm, where to start. Perhaps it’s the gloves? Are they designed specifically for curling? Is it the shoes? Why isn’t he wearing ice skates? Look at the expression on his face. Do you see that steroid infused intensity? That’s “‘roid rage” if I’ve ever seen it. The guy’s a beast y’all! (New York Times)
There’s really four issues at work here, and all of them speak on some level to fraud, dishonesty, and hypocrisy. What are these issues I speak of?
- What’s the deal with the Russians? Why do they feel that they have to cheat at everything, and why do we even play with them anymore? When my mother told me that my neighbor Lance was stealing good baseball cards from me and replacing them with crappy ones, (You know, like taking my Frank Robinson and replacing it with a Dennis Menke) I stopped trading baseball cards with him. End of story.
- What is it about the Olympics that makes everybody want to cheat, and look for every conceivable competitive edge no matter how illegal or immoral it may be?
- Sports are supposed to be sacred. The one area of life where all should be determined by hard work, sacrifice, and a little God-given talent. What’s with all of the performance enhancing? In other words, why is everybody such a damned cheater in every competitive endeavor??
- At the risk of getting trolled by curlers, including the good people at the Schenectady Curling Club, this isn’t a sport, it’s a game, like shuffleboard, but on ice. Is it quirky and fun? Sure. But why do you need a uniform? Oh, and why on God’s green Earth do you need to take steroids for it? What the hell????
They start them young over at the Schenectady Curling Club. Let’s face it. If you wish to see your child draped in Olympic gold in the cut-throat arena of competitive curling, you’re going to have to be dedicated at a very young age. As soon as my son demonstrated even the slightest interest in competitive curling, I sent him away to Saskatchewan for six weeks of intensive, um, pushing that thing around on the ice, and a steady diet of Pop-Tarts,. Why Pop-Tarts? Cause it’s curling you fools. (Times Union)
The Russians
Let’s first take a look at the “Russki’s.” Russia’s track record as a nation of honor, ethics, and morals is dubious to say the least, low these past 900 years. It seems that after Ivan the Great threw the “Mongol hoards” out of Russia, the average “Ivan” in Russia has been more “Terrible” than “Great.” First, there was 900 years of absolute authority under the Czars, including the last 300 by the Romanov dynasty. When your family runs the nation and the church, and yet all you produce are a bunch of hemophiliacs with webbed feet, your reign may not be spiced with a lot of glory. Fear not, after a 20 minute respite under the banner of Democracy in 1917, the Communists came to power where they proceeded to lie, cheat, steal, and oh, um, kill countless millions. There was another 20 minute interlude of Democracy in the 1990s under Boris “Stoli’s is my one and only” Yeltsin, and then, faster than you can suck down a brimming’ bowl of borscht, all of Russia was “rootin’ for Putin.”
When your nation has a civil rights record that makes Pol Pot look tolerant, the odds that you could be trusted to compete honestly in the world of international “amateur” sport, are lower than your odds of surviving in one of Stalin’s Gulags. In fact, in a nation that has been ripe for the past 100 years in terror and brutality, you’d pretty much do whatever you could to escape the drab life of the average Russian. If Olympic glory provides the escape you crave, and taking a few performance enhancing chemicals helps make this escape all the more possible, then you might as well learn the term in Russian for “pass the needle.” (If in fact you ever do find yourself in Russia, and you need to artificially enhance your athletic performance, all you need to say…”пропустить иглу“)
While the food lines in the Soviet Union for something as banal as cabbage water could be quite disheartening, there was no need to feel discouraged. The line for performance enhancing steroids was considerably shorter. (You Tube)
While we can sympathize with the plight of the average Russian citizen, it simply doesn’t excuse them when it comes to cheating in the Olympics, and cheat they did. In fact all of the old Soviet Bloc nations cheated, which would explain all of the armpit hair that was left in the Olympic pools after the East German “women’s” swim team was done taking their practice laps, in addition to the smell of Aqua Velva that permeated the Olympic aquatic centers.
There was hope of course that after the fall of Communism, the Russians would proceed to join the rest of the Olympic participating world, and clean up their act. However, while some of the more egregious attempts at performance enhancing were curbed, cheating or “doping” was and obviously is, still wide-spread. It got so bad that the notoriously anti-American IOC or International Olympic Committee, actually banned the Russians from participating in this year’s Olympics in South Korea, which is pretty pathetic since they allow North Korea to participate, and they’re threatening to blow up the world. However, while the Russian athletes couldn’t participate under the Russian flag, they have been able to participate under the Olympic flag, and in light of the latest reveal regarding the Russian curler on steroids, little has changed.
“Puny Americans, they can never compete with our triple “Salchow,” and don’t even get me started on their inability to “Lutz.” (Getty Images)
The Olympics
Supposedly, what makes the behavior of the Russians so egregious is the fact that they are tainting our beloved world of sports, particularly the Olympics. However, as my Rabbi, Rabbi Orenstein said to me at my Bar Mitzvah, “Let’s get serious here.” Most countries that have ever achieved even in the slightest regarding the Olympics have most likely been involved in performance enhancing drugs. Even heroes to so many youngsters in the United States such as Florence Griffith-Joyner and Jackie Joyner Kersee have been tainted by this scandal, although Kersee vehemently denies it, and there’s never been any official accusation against her. Olympic sprinter Marion Jones was one of the biggest female stars in the United States until she tested positive for steroid use, and was stripped of her medals. However, since 1968, the United States has only had eight medals taken from it, while the Russians have been stripped of 41. (That’s why I self-identify as a Ukranian-American, and not a Russian-American. It’s the shame of it all that I can’t bear.)
- Editor’s note — The Ukraine has been stripped of 10 Olympic medals since 1968, but that doesn’t mean that the Ukraine is weak.)
Never utter in public the sentiment that the Ukraine is weak, especially on the New York City Subway. (You Tube)
The idea that the Olympic “spirit” somehow supersedes politics while at the same time representing the best in human athletic competition is quaint. It’s also absurd. Whether we are talking about the tragic 1972 Olympics in Munich when 11 members of the Israeli Olympic team were murdered by the P.L.O., or the garbage that was the spectacle of the 1936 Olympic games in Nazi Germany, or even the literal thievery that took place when the American men’s basketball team had the gold medal stolen from them by the referees in the championship game against the Soviet Union in the 1972 games, the Olympics are dominated by politics. Please, don’t even get me started on the arbitrary scoring done by the Russians historically in ice skating and gymnastics. Those fresh-faced little girls from the U.S.A. didn’t delay puberty for 10 years so they could score a 9.4 on the uneven parallel bars, while those Rumanian “she-devils” scored perfect 10s in every event they participated in. Athletes cheat for their country and their own personal glory the way nation’s cheat on arms reduction treaties. I believe it was Ronald Reagan who said…
"overyay, no proveryay," "Trust but verify."Cheating in Professional Sports
Cheating in sports isn’t reserved for international competition by any means. Here in the United States, our professional athletes, who in many cases have far more to gain than an Olympic athlete as far as money and fame are concerned, have been looking for an edge, both honestly and dishonestly for decades. Baseball was set on its ear in the 1990s and early 2000s due to the steroid scandal that pretty much made a mockery of every record for hitting that ever existed. (Except for the record of being hit by a pitch the most times in one season. That belongs to Ron Hunt of the Mets in 1964 when he was hit a still-record 50 times. Steroids can’t lay a finger on that one.) The athletes who turned to performance enhancing substances found themselves cranking out unheard of offensive numbers in their late 30s, an age where most baseball players typically see a steep decline in their performance.
Before steroids, players regularly took part in ingesting amphetamines, or uppers. Most players said that the season was far too long and grueling, and taking “speed” was the only way to survive. (I’m not counting the cocaine craze of the 1980s as a performance enhancer with all due respect to Willie Wilson and Keith Hernandez.) Willie Mays, the “Say-Hay Kid” used to drink his “green drink,” whatever that was. Before that, I think it was hot dogs and beer, at least that’s what Babe Ruth used, but either way, baseball is no more pure than the Olympics.
Barry Bonds before and after. Before and after what? Only Bonds and his “dealer” knows. (You Tube)
Football faced its own steroid issue even before baseball in the 1980s. All of a sudden, offensive and defensive lineman who weighed over 300 pounds were sporting 3% body fat while posting times in the 40 yard dash that many running backs would envy. No NFL player more blatantly abused steroids than Lyle Alzado, the former Bronco, Brown, and Raider defensive lineman. Alzado was so steroid infused, that in a playoff game in 1982, he exploded into “‘roid rage” right on national television and yanked New York Jets offensive lineman Chris Ward’s helmet right off of his head.
Lyle Alzado points an accusatory and steroid infused finger at New York Jets offensive lineman Chris War after ripping Ward’s helmet off and throwing it at him. In many respects, Alzado was feeling the same outrage and anger towards the Jets that their fans have been feeling for decades. (You Tube)
Cheating in sports is endemic. The Patriots have practically made it their brand during their run of dominance over the past 17 years. Even in high school, coaches will try to hide students who have supposedly used up their eligibility in order to squeeze one more season out of them. The pressure put on young athletes has practically become a sickness in our culture. Teenagers and children are asked to sacrifice all sense of balance in their life if they wish to play on their travel teams as well as their school’s varsity team. The price they have to pay in order to play and of course win is such, that performance enhancing drugs have made their way into our college and high schools at an alarming rate.
Curling
As for the “sport” of curling, let me say that I’m not against it. In fact, my feelings towards curling are not unlike my feelings towards a lot of areas of entertainment and recreation that people busy themselves with in the course of their lives. I don’t oppose the opera, or watching lacrosse, or rock-climbing, or deep-sea fishing, or hunting, or even playing soccer. (Well soccer’s stupid, so not soccer.) I don’t oppose these activities, but I don’t invest any time in them either. They are largely harmless in my humble opinion, and I am completely ambivalent towards their existence. Some of them I might even consider trying one day. (Not really.)
What I don’t understand though is why somebody would need performance enhancing drugs in order to participate in curling? Have you ever watched a curling match? I’ve never been to one, but I’ve watched it on television. I’ve often thought as I observed in a bemused state why somebody would do it, how an individual could become interested in such an activity, and what people find interesting enough about it that they would actually dedicate a meaningful amount of time towards getting good at it. Here’s what I’ve never thought, not even once. “Gee, that curling participant might have won if only he had been a lot stronger. He should consider hitting the weights, or dare I suggest it, finding a lab that would provide him with performance enhancing drugs.”
Oh sure, sweep, sweep, sweep. But I guarantee you their locker room’s a mess. And would it kill you to pick up your cool curling uniform off of the floor ladies? (You Tube)
Recently, the #failing New York Times printed an opinion poking fun at the fact that now women are expected to wear “yoga pants” to yoga. Never mind that the people who invented yoga, the Indus-Sarasvati civilization of Northern India were probably wearing a dhoti. Did Gandhi fail to achieve inner peace due to his galling lack of yoga pants? It’s the same thing with bicyclists. Do they have to wear those shorts and skin-tight shirts? Didn’t we all ride bikes as kids growing up wearing regular clothes? When did that become problematic? Must there be a uniform for everything? Apparently curlers believe so, and they are sporting uniforms that look like a cross between the slacks and shoes that bowlers wear, and a skin-tight shirt that makes them all look like Jack LaLanne.
If as a planet, we are now willing to use drugs to improve at curling, then where does it stop? Are bowlers next? Goodbye nachos, hello HGH? Are badminton players going to “juice?” What about competitive ballroom dancers? Nobody wants to see your belly jiggle when you “jump and jive.” How about those old Italian men who play bocce in the park on Sunday mornings? Instead of sipping anisette, why not have them take a shot of human growth hormone in their asses? Oh, I’m sorry, are these examples silly? Fine, then how about we clean up the “sport” of curling, before some steroid infused beast takes the “stone” and brains one of their competitors. By the way, that actually sounds like something I would watch.