It’s one thing to feel disappointment after your hockey team fails to
medal, especially when many expected at least a silver. It’s one thing
to walk away angry after a wholly disappointing effort. Even Russian
president Dmitri A. Medvedev was angry
over his country’s weak performance.
“Those who
are responsible for training for the Olympics must take
responsibility,” Mr. Medvedev said on Monday. “They must have the
courage to submit their resignation,” he said. “And if they do not have
this resolve, we will help them.”
That’s one thing.
That’s expected, and you have to respect that stance. They are angry
and the country wants to do better, especially with the next Winter
Olympics being held in Sochi in 2014.
Yet columnist Timothy
Bancroft-Hinchey of the online Russian newspaper Pravda has taken a
different stance. He alleges that not only were the Canadians taking
performance-enhancing drugs and getting away with it, but that the
Russian athletes were having their food laced with drugs as well.
I
kid you not. More after the jump.
From the Pravda article, which
is the top story on their website today:
The middle finger and the giant raspberry go to the
Canadian ice hockey team. Were they on drugs the day they beat Russia so
overwhelmingly? These days, and since the USSR’s 8-1 thrashing of
Canada in the early 80s, Canada-Russia ice hockey games are always very
closely fought events and there has not been such a monumental
difference between the two sides. Very strange, the more so since the
same Team Canada (whatever the hell that is supposed to mean) put in an
extremely lacklustre performance against lowly Slovakia and was lucky to
reach Sunday’s final. And for anyone who is about to be shocked by the
question, one supposes it is OK to make cheap and gratuitous references
to Russians and doping, but when the ball rolls back home it hurts.
Right?We will never know, will we? We will never know,
because the officials at Vancouver predictably did not mete out to the
Canadians the shockingly humiliating treatment given to the Russian
skier Natalya Korosteleva, asked to produce a urine sample during the
break between the quarter-and semi-finals of her event. Had she
complied, she would not have had time to enter the semis. And such was
the hounding of the Russian athletes that there are rumours many refused
to eat for fear their food would be laced with steroids.
Obviously, this is just a Russian columnist writing
for an online, sensationalist newspaper. But this cannot be a serious
article, can it? Is he really accusing the Canadians of not only lacing
the Russians food, but being involved in a Martin-Scorcese-level
conspiracy that has the Canadians taking drugs and then the IOC testers
overlooking it?
He goes on to say that none of the Russians will be
missing Vancouver, and it was all just a big waste of time. Somehow, he
ties in Russian health-care and the overall employment rate in his
argument, but this is easily just one big, insane rant. Right?
Is this seriously what the Russians want to start,
when they will be hosting the Olympics in four years?
