Politicizing Sports
Автор, американец, бывший зам. финансовый министр США, обвиняет WADA в политизации спорта и использование Марию Шарапову для этой цели.
Он допустил некоторые фактические ошибки, но мне кажется его слова понравятся россияне
By Paul Craig Roberts
PaulCraigRoberts.org
March 15, 2016
Paul Craig Roberts, a former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury and former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal, has been reporting shocking cases of prosecutorial abuse for two decades. A new edition of his book, The Tyranny of Good Intentions, co-authored with Lawrence Stratton, a documented account of how americans lost the protection of law, has been released by Random House.
One of the world’s best female tennis players, Maria Sharapova, has been suspended, because a medicine she has been taking legally under a doctor’s prescription for ten years was suddenly retroactively declared to be a prohibited substance that is a “metabolic modulator.”
The medicine, known as mildronate and also as meldonium in its banned name, has been in medical use for thirty years. Its inventor declared that the prohibition of mildronate “is a crime” and will lead to deaths among athletes. He says that it has not been proven that the medicine enhances athlete performance, but it does protect their hearts from over-exertion.
Mildronate is used to treat heart problems, magnesium deficiency, and diabetes. Sharapova suffers from magnesium deficiency. There is diabetes in her family history, and doctors saw signs that she was developing the disease.
The medicine is not designed to improve athletic performance. However, the medicine does protect athletes’ hearts as they push to their limits. Apparently it is this aspect of the medicine that caused the World Anti-Doping Agency to conclude that the medicine facilitates recovery from exertion and, thereby, enhances physical capabilities.
It is immaterial to my point whether the medicine’s inventor or WADA is correct. My point is that for a widely used legal substance to be put on a prohibited list for athletes, there should first be the public discussion. If the decision to prohibit the medicine is shown to be warranted, there should be enough advance notice provided so that athletes using the medicine for health reasons such as diabetes or magnesium deficiency, or to protect their heart from failing under exertion, have time to clear their bodies of traces.
This was not done. The medicine was added to the prohibited list on January 1 under the name of meldonium, a name that Sharapova did not recognize. Even if she had been aware that her medicine had been banned, there was not sufficient time between January 1 and the January Australian Open for her to be clear of the substance. WADA’s decision was made in a way that guaranteed that Sharapova would fail the test, a test she has always passed in her rise to dominance in women’s tennis. Other than WADA’s incompetence, it is difficult to read this other than WADA accepted a bribe to eliminate Sharapova from the Australian Open and subsequent events.
Examining this matter from the standpoint of the facts, it is unclear whether WADA consists of a bunch of incompetent and inconsiderate dopes who were unaware of the medicinal use of meldonium, or whether this is an orchestrated stunt to cast more discredit on Russia and Russian athletes.
Perhaps what we are witnessing is an attempt on the part of less capable American and Europeans to move aside dominant Russian athletes in order to be able to capture their lucrative endorsements. Nike, Tag Heuer, and Porsche suspended their contracts with Sharapova. Such cowardly behavior speaks poorly of the integrity of the three companies. The absence of loyalty and support that the companies have shown to their star associate raises questions about the character of the companies’ managements and the quality of their products.
As the record proves that Sharapova’s use of the medicine is clearly for medical, not performance, reasons, perhaps she will be reinstated by the International Tennis Federation. But the Tennis Federation, like most other institutions, might be under Washington’s thumb and used as an instrument of US foreign policy.
Even if she is reinstated, the Tennis Federation, WADA, and her sponsors have succeeded in messing with her mind. WADA official Dick Pound, who is trying to get Russian athletes banned from the 2016 Olympic Games in Brazil, demonstrated his own lack of integrity when he seized on Sharapova to boost his anti-Russian propaganda, declaring that she was “reckless beyond description” and guilty of “a big mistake.” As there is no justification for Pound’s irresponsible assertions, it raises questions about the integrity of WADA itself.
An athlete’s mental state is more important to the athlete’s performance than performance-enhancing drugs. I was disappointed to see that even RT misrepresented Sharapova’s situation as “explosive news” that she had “failed a drug test.” She did no such thing! She was trapped, perhaps purposely, by the sudden inclusion under a different name of a medicine she has been taking for a decade under medical supervision.
Until Sharapova is reinstated, competitors will benefit from less strenuous competition.
I remember from my studies of post-Roman Europe that various rulers to the extent that they could mint coins featured the Roman Emperor on the coins, not themselves. The reason for this, I was told, is that people associated coinage with Rome and were accustomed to a Roman image. To make their coinage acceptable, petty kings identified their coins with Rome.
Perhaps this is what we are witnessing today in Russia and China’s acceptance of Western domination. The United States and Europe—the West—comprise the hallmark of approval. Russia and China, despite their independent power, desire this approval. The West knows that Russia and China seek approval and denies it to them as an assertion of the West’s superiority.
It is not Russia and China that destroyed seven countries in the past 15 years. It was Washington and its European vassals. It is not Washington that is accused of human rights violations that are so severe that millions of peoples are fleeing into Europe in order to escape death at the hands of the Americans. It is Russia’s attack on ISIS that is blamed for the European refugee problem. It is Russia and China that are accused of human rights violations, not the real perpetrators—Washington and its vassals.
The West uses disapproval as a weapon. Washington disapproved the Sochi Olympics. While Putin was in Sochi, Washington overthrew the government of Ukraine and created a problem for Russia. While Putin was at the Beijing Olympics, Washington gave the go ahead to its Georgian puppet to attack South Ossetia and to kill Russian peacekeepers. Certainly, Putin should not go to the Brazilian Olympics this year. Washington might overthrow Putin in his absence. Certainly, Washington wants to be rid of Putin, and so do the Russian Atlanticist Integrationists whose sole ambition is to be an approved part of the West. Just as Washington had its Ukrainian puppet government lined up to take office once Washington overthrew Yanukovych, Washington has Atlanticist Integrationists lined up as its puppet government to take over Russia.
It is ironic that it is the hallmarked West, not the disapproved countries, that is in decline, culurally, morally, spiritually, and economically. Why do Russia, China, India, and every other country free of US imperial domination desire to be associated with a corrupt, immoral, declining part of the world whose economic and political existence depends on extending its hegemony over the remaining productive parts of the world in order to loot the countries for the benefit of the West?
Why are Russia and China concerned that they receive the approval of the West?
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2016/03/paul-craig-roberts/outrageous-assault-maria-sharapova/
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Рассматривая этот вопрос с точки зрения фактов, неясно, ВАДА состоит из множества некомпетентных и невнимательных идиотов, которые не знали о медицинском применении мельдония, или является ли это срежиссированным трюком, чтобы ещё больше дискредитировать Россию и российских спортсменов.
If WADA’s role is to communicate changes in the Prohibited List to NADOs, then perhaps WADA needs to be doing more to ensure that NADOs relay that information to athletes. One suggestion is that WADA request evidence from NADOs that they have effectively communicated the change.
“I think maybe WADA will look at that when they look at compliance and see how organisations are communicating changes,” says Niggli. “Clearly there is a responsibility on anti-doping organisations to make sure that they pass on the information.”
WADA knew that a large proportion of Russian athletes were openly using meldonium. According to the study into meldonium use at Baku 2015, the ‘geographical commercial availability of meldonium for medical use correlates with the countries of origin of the athletes who self-declared its use, and also correlates with the NOC medical teams who carried it as team stock’. Extrapolation of these statistscs suggest that significant numbers of Russian athletes were self-reporting their use of meldonium on doping control forms.
The question, therefore, is whether WADA would have been as seemingly slack with the communication of the changes regarding meldonium’s status had they detected the same patter of use among Western, or simply non-Russian, athletes?
It is a hypothetical question and impossible to verify, but remains valid; was the addition of meldonium to WADA’s Prohibited List so quickly and apparently quietly in fact a knee-jerk reaction to the ongoing Russian doping controversy?
Even if Russian athletes had been taking meldonium as a performance-enhancing drug to gain an edge, this was a perfectly legitimate way of doing so, and very much akin to other methods of gaining an edge, as Pickering emphasises, like training at altitude, following a strict diet, sleeping well, taking other supplements. It is unlikely that the ARAF or any other Eastern European sporting body whose athletes have fallen foul of the new regulations, would have welcomed the renewed scrutiny and critique of their athletes.
“NADOs [National Anti-Doping Organisations] need to do more,” said WADA’s Howman. This is a sentiment shared by Howman’s incoming successor and incumbent Chief Operating Officer, Olivier Niggli, who will take over as Director General on 1 July 2016. In an exclusive interview with The Sports Integrity Initiative, we asked Nigglie whether WADA could have done more to communicate the change in meldonium’s status effectively.
“That’s an interesting question,” responded Niggli. “Because we have done what we have always done, and when you look at the documents that were published at the end of September, it’s on the first page that meldonium was added to the list. It can’t hardly be clearer.”
“We are not responsible to reach out to every individual athlete,” continued Niggli. “Really the international federations and through their national federation and the NADO needs to do their work within their sport and in their country.”
“It looks as if this may not have happened the way it should but I have a hard time accepting that WADA should have done differently.”
http://www.sportsintegrityinitiative.com/sharapova-ignorance-and-wadas-culpability/