Drugs and the Olympics etc.
Anyone else uncomfortable with Lizzie Armistead getting into the Olympics effectively via a technicality? Whatever the reasons the athlete gets three chances to take a test, and I don't think there should be many circumstances where they can get away with not doing so. The punishment in fact is somewhat lenient. I might be tempted to argue that missing three tests should carry the assumption of a failed test - after all we don't know what an actual cheat would do. We have certainly seen a number of them claim all sorts of innocent stories before being proven as cheats. It's sad if the athlete subsequently banned for three misses is actually clean, but you can be sure that a number of Russian athletes have been banned from these Olympics have been clean, because of the greater good (well the greater guilt actually) and I have no problem with that. In fact I think the balance of evidence should be shifted to an athlete having to prove they are clean in order to participate rather than the world doping agency having to prove they are a cheat. If an athlete hasn't been tested in a year (as Armistead hasn't) then you simply don't get in.
I also remember that there was a lot of talk about doping before the London games (not on this scale though) but it died down when the games opened (at least on TV). The interesting thing was that I was out walking one evening and listening to a women's middle distance race on Five Live, and one of the commentators, who I believe was a coach rather than ex-athlete (wish I could remember who) effectively implied that the race we were hearing was not clean. He was saying that whilst most events / distances had been cleaned up, it was almost like different sectors had been affected differently and women's middle distance was still behind in cleaning up. It was quite different from the TV perspective!
I think again that the drugs discussion will disappear off the TV once the games starts, but what happens if Gatlin (unbelievably a twice banned "athlete") beats Bolt in the 100 metres, arguably the games most iconic event? The Olympic organisers must be crapping themselves about that!