Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Brexit Update, Doping in Sport
June 27, 2016 11:08 PM - Season 3, Episode 17 - Subscribe

This week....
  • The UK votes to leave the European Union, and in the wake David Cameron resigns as Prime Minister of the UK. YouTube (5m)
  • And Now: The Things News Anchors Are Scared Of
  • Main Story: Doping in the Olympics, and its creeping ubiquity. LWT provides an inspirational athlete bio that may be more realistic than the usual uplifting sports story. YouTube (21m)


United Kingdom: "A place whose very name, after this week's events, is beginning to sound a bit sarcastic."
The Olympics: "Your biennial reminder that NBC exists."

Last Week Tonight is on break for a month.
posted by JHarris (8 comments total) 3 users marked this as a favorite
 
I'm not sure if Oliver got the doping threshold right - if I'm not mistaken, these days there's less of a hard limit (except for those caught red handed or with improper dosage), but following on their biological passport, where they can be suspended even without a positive control, but simply for having results beyond what is considered to be the natural limits of the passport.
posted by lmfsilva at 2:38 AM on June 28, 2016


I need a "There Are No Fucking Do-Overs" t-shirt.
posted by still_wears_a_hat at 5:45 AM on June 28, 2016 [2 favorites]


So the main sports with doping problems seem to by Cycling, Track and Field, and Baseball.

Why do the NFL and NBA not seem to have a problem? Better testing leads to less bombshells about star athletes or worse testing that lets people get away with alot more or just the mechanics of the sport don't give cheaters much of an advantage?
posted by LizBoBiz at 8:15 AM on June 30, 2016


I don't think so.
Since athletics and cycling are international sports, it's not as easy to cover up a story - the French and the Italians will pick up any story on a team with a PED problem, or Froome and his magic bikes. Athletics have a lot of people's livelihood depending on a result that might not appear if the Russians are doped as fuck, so there's also some incentives to shout out.

It's very likely the NFL has a rampant PED problem, but it's nobodies' interest to publish a story on that.
Al Jazeera did it, and all they got was a bunch of "dam furigners" comments directed at them by the media, even if the NFL is allegedly interested in Peppers, Clay Matthews, James Harrison and Mike Neal, while Manning is not going to be questioned because reasons.
Lobbying can bury a lot of stories. Who could blow the whistle on the NFL with nothing to lose?
posted by lmfsilva at 9:11 AM on June 30, 2016


Yeah, I think it's more a matter of when the NFL and NBA PED stories start coming out than if they will. There's just too much money on the line to believe that there are only 10 players on PEDs in the NFL and none in the NBA over the last year.
posted by Etrigan at 9:51 AM on June 30, 2016 [2 favorites]




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