London Olympics Panic! - Britain's Useless Athletes Unable to Win Gold

chewmylegoff

Whilst in other news another drugs cheat won the 1,500m.

I wish they would just ban the drugs cheats forever. Including the british ones. Especially the british ones.

vivatifosi

chewmylegoff wrote: »

Whilst in other news another drugs cheat won the 1,500m.

I wish they would just ban the drugs cheats forever. Including the british ones. Especially the british ones.

Me too. Though I understand they are now on the boundaries of being able to cheat genetically. In another 50 years we could have countries sweeping the board at the Olympics, building swimmers with hands like giant spatulas and webbed feet.

It frustrates me greatly that the field for the women's 200m final was one of the finest ever assembled, but few realised because they had no chance of shaving a third of a second off their time to beat a record set 24 years ago. Now why has that record - and its 100m equivalent - never been broken? Hmmmm:mad::mad::mad::mad::mad:

sabretoothtigger

I remember Flo Jo at the time, seemed a genuine runner where as Ben Johnson who was banned the same year looked like it was 50/50 to kill or race someone on the starting blocks

Apparently she died over ten years ago in her sleep :O

Sapphire

vivatifosi wrote: »

Me too. Though I understand they are now on the boundaries of being able to cheat genetically. In another 50 years we could have countries sweeping the board at the Olympics, building swimmers with hands like giant spatulas and webbed feet.

I've been thinking just the same thing. I can see China going for it in a big way, because their athletes are not physically suited to some events, no matter how much money they put into training them. China wants to be top of the medal table as an expression of power, just like Russia did in the Cold War days.

They could do it in secret, too. :mad:

chewmylegoff

vivatifosi wrote: »

Me too. Though I understand they are now on the boundaries of being able to cheat genetically. In another 50 years we could have countries sweeping the board at the Olympics, building swimmers with hands like giant spatulas and webbed feet.

It frustrates me greatly that the field for the women's 200m final was one of the finest ever assembled, but few realised because they had no chance of shaving a third of a second off their time to beat a record set 24 years ago. Now why has that record - and its 100m equivalent - never been broken? Hmmmm:mad::mad::mad::mad::mad:

The media exaggeration around the subject of gene doping is a bit silly really. We are nowhere near growing designer athletes.

The first wave of gene doping will be manipulating genes which control/relate to muscle mass. When gene therapy has been successfully used to treat genetic diseases then that will be the time to start worrying about it. Some way off yet. Also muscle mass manipulation through genetics would require untargeted gene therapy to all parts of the body and would be hugely expensive and logistically difficult with current technology. (trials have been successful at increasing muscle mass in adult mice using gene therapy, but a human weighs 3,000 times more than a mouse and amount of vector you need to achieve a result, as i understand it, increases broadly expontentially with the size of the animal, so the dose would need to be 9,000,000 times what you give to a mouse which would probably just kill you).

Making swimmers with webbed feet? Doubt it somehow. Even if it were possible, if Chinese swimmers turned up with webbed feet I shouldn't think it would be long before the Chinese were respectfully asked to leave the competition...

I think the Chinese will be perfectly well able to dominate the medals table for future olympics by simply expanding on he same techniques they are currently using - I.e. slavery. When you have got over a billion people to choose from you don't really need to manipulate their genomes, far cheaper to just look at them and pick the ones with he right physique for each sport. The chinese have the shortest and lightest athlete at the games and the tallest. They only don't have the heaviest because there is some judoka from guam or something who is enormously fat.

RenovationMan

Sapphire wrote: »

I've been thinking just the same thing. I can see China going for it in a big way, because their athletes are not physically suited to some events, no matter how much money they put into training them. China wants to be top of the medal table as an expression of power, just like Russia did in the Cold War days.

They could do it in secret, too. :mad:

Just like America always has. I saw a clip where their news programs were concentrating more on the medals table than the individual gold medals and the athletes that won them. We're starting to go the same way.

vivatifosi

chewmylegoff wrote: »

The media exaggeration around the subject of gene doping is a bit silly really. We are nowhere near growing designer athletes.

The first wave of gene doping will be manipulating genes which control/relate to muscle mass.

I'm talking 50 years into the future though. Bear in mind that Crick and Watson only discovered DNA 59 years ago and the human genome sequence was announced around 2003(?) with help from supercomputers, the movement in this area has been quite swift.

chewmylegoff wrote: »

I think the Chinese will be perfectly well able to dominate the medals table for future olympics by simply expanding on he same techniques they are currently using - I.e. slavery. When you have got over a billion people to choose from you don't really need to manipulate their genomes, far cheaper to just look at them and pick the ones with he right physique for each sport. The chinese have the shortest and lightest athlete at the games and the tallest. They only don't have the heaviest because there is some judoka from guam or something who is enormously fat.

I don't like the Chinese system for the reasons you state, but I get a kick out of seeing our medals per capita compared to theirs and the US's:
As of this morning:
US - 41 golds - 1 per each 7.7m of population
China - 37 golds - 1 per each 36.4m of population
UK - 26 gold - 1 per each 2.4m of population

We need to keep an eye to the sneaky Aussies and Hungarians though. Aussies are having a bad Olympics by their standards yet still getting gold for each 3.2m of population and Hungary has a gold for each 1.2m of population (goes away to look at what Hungary is good at)... (ETA: comes back: kayaking - 3 of their 8 golds are in that).

Sapphire

RenovationMan wrote: »

Just like America always has. I saw a clip where their news programs were concentrating more on the medals table than the individual gold medals and the athletes that won them. We're starting to go the same way.

There's nothing wrong with wanting your country to excel in sports – God knows, this country needs to excel in something, and to feel it's good at something. The relentless barrage of negativity from the press and politicians (i.e. outside the Olympics) is not good for this nation's morale.

Becoming enthusiastic about sports might help to get people off their backsides and disengage from their iPhones and iPods. And I think that using lottery money to pay for the support teams needed to ensure wins in many sports these days is a good thing.

All countries focus on the medal tables – there's nothing new in that. There has been a hugely enthusiastic reception for the athletes who win in their events.

Debt_Free_Chick

chewmylegoff wrote: »

I think the Chinese will be perfectly well able to dominate the medals table for future olympics by simply expanding on he same techniques they are currently using - I.e. slavery.

Or enforced National Service, where they've got bu88er all else to do apart from "train for the Olympics"

StevieJ

Well done Josh, that makes 3 golds a silver and a bronze in boxing, excellent performance.