SAM BRINKLEY The International Olympic Committee (I.O.C.) has banned the Russian Federation from participation in the 2018 Winter Olympiad, to be held in Pyeongchang, South Korea this coming February. The ban is part of a series of disciplinary actions against Russia’s Olympic team for its state-backed doping scheme at the Sochi 2014 Winter Games. Several top athletes, with the support of the Russian Ministry of Sport and Federal Security Service, were discovered to have used performance-enhancing steroids over the course of their competition in Sochi. Since Russia was the host country, Russian operatives were able to slip into drug testing facilities and manipulate the urine samples of over a hundred athletes in the middle of the night, leading to a thorough ongoing investigation by the I.O.C. and a revocation of several dozen athletes’ medals. Many of those athletes have also been individually banned from competing at Olympic events for life. Among them are Alexander Zubkov, former gold-medalist in both two-man and four-man bobsledding, and Olga Fatkulina, former silver-medalist in 500 meters speed skating. President Vladimir Putin and other Russian officials have expressed outrage at the I.O.C.’s sweeping decision, although the Committee was unable to find enough concrete evidence that higher levels of the Russian government, up to the president, played a role in authorizing the athletes’ rule-breaking behavior.
For Russians, especially following the Cold War and President Putin’s ascension to power, the Olympic Games represent a crucial opportunity to establish their nation as competitive on the world stage. Russians typically perform extremely well in international athletic events, and have proved especially superior in the quadrennial Winter Games. In Sochi, the Russian team won both the most medals and the most gold medals out of all the participating countries prior to their standing’s partial annulment following the doping revelation. The 2010 Vancouver Games were also successful, with Russia yielding a total of 15 medals. Yet out of any nation, Russia has had the greatest number of medals rescinded by far in Olympic history: 49. The official Olympic creed states, “The most important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win but to take part, just as the most important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle. The essential thing is not to have conquered but to have fought well.” When Russians casually and consistently attempt to violate the rules of international competition, they run the risk of constructing a selfish image of themselves which isolates them from the worldwide community. The I.O.C. ban does not mean that no Russian athletes will participate in the 2018 Games, however. President Putin has signalled his permission for Olympians to travel to Pyeongchang to compete as neutral athletes, or in this case, “Olympic Athletes from Russia.” This allows for Russian athletes either not personally banned or not evidenced to be involved with the scandal to have a place in the Games, still following rigorous drug testing. The Russian flag and national anthem will simply not be allowed to be displayed and sounded at the opening and medal ceremonies. I.O.C. officials have not yet clarified whether the ban will be symbolically lifted in forgiveness to Russia prior to the 2018 closing ceremony.
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ADAM SICHEL Hailing from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the head coach of the 2017 Enloe Eagles football team has a lot to say about this year’s team. Coach Ken Blocker sat down with the Eagle’s Eye to discuss his first season as head coach and the impact he and his staff have made on the newly transformed football team.
How do you feel the team has changed from last year to this year? We pushed them pretty hard last year, I think the difference is the staff’s expectations. We have a college staff. In a couple main positions we have college coaches. Coach Kennedy is a college coach from Shaw University, Coach McKenzie is a college coach from Clemson University, and myself was also a two-year coach at Shaw University. I mean those expectations causes a lot of things to change in general. It's kind of like an experiment, to see if we can push them like a college team and see how they respond. So far, so good. Having been an assistant coach at Enloe last season, how much has that helped you this season as head coach? Absolutely, the biggest part about it was I already knew the guys, so by knowing them you know what they can do, what they can't do, strengths, and weaknesses. And by knowing their strengths and weaknesses, you can start to build a program based upon those strengths and weaknesses. And it also keeps a little level understanding and a bond between them. And they know I’m not going to ask them to do things that they are not able to do when it’s time to push it to another level. What do you say to your guys before a game, before a practice, what gets them motivated? Because football is a game of emotions, we try to make sure coming into the game we have a level head. The team who can play the fastest, the strongest, the hardest-- but be able to keep their head-- is usually the team that’s going to win. So we try to come in level headed, even-kill. There is not a lot of pre-hype, not a lot of hura before the game, because it will take you to a place that you can’t get back from sometimes. Sometimes you're so high, that you can't concentrate. And then you don’t want to start too low, that now you can't get up. So we try to come in right at the middle. There is no pre-hype before the game, you won’t hear us chanting, or any of that stuff before the game. How do you see the future of Enloe football? The future of Enloe football looks bright. I mean we are getting people in, we’re getting colleges in. Pretty soon we are gonna start making that bond strong between Ligon and Carnage, where a lot of our feeder kids come from. Get out here to the community and start working with the youth programs and all that stuff, so we can start building it from the ground up. But I think we have a good base. What does Enloe football specifically mean to you? You know I have learned a lot since coming here. Everybody kept saying “you know Enloe can't win,” and “it’s going to be a tough win here at Enloe,” I even read a blog where somebody said Enloe was career suicide, and it kinda motivated me more. Because at the end of the day, I believe in these young men and nobody wants to lose, you just have to figure out why they’re losing. What I figured out from this team is it is not so much on the field, it is more off the field. And just showing that you care about the players more than football, which is crazy because you are the football coach, but you end up having to care about the guys in the classroom and in the hallways. So they end up buying into the program, which is trying to do a lot more. Can you describe what the college recruiting process is like? Well I mean you got to build relationships. My mentor, his name is Terry Smith, he was a great head coach in Pittsburgh. I worked underneath him for years and now he is the assistant head coach at Penn State. I learned from him and all of it is just relationship building and getting exposure for young men, and taking them to those camps, and doing all those things that you need to do to just build pride in the program, and just build pride for the young men and giving them the ability to see that there is a next step. And I think that, here at Enloe, maybe at times, you know it got mundane to where losing was just the way. And if you show kids that their is a next step, show young men their is a next step, a place to go, there is a destination, you never know what you get. |
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