Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Steven Staggs
Testing is the same in both men and women track and field events. She didn't test positive for anything, so she was not cheating. This was all done beyond her control and I bet she would give up alot for this to have never happened to her. I think it's very unfair to label her as a cheater.
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I agree - both genders are subject to the same sort of policy as far as olympic-type athletic events go.
ReplyDeleteI think "cheating" should be a term reserved for those who knowingly violate the rules. This doesn't appear to be the case with her, so I definitely agree that it's unfair and flat-out incorrect to label her as a cheater.
On the other hand - Putting myself in the perspective of the athletes she competed against, I can kind of see where they are coming from. Considering they train extremely hard to compete as well, they may feel "wronged" by the fact that they were beaten by someone with gender ambiguity like her. Still, I think they are probably just frustrated, and some of the comments that they made definitely lacked class -
"Immediately, competitors were calling for her private parts after Semenya had passed them like fence posts. "Just look at her!" fumed Russia's Mariya Savinova, who finished fifth in the 800, 3.23 seconds behind Semenya. "For me, she's not a woman," burned Italy's Elisa Piccione, who finished sixth, 3.36 seconds behind Semenya."
Just to add to the whole cheating discussion, I agree that she isn't a cheater in any way, shape, or form. You hear baseball players saying "I didn't knowingly" take this or that, but they took something (and if they knew it or not is a whole different debate). She didn't take anything, she shouldn't be a cheater. I'd bet anything that she didnt go into the race thinking that she was going to have an advantage because of her situation.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the posts above, I don't think Caster is a cheater in any way. I read some articles and it said that the Track and Field Orginization don't want to test Caster because they think she's cheating, they want to test her because they think she has an unfair advantage over the other female runners. That doesn't really make any sense to me becuase maybe Caster really is just a good runner, and it doesn't have to do with her being a different gender. I mean did Michael Jordan have an unfair advantage over all basketball players? I don't think so, I just think that he was an amazing player and was better than other basketball players.
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