Zagitova sets new world record: Medvedeva close behind in women's singles figure skating

Shame on those who wanted to force these girls out of the Olympics. 

Shame on Russia for running a state sponsored doping program, blatantly flaunting the spirit of the games, leading Russia to not be welcome at the games

They have every right to perform and participate.

Yep, under the Olympic flag. Not under the Russian flag.

Once again I encourage anyone to watch the documentary Icarus. You’ll be absolutely disgusted with Russia and their athletes, and fully understand why it should be at least a generation before they should be welcome to join again.

Proven clean athletes should be able to compete, but unclean doping systems should not be awarded or rewarded

on Wednesday with a brilliant free skate

The free program is on Friday.

The article just contradicted itself

This is the short program, not the long program a.k.a. free skate

Once again I encourage anyone to watch the documentary Icarus.

Can be found on Netflix:

https://www.netflix.com/title/80168079

Icarus actually started out as a documentary about doping in cycling, but as they found out more, accidentally led them to Russian doping

https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2017/08/icarus-review-netflix/535962/

In the new Netflix documentary, a filmmaker accidentally captures how one of the biggest scandals in sporting history came to light.

When he set out to make Icarus, the playwright and actor Bryan Fogel had one goal: to examine how easy it is to get away with doping in professional sport. An enthusiastic amateur cyclist, he was disturbed by the fact that someone like Lance Armstrong could cheat for so many years and never fail a single drug test. “Originally,” he explains in the film, “the idea I had was to prove the system in place to test athletes was bullsh-t.”

Icarus, initially intended as a Super Size Me–style effort to poke holes in the anti-doping system, ended up capturing the maelstrom of one of the biggest scandals in sporting history, while former anti-doping officials were dying under mysterious circumstances and the IOC was pondering whether Russia should be banned outright from the 2016 Rio Olympics.

It’s fair, then, to call Icarus a coup for a first-time documentarian, the product of both dumb luck and a strange rapport between Fogel and Dr. Grigory Rodchenkov, who is the director of Moscow’s anti-doping center when Fogel first meets him via Skype in 2014.

An anti-doping scientist at UCLA introduces Fogel to Rodchenkov, an instantly endearing and offbeat character who croons at Fogel’s dog over Skype and has a strangely encyclopedic grasp of doping itself—what Fogel should take, and how he’ll feel as he starts his new regime. It involves prescription steroids and hormones issued by an anti-aging doctor, and fairly graphic footage of Fogel injecting himself daily.

Rodchenkov is a cheerfully game accomplice, and at some point Fogel starts to wonder—why is a lab director in charge of anti-doping efforts for the Sochi Olympics showing a relative stranger how to take performance-enhancing drugs and get away with it?

The answer comes in November 2015, when Rodchenkov is heavily implicated in a report by the World Anti-Doping Agency that ties him to state-sponsored doping efforts in Russia.

The scale of the cheating Rodchenkov helps expose is clearest when Fogel meets with scientists and officials at WADA in 2016, and explains that they have spreadsheets detailing every athlete on the state-mandated doping protocol at the London Olympics, and how many of them were implicated.

The two Russians Evgenia and Alina are so far above the other skaters in terms of talent and presence, it isn't even close. In order to get to that level, you have to start young with very talented skaters and then train them with crazy intensity. There are some that say skaters like Alina lost their childhood due to the demanding training involved, 7-8 hours a day. That's what it takes though. Other skaters around the world don't have that kind of training regimes so they will never be on the level of the Russian skaters.

Strangerland: "You’ll be absolutely disgusted with Russia and their athletes, and fully understand why it should be at least a generation before they should be welcome to join again."

No... a generation should not have to suffer for what some have done, same as all of Japan's speed skaters shouldn't all be cast out because of one doper. And don't try to argue that they're different. These female skaters aren't doping. Shame on what the Russian government has done, yes. Not shame on these women, and they should not be kicked out and should be allowed to fly under their own flag before too long.

In any case, not quite done yet. Canada's right on their tails, and Japan also not far behind.

No... a generation should not have to suffer for what some have done, same as all of Japan's speed skaters shouldn't all be cast out because of one doper. And don't try to argue that they're different. 

It’s different because Russia was running a state sponsored doping program.

Thr athletes are not being punished - they are still allowed to compete. It’s Russia that is rightfully being punished by not being welcome at the olympics.