Usain Bolt gives Thomas Bach a crystal clear message

LOL! So what. PEDs can be made that easily beat drug tests. Marion Jones and Lance Armstrong never failed drug tests either.

And with Fukushima unresolved and radiation reaching as far as Tokyo, it's better for the athletes there? For example" High level' of radiation detected in Tokyo park BBC 24 April 2015"

+1 everyone of our major sports use it. League union soccer afl cricket

Cape Town would be an awesome spot. Jo'Burg would be unimaginably dangerous I'm afraid.

There is no way SOuth Africa could afford an Olympic games. The bigger concern looking at Rio is the lack of foreign Olympic spectators. Unless you have a big background population who are wealthy enough to afford Olympic tickets then there seem to be empty stands, Even Athens which is next door to more sports fans in Europe had poor attendances for events not involving Greek athletes. Of course Athens had overpriced accomodation which scared many off. China was not everyones cup of tea it seems, and Brazil has the zika virus and fear of crime. There is no way you can work out whether the spectators in London were locals or foreign residents already there and the same goes for Sydney. The whole economic benefit is the proposition that you will get hundreds of thousands of tourists going to the games, and each one will spend many thousands of dollars .Looking at Rio you would be lucky to have 50,000 foreign tourists there for the game. There will be lucky to be half the people willing to go to SOuth Africa than even Rio with the ZIka virus. In the world cup they had enough people from many countires to fill the stands in both Brazil and SOuth Africa. In SOuth Africa it was even embarassing the lack of local spectators, the blacks being too poor to afford tickets, and the richer white population didn't even turn out to support their home team, where their seems to be some form of racial divide regards which sport they attend. You have to worry that the same will apply to SOuth Africa at the Olympics, with mainly black athletes in track and field would the wealthy whites bother.

In what was is the Sydney Olympic Stadium a white elephant? It's used a LOT for many different sports. It's the only stadium in Sydney close to that capacity. Nothing else is over 50,000. They modified it after the Olympics which dropped capacity from 110,000 down to 80,000, and it's been a highly used stadium ever since. I don't know that you understand the idea of a white elephant.

The big thing that needs to change is the ridiculous percentage of the money that goes to the IOC. What happens to all that money? They are a closed, non-democratic organisation, so nobody really knows. But it seems like it mostly lines the pockets of those running the IOC. The hosting country should keep at least 90% of broadcasting revenues. If that happened then it would become much more viable to actually make money out of an Olympics. They'd make most of their money through broadcasting, it would cover the costs spent on building things, and poorer countries like Brazil could host games and afford to offer really cheap tickets to their own people (sure charge the tourists a bit more) and get people into the stadiums.

Not sure that she's commentating. She "hosts" the start of the live broadcast starting around 10pm. So she's the one in the studio they go back to for a couple of minutes in between events.

Let's just say there have actually been a lot of pretty awesome stories at these games!

Exactly, there's more than a score on a board. If that was the case then you'd probably find a few countries would be the most capable of hosting a games and it would never leave those. It went to Rio because it was cool to actually have an Olympic games in South America for the first time. For instance, I'd love to see if they could pull off a bid for a Johannasburg Olympics. I can't imagine they'd have ratings using whatever scale is used for that higher than any bid in a first world country, but there are many other reasons why having an Olympics in Africa would be really cool. (I choose J'Burg because I like the idea of another high altitude Olympics where we can see some cool world records like we saw in Mexico City but other than that might not be the best African choice, Cape Town would probably be better). And those are the same sorts of reason why having an Olympics in Brazil was a cool idea. The big issue is that the IOC arrange the Olympics in such a way that they keep most of the money rather than it going to the hosting nation. If Brazil got the majority of the money from broadcast rights then it would probably be a good thing financially for Brazil instead of a financial drain on them. That would make hosting much more viable for everyone, especially poorer countries!

Are you aware of the recent revelations about Kenyan athletes and doping? Also doping in US pro sports is endemic. Those were not good examples to discredit anything. And his circumstantial evidence is quite damning.

It's quite legitimate for the AFL not to pass on illicit drug test results to ASADA, where they fall outside the WADA code. It's a player health issue, not an anti-doping one. Anyway yes you can't trust countries to test their own athletes. Everyone knows that. It's just that countries won't give up control. Take a wild guess why not!

It is not nonsense to point out that 4 of the 5 best Jamaican runners ever (who are also the fastest runners ever) have been shown not be simply naturally fast, but chemically enhanced. These 5 arrived on the scene at pretty much the same time and the 4 who have been popped are/were team mates and/or training partners of the 5th and fastest.

The Americans have tested positive for steroids Gay and Gaitlin, the Jamaicans for stimulants. What I can't work out is how would Jamaicans have the best doping method that no one else knows.

What is the whole point of testing for illicit drugs instead of everything unless they have a cheaper test for illicit drugs then it makes more sense. AFL seemingly are allowing illicit drugs in the off season and not testing for performance enhancing drugs in the off season. The AFL have refused to pass on the tests in the off season to ASADA as well but those are only for illicit drugs. I can;t see how you can trust countries doiing their own tests, if a country is doping then they just rig the tests. WHy not put a fund based on GDP per country to fund and do the tests, rather than chasing up poor countries that are succesfull.

Nostalgic facial hair: each to their own, for me Fiji winning their first ever was the best "story" of the games (and that's just my inconsequential opinion as someone who doesn't give a rat's rectum about rugby) I prefer the Olympic stories emotion over endorsement.

Or Jamaicans are just naturally fast. By your logic all Kenyan distance runners are dopers. All USA basketball players are on the juice. Sorry but your circumstantial evidence is nonsense.

Yeah, let's put them in Athens every Olympiad. Great idea. Leaving aside the question of on-going patronage, what happens to all of the infrastructure in between the Games? Usage would be minimal, relative to the financial cost and opportunity cost of those assets. Athens would effectively have a ghost town on their doorstep. If I am the mayor of Athens, that isn't a great use of space/assets. So, do you want the IOC to have to buy huge tracts of land in Athens (not a lot of it) so it can maintain the unused facilities? Silly idea with no economic rationality or realism. Not sure why the author chose to throw it up again.

To be fair, there is some circumstantial evidence. Of the top 100 times ever recorded for the 100m, 59 have been achieved by 5 Jamaican runners (Yohan Blake, Asafa Powell, Steve Mullings, Usain Bolt and Nesta Carter). The 59 times have all been run since 2005 (Steve Mullings 1 x top 100 time, Nesta Carter 2 x 100 times, Yohan Blake 5 x 100 times, Usain Bolt 22 x 100 times and Asafa Powel 26 x 100 times). Of the top 5 Jamaican runners, 4 (Steve Mullings, Nesta Carter, Yohan Blake and Asafa Powell) have been charged with doping offences - only Usain Bolt has not. Of the remaining 41 times, 36 were achieved by runners from the US (28 of which were run by Tyson Gay and Justin Gaitlin, both of who have been charged with doping offences). Maurice Greene ran four of the times and was subsequently under a doping cloud re:BALCO. The sweet spot for really fast times seemed to be between 2007-2012 when 9 of the top 10 times were run by 5 runners (Usain Bolt, Asafa Powell, Tyson Gay and Yohan Blake). A reasonable person could conclude a doping culture existed in top Jamaican and US running since at least 2005. Only one runner has not been popped and he is the fastest of the lot, by a large margin. There is smoke for a punter to keep an open mind regarding cleans or otherwise - and in the interim simply enjoy the fast running!

That's not a bad idea. One option of course, is if you can't afford it, don't bid for it.