The Last Decade

I saw an article published by the BBC about the last decade's events that shook sport. I've known a few as I'm following sports events but was curious to see what Dan Roan is writing about.

Doping is mentioned in the first place as we had thousands of doping cases and I believe the new decade is going to be about doping as well. The winner is obviously Lance Armstrong. Once the biggest cycling champion, now the most infamous cheater who's name will always be linked to doping. He can never wash it away.

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He won 7 Tour de France titles, he was basically a legend. How many times he said in different interviews that he didn't do doping. Then he confessed he won all 7 titles by doping.

For me the other doping scandal of the decade was Russia. I haven't checked any statistics but I guess every country has doping cases but what Russia did is unprecedented. Doping, cheating my replacing samples and covering up are just a few things they did. WADA has recently banned Russia for four years but the appeal is still ongoing.

In my opinion the other thing that has defined the last decade is the gender scandals. Transgender athletes are facing difficulties due to unclear rules and the athletes they are competing against are also facing difficulties due to the same reason.

And there's Caster Semenya, who's case in singular. There were no similar cases in history and no one knows what to do with her. After putting her through a very unpleasant gender verification test, some testosterone level regulations were set up but the whole matter is still not clear.

This new decade is not going to be different, these problems still exist and won't go away just like that. Russia's appeal can take years and the 2020 Tokyo Olympics is just around the corner. If the appeal is not finalized, Russian athletes are going to participate and I bet we're going to see some nice doping cases again, and not necessarily from Russia, or only from Russia.

The gender matter is still not regulated properly, there's a long and bumpy road ahead of everyone full of sacrifices and losses. I guess we'll see what the new decade holds for us, right?