Excuse Me Mame, Er...Sir...

"The gender trap: We're familiar with drug testing for athletes, but officials at the Beijing Olympics will be taking things one stage further and examining competitors whose sex is in doubt. And it is far from being a new problem, as Emine Saner discovers"

Great article by Emine Saner, from the Guardian in the UK.

I actually never knew this was so much of an issue that they had to actually "test" women thought to be men competitors. Although, looking back to my younger years as an avid Olympics watcher, I do recall some of the East German team members to be very "butch", shall we say? Who knew that they were being forced to ingest physically altering drugs that also made them somewhat mental, and for some, suicidal.

Reading the section on Adolf Hitler, it doesn't surprise me that he would have resorted to such trickery as substituting a male in a female competition in order to give the appearance of Aryan domination and supremacy. Compared to most of the horror he created and stirred up, the shenanigans perpetrated at the Olympics can be considered quite tame.

As far as the Polish sprinter goes, wouldn't it have been VERY obvious that her bits and pieces were flopping about as she ran like the wind? Even back then, I think they wore shorts that were, well...short. I assume some serious taping and shellacking had to be done before every race. Wouldn't someone have noticed during all those years?

Anyway, back to China. It seems that the more I hear about the Olympics this year, the more I get disturbed about the way they are being conducted. Most likely, the Olympics will probably NEVER be held in a communist country again. There seems to be way to much drama and bullshit associated with the act of fair play and camaraderie between nations. Great lengths seem to be taken to make the air of goodwill the games represent anything but...