Hollow victories

THE speculation is that the Americans’ chances of winning the gold medal in ice hockey in the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea have been tremendously boosted by the blanket ban on Russian athletes over what has been reported as “organized” doping supposedly orchestrated by Moscow.

- children about even if the United States were to win again after 38 years.

At Lake Placid in 1980, the US went up to top of the podium by defeating the seemingly invincible Russian ice hockey team in what the Western media called the “Miracle on Ice.”

The Americans were alsorans from Sarajevo ( 1984) to Sochi ( 2014).

Meanwhile, the Russians (under the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and, later, the Russian Federation) have won more ice hockey gold medals than any other country.

The Americans’ “benefactor” in the run-up to next year’s Winter Games apparently is the World Anti- Doping Agency ( WADA), which last week threw the “dirty” Russians under the bus by banning all of them from the world’s premier sporting extravaganza on ice in PyeongChang.

The WADA is the same banana that made Maria Sharapova, a glamorous tennis superstar--and Russian--pay dearly for “doping” by shutting the door on her for two years ( later reduced to 15 months).

It is the same agency that has given the Williams sisters, Venus and Serena, “medical exemptions” to take prohibited drugs on its list but without saying for what ailment/s the medicines are.

The siblings, also tennis superstars in their own right, have not been reported to tell the world, the media at least, what “mysterious” disease/s that has/have been bothering them.

But another American athlete, the multiple gold medal-winning gymnast Simone Biles, said she was prescribed the medicine/s for disorder” or ADHD.

Biles’ admission came after alleged hackers from “Fancy Bear,” which, according to the WADA, is a Russian group, dropped the bomb on her and the Williamses.

With the agency slamming the PyeongChang gates on the likes Medvedeva, two- time world champion ( she is 19) and the favorite to win in South Korea, the spoils now would be feasted on by presumably “clean” athletes from the United States and a few other countries.

That label for American speed skaters, among others— and ice hockey p l ayers— has prompted Fancy Bear to cry “double standard.”

Maybe, but the WADA applying it to the cases of Venus, Serena and Simone would have elicited screams of racism from probably all sectors beyond sports.

The three women are AfricanAmerican.

Sharapova and Medvedeva, quite obviously, are white and apparently fair game for the WADA.

Still, we don’t think that the US ice hockey team would be going anywhere near the podium in South Korea.

If it did, then it must be over the pucks of the Canadians.

(At this writing, it was reported that 95 Russian athletes have been “cleared” and would probably see action in PyeongChang).