Quote Originally Posted by Hal-9000 View Post
Yeah the Russian hockey program was so different than our system. They had (and still do) people that played on the national team as sort of a life time job slot, and they drew from that pool throughout the 70's on. We started populating our teams with pros in answer to their wonky, if not dishonest sporting system.

Not to go over old ground...but how the hell does Russia get to be in the Olympics after being banned from the games? I would drug test every one of those hockey players right down to cold medicines if I was the IOC.
I think the basic gist of it is, that the Russians appealed the ban but the IOC upheld the ban against Russia participating at the Olympics. But, they relented and let a certain group of athletes, ones that hadn't tested positive at the time I guess, to compete at the Olympics under the stipulation that they couldn't compete as Russians for Russia, that where the OAR (Olympic Athletes from Russia) came from. So while there were Russians there, technically they were not competing AS Russians.

Still BS if you ask me, especially since one of their Curlers tested positive for doping.