By Adam Spartz

In an article posted by the New York Times, the article goes into detail about the corruption in international sports. The main focus of the article is on the illegal doping of the Russian track team during the Rio Olympics. The article points out that top officials in the International Association Athletics Federation covered up what was going on. Officials took payments so that way they could earn a little on the side but not have to say anything. The greedy behavior of these top officials undermined the fair competition in track in field. With the officials taking bribes, and the story being released this was possibly the biggest case of bribery, and fraud on an international stage in a very long time. The investigation led to the international Olympic committee not allowing the Russian track team to perform in the Olympics. This was huge this was the first time in a long time that this has happened. this incident led to sixty-eight members of the Russian track team being banned after the Track team in the London Olympics won seven gold medals. The international Olympic committee thought about not allowing Russia from competing in the Olympics altogether. The decision was close but allowed just for the track team to be banned. What this meant for the country of Russia was a bad look from two standpoints, the first was that they were trying to bid for the winter Olympics in Sochi this could have threatened there possible bid for the winter Olympics. The second problem was the look that it gave for the International Association Athletics Federation, could people ever really trust them ever again including the entire Russian Olympic team ever again? this will be determined in the future but this exposes international sports corruption. This is another case of an organization/committee that tried to look the other direction. With this much corruption the International Association Athletics Federation it makes you wonder how long has this been going on? Another question that this brings up is what other countries have done this or what countries are still doing this? We may never know but we can certainly take away several things from this story. The first is that the international sports world once again shows, that it is not as clean as people think it is. The second thing is that that international sports such as the Olympics needs stricture anti doping rules to prevent this type of situation from ever happening again. The third and final thing is in the next Olympics in 2020 with this type of incident happen again?