The Olympics Begin
August 8th, 2008
Every four years, we experience the summer Olympics. They formally open today in Beijing, although women’s soccer has already kicked off. The Olympics are a major media event, one that NBC paid $1 billion for the rights to televise. While the athletes are there to perform at their best and many great athletes will be participating, the side shows are almost as interesting.
Illegal substances or “doping” may appear to be a recent issue, but have actually been around since the 1960 Olympics in Rome when Danish cyclist Knud Enemark Jensen died during his event after injecting a doping agent. At the same Olympics, American and Soviet weightlifters acknowledged taking anabolic steroids.
