Mark Tewksbury’s slanderous attack on Yelana Isinbayeva | TONY SEED
(August 25) – The latest broadcaster to shoot off his mouth to the world and bray his catastrophic ignorance is Canadian ex-swimmer Mark Tewksbury, a prominent colour and expert commentator at the Rio Olympics for the state-owned Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. He was the chef de mission in the London Olympics four years ago, so he knows the drill. Right from the Opening Ceremonies, CBC has been broadcasting biased and malicious comments and reports against Russian athletes, as well as joining Western media outlets, both mainstream and tabloid in casting aspersions on Brazil itself.
Instead of highlighting the Olympic spirits and bonds made by athletes from across the world in Brazil, Mr Tewksbury tweeted his extreme disapproval that Yelana Isinbayeva, whom he libelled as a “doper,” had been elected to the IOC.
Ms Isinbayeva was elected to the IOC by her fellow athletes at Rio, despite being excluded from the pole vault competition of which she is the reigning World Record holder, with over 1,300 votes, the third highest total – an impressive statement by international athletes, which one would think would give Mr Tewkesbury and others of his ilk pause for thought.
Instead, in the tweets, which appeared early morning on August 19, Tewksbury said he was “disgusted former doping athletes are represented on IOC Commission.” His tweets deliberately neglected the fact that Ms. Isinbayeva – who participated in three Olympic Games – never had a positive doping test in her entire sporting career. He did not mention that she had the endorsement of 1,300 athletes.
Instead of mentioning she had the endorsement of 1,300 athletes, the CBC “expert” commentator went out of his way to mock IOC president Thomas Bach’s comments that “Athletes are at the heart of Olympic Games” – as if the athletes were voting like his dutiful children.
Interestingly Mr Tewksbury quickly deleted his tweets, but other tweets made by the CBC “expert” alleging that the election was “rigged” remained online:
I am so sad. How can we clean up sport after this? For sure it was rigged. Will be presented as democratic.https://twitter.com/CHBlanche/status/766485494238736386 …
Earlier today, Tewksbury also tweeted in relation to Isinbayeva’s election, labelling the three-time world champion and current world record holder as “excluded,” from the Olympics, with a link to an article from The Straits Times.
Olympics: Excluded Russian Isinbayeva elected to IOC athletes commission http://str.sg/4qXc
Olympics: Excluded Russian Isinbayeva elected to IOC athletes commission, Sport News & Top Stories…
Sport News -RIO DE JANEIRO (AFP) – Two-time Olympic pole vault champion Yelena Isinbayeva was on Thursday (Aug 18) elected onto the International Olympic Committee’s athletes commission despite being…
straitstimes.com
Ms. Isinbayeva was barred from competition at the Rio 2016 Olympics per the ruling of the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), which prohibited the entire Russian track and field team from the Games in the wake of the alleged state-run doping scandal. The only exclusion was made for long jumper Darya Klishina, who lives and trains in the United States.
Ms. Isinbayeva, a three-time world champion and current world record-holder, double gold medalist for the Russian Federation and widely assessed to be the greatest pole-vaulter of all time, has never failed a drug test. Ever. Her only crime is her national origin; she is the victim of a collective ban and indiscriminate collective sanctions, one of the victimizers being the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
According to the CBC – a Crown corporation and the quasi-official voice of the state – Russian athletes are “emerging as the villains of the Rio Olympics.” The tone seems approving, self-righteous…judgemental. “As if,” one commentator noted, “the official mouthpiece of Canada is delighted to sign on to the Get Russia program offered by its southern neighbour and business partner to all its toadies and would-be chambermaids.”
To this end, Tewksbury manufactured a villain. Far from being an irresponsible use of freedom of expression that is being abused to flame hatred, this is black propaganda and the disinformation of the U.S. state It is aimed at monopolizing international sport and humiliating its old and now lifelong enemy, Russia. Such biased and malicious reports without factual basis have already fanned bitter feelings between Australian and Chinese netizens, seriously violating the Olympics’ Charter. It risks spiralling into unnecessary political conflict and eventually military conflict.
Postscript
The Canadian blogger Mark Chapman* writes:
But you can sort of see where Mr Tewksbury gets the impression that everyone in Russian Track & Field is a zombie dope freak. Because of the just-as-ignorant McLaren Report, in which he and his pals on the ‘Independent Commission’ more or less acted as stenographers for Yulia and Valery Stepanov (who were paid $30,000.00 by WADA as a ‘fleeing fee’) and Grigory Rodchenkov, the central figure in Russian sports doping who is very likely parlaying it into a state-sponsored program to save himself. Grigory Rodchenkov, who previously referred to the members of the ‘Independent Commission’ as ‘three fools who do not understand how the Moscow lab works’. But because his testimony was needed for political reasons, which are helping the United States of America humiliate its old and now lifelong enemy, Russia, McLaren deemed him to be credible anyway although his preliminary report assessed the exact opposite. Why? Because up as far as the preliminary report, Rodchenkov was denying everything. By the time the final report was thrown together, at just the right time to slap a national Olympic ban on Russia but leave them not enough time to undo it , Rodchenkov was singing like a canary and confessing to everything.
Confession is apparently not only good for the soul, it is also good for politically-motivated hack jobs which lack the weight of independent verification, setting in motion a rush to judgment that suits the regime-changers of North America and NATO, and feeds the hungry press a sensational story which is immediately assumed to be fact.
WADA and its foot-in-mouth-breathing soldiers would have been wise to sense, in the election of Isinbayeva, an attempt to back away from the precipice McLaren and his buddies are trying to drag us over. WADA no longer enjoys the confidence of the IOC, because it is comprised of partisan zealots who are willingly in the service of a political agenda, at the expense of sport. You can be assured that legal action will follow the Olympics, and if McLaren cannot get his ducks in a row by then, a whole lot of people are going to have egg on their faces.
So let me give you some advice, as a taxpayer who helps fund your spoiled and cosseted pursuit of sport in your discipline. If you’re at the Olympics, bully for you and the CBC, which is paying your way. In politics? Check your paperwork; I’m pretty sure nobody ever asked you to perform in such a capacity. Next time you see the Foreign Minister of your country doing wind-sprints, or a tricky dismount from the horizontal beam, you can assume there’s some crossover… You can swim or run or jump faster or higher or further than anyone else who is involved in this competition. You are living proof that you can be the best at something, and not have a clue about anything else.
Richard McLaren does not have proof of who in the Russian Federation is a doper and who is not. What he has is witness testimony from three people who were themselves earhole-deep in doping, and have fled their country. The IOC would not consider the election of Isinbayeva to the IOC if they were even optimistic that McLaren’s report rests on solid proof.
Everybody in the world has had it up to here with the behaviour of pampered athletes abroad, from finger-wagging to rest-room-door-smashing to making up bullshit stories about robbery to sounding off about events from a dataset of zero. Stick to what you know, and the next time you’re tempted to step out of that circle, think again. Think of everybody in your country with a zipper over their mouths, and follow suit. If somebody asks you a question about your sport and your personal place in it, feel free to enlighten everyone. If you are asked a question or feel moved to publicly comment on something that is not your specialty, remember your mother’s advice; if you can’t say something nice, shut the fuck up. I’m sure she didn’t say it quite that way, but you can extrapolate a little for the times. Use your head for something other than keeping your Nicki Minaj ball cap from shrinking.”
Lest one think the target is exclusively Russia, the media has also sunk so low as to exacerbate verbal clashes and biases against a Chinese swimmer – the slander made by Australian swimmer Mack Horton against his Chinese rival Sun Yang – the subject of a separate post (click here.)
Sightly edited for copy by TS
*Mark Chapman blogs at The Kremlin Stooge.
Friendship First, Competition Second – An Amateur Sport Website 