Russia Banned From 2018 Winter Olympic

Once again athletes who has doped are in trouble. Once again, yawn. 

This time the Russian Olympic Team is banned from competition in the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea after it was found that many of their athletes were doping during the 2014 games that were held in Sochi.

Not only did they scheme to cover up that their athletes doped, they can't even march in the 2018 opening ceremonies or have their anthem played.

 The Russian athletes that are clean have to get special permission to march in uniforms of unspecified countries.

My question is this, what happened to the integrity of athletes? It's not just baseball that has the steroid cheaters, now it's the Olympics too. What happened to fair play? 

Why was Russia allowed to cheat?

Shouldn't there be safeguards to make sure doping doesn't happen.  

What happened to working hard for a goal? What happened to excelling at a sport by sacrificing years to achieve a dream? Now all athletes have to do to achieve greatness is swallow pills in a bottle. 

Is the lust of fame, fortune and national pride are more important than ethics? What message does this send to the young? That in order to win, you have to cheat? 

If the Olympics and pro sports wants to clean their act, they must first: impose stiffer penalties on the athletes and countries who cheat. In other words make them an example. 

Second: don't let trainers and coaches have accessibility to performance enhancing drugs. 

Third: have a strong policy that has some teeth to it, and better drugs tests. And fourth: stronger education about the issue.

By taking action, instead of reacting, maybe the Olympics can get back to what it should be about, athletes excelling and fair play.