Excellence in Doping at the Olympic Games

Of all the countries we didn't think would need to use PEDs to achieve excellence in shooting, North Korea would have to be at the top of the list. An estimated fifty percent of the state budget goes to defense, their military is ginormous, and judging from their propaganda posters, someone in the DPRK spends a lot of time training to shoot people. Namely you, American imperialist scum.

So it is with some measure of disappointment that we share this with you: North Korea has earned the first doping boot of the games, courtesy of Kim Jong-su, an air pistol medalist who tested positive for a banned PED yesterday.

The North Korean shooter has been stripped of his men's 50m air pistol silver and his 10m air pistol bronze medals after testing positive for a banned substance by the International Olympic Committee.

Jong-su tested positive for the beat blocker propranolol which was used to lower his heart rate and stop trembling.

A chemical that lowers your heart rate and makes you stop trembling is banned? This means scotch is out as a performance enhancing drug, which aspiring Olympian John Daly is very, very sad to hear. On the bright side, at least Jong-su can take solace in his government's inevitable explanation that this is all part of an imperialist conspiracy to discredit the DPRK, and his doping actually resulted in medals. From the same article:

A female vietnamese artistic gymnast, Thi Ngan Thuong Do, who finished last place in the floor exercise, was also disqualified, having also tested positive for a banned substance.

The lesson? If you're going to dope, go hard or go home. Champions take no shortcuts, even when it comes to injecting monkey testosterone into your eyeballs before the Olympics.

This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.