The papers are full of praise for Greece and the manner in which it hosted the Olympic Games. I think the venues devoid of fans and the incident in the marathon are two marks against the Athens organizers, but from the safety of my living room the Games seemed to go off well enough. At least the drugs issue seems to have been taken seriously this time, even though it meant driving away Greece's two favorite athletes.
Whatever about Athens, the IOC certainly has to do something about the fact that so many of the medals were disputed. The 3-Day-Event and gymnastics (and others?) had trouble deciding who actually won the gold medal. The athletes are professionals now and there's a lot of money at stake, but the people who run these sports are still amateurs. I've seen many, many disputed decisions in every sport I watch, but I've never seen such confusion as to who actually won the contest. No decision ever appears to be final. The IOC has got to do something about that. They should award no gold medals before the decision is final and then once the medals are distributed only a failed drug test should overturn that.
