Posted on 7/27/2007 3:04:40 PM

Betting on Olympics - OLYMPIC PROPS

By Joshlyn Butterfield

It’s the Cold War all over again.

The 2008 Olympic Summer Games in Beijing have been painted in stark political colors ever since they were awarded to China six years ago. The closer we get to the opening ceremonies, the more heated the rhetoric. On one side, you have journalists, actors, United States lawmakers, Tibetan activists and Cleveland Cavaliers forward Ira Newble. On the other, the Communist Party of China.

It hardly seems like a fair fight. But when this ideological battle is played out in Beijing’s Olympic venues, it’s expected to be a tight contest.

The props market asks if China will win more gold medals than the U.S. “Yes” is priced at –130, with “No” a slight underdog at –110.

This prop is about as juicy as they come, mixing sports and politics as if they were Mentos and Diet Coke. Memories of the 1936 Summer Games in Berlin are already being invoked. History recalls how Jesse Owens led a brigade of American athletes into the heart of Nazi Germany and delivered a body blow to the ideology of Aryan supremacy. One point of information that is rarely mentioned: Germany won 33 gold medals to 24 for the Americans.

China will be just as motivated, if not more so, to use the Games as a political platform. Although the ruling party remains Communist in name only, it is still an autocratic regime with a heavy investment in the nation’s sports programs. China’s gold medal count has been on the rise since the People’s Republic made its Summer Games debut at the 1984 Games in Los Angeles; by the 2004 Athens Games, China was second in the world with 32 gold medals, behind only the U.S. at 36.

This surge up the medal table conjures images of Soviet-era sports programs, such as the one in East Germany that fed performance-enhancing drugs to its athletes. China’s women swimmers have been under the microscope since joining the world stage in the early 1990s; dozens have been banned for using anabolic steroids, human growth hormone, and other substances that have been passed off as benign herbal medicines. China’s ability to evade getting caught this time around will be central to their medal hopes.

On that front, the Olympic movement is clearly losing. The Athens Games were rife with doping scandals, but only 24 violations were recorded among over 11,000 competitors, leading to seven athletes being stripped of their medals. Not one came from China.

The over/under for the 2008 Games is 6.5 disgraced athletes, with either side priced at –120.

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