vava

Hey there Armat - I've used a couple of guestbooks in the past, but ended up shutting them down due to spam. These days, for spam control, you may wish to use a guest book that enables image verification to distinguish between spam bots & real humans (called a CAPTCHA). I don't know off-hand if any exist, but I'm certain you can find a service that will couple a CAPTHCA with your guestbook input form. See the wiki article and examples of CAPTCHA's here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captcha Nice to see you're back

And so Sip reveals the real reasons he's still a bachelor...

Hey hey hey - look who's back! How are you keeping Armen jan?

Bari chanapar Azat - have a safe (but fun!) trip. Make sure you head over to the Piemonte and get yourself a wine tout in Barolo

Funny - the rest of the article seems to be cut off. Here it is in it's entirety - I've put the missing portion in italics. There is also a sidebar article on the history of this issue in the educational system in Canada: Link to the story @ EmbassyMag.ca It's worthwhile to note that notorious Genocide Denier Gwynne Dyer is a columnist at Embassy Mag.

Excellent news

Now i'm hungry

ashot jan bari taredarts Edit: emoticons kill me.

Why do you have your panties all tied up in a knot? Seems to me that you're the one who started the flaming... Let's just stop this nonsense - everyone - and stop being overly sensitive. Back to the issue, my understanding is that the Swedish team did in fact request a review of the contested play - but the judging committee refused to hear the case. In such instances a visual protest can be effective (although I agree there was certainly a lack of decorum - but passion in sport is what wins medals, yes?) Again let's remeber what what happened in Salt Lake City: It wasn't until the media frenzy & the resulting judge's admission that any action was taken up with the ISU. You cannot go around making official depositions based on theoretical evidence - these people are athletes and coaches not interpol investigators. Without an admission it's next to impossible to prove that there was corruption. But by all accounts, during the match it was plain to see...

Finally here's a picture of Armenian medalist Yuri Patrikeev - look at his suit, it's falling apart. I guess that's why we don't have any swimmers in the competition; we can't afford those fancy space age suits...

Not sure how many of you will be able to view this (for copyright reasons, i suppose) but here is Ara walking away from the bronze, leaving it in the centre of the mat... (choose Day 6, 1st video clip) And here's a photo from the Gaurdian.

It's the same situation as the figure skating fiasco in the winter olympics when Canadians Salle & Pelletier were finally offered to share the gold medal due to a admittedly corrupt French judge. If wrestling was a higher profile sport with more sponsorship money & tv coverage, there would be universal outrage right now.

4 Bronze medals now: Yuri Patrikeev won a Bronze in wrestling: Men's 96-120kg and Gevorg Davtyan in weightlifting Men's 69-77kg

She's pretty - your family has good parska-hye genes I guess

Armen Vardanyan won a wrestling bronze medal for the Ukraine.

Awesome! I haven't seen any coverage of the water polo yet but I'll keep my eyes peeled.

Well, since you put it that way... So when should I expect the flight tickets?

I'm saying that an open door policy in this regard will make it impossible to have "similar chances". Unfortunately neither my idealogical approach, nor your pragmatic approach seem to address the inherent problems of the current situation. I agree that some methods of enhancement are borderline. Your suggestions could possibly be a solution for a short while, but there will always be newer methods devised to work around any controls that are out in place. What we're losing long term is the essence of competition and the excitement of sport. Again, unfortunate. I think we're headed in that direction (of not already there) - and that would still be the case without the "drug hunting". Bottom line is that cheating attitudes have to change; we are raising generation after generation of cheaters. How often have you heard a phrase like "Do whatever it takes to win"? Well, the athletes are doing exactly that. Should we be surprised? Attitudinal change has to come from within, perhaps education is a start - perhaps it's all just gobbledygook.

Hmmm... any relation?

Height, weight, shoe size are part of the natural variances in an individual. Injecting chemicals and artificially isolated hormones is wholly unnatural, and when used for performance enhancement is cheating. You cannot draw the same parallels between between an optimized exercise and diet regimen and the use of steroids & growth hormones. I don't think you can "control" these drugs. How would you control dosages, for example? It would be impossible to determine if someone was using higher than permitted levels... I agree with your last point, however the possibility will remain that someone innocent may get caught as a result of abnormal levels of some naturally occurring hormone/chemical.

CBC.ca - but that won't guarantee that you'll see Armenians... Tigran Gevorg MARTIROSYAN won the other Medal for Armenia in Weightlifting 62-69kg class.

2?? Great news. One of them was Roman Amoyan - who won bronze in the 55kg Wrestling event. For those interested, Russia won gold, and Azerbaboonistan won the silver...

And so where do you draw the line? There will always be newer "enhancement" technologies - is it all "part" of the competition? I would hope not... We know now that the East German swimmers who cleaned up the medals in '76 were doped. They won, kept their medals (well, some chose to return them) and 20 odd years later they have beards & a slew of health problems including liver cancer, organ damage, psychological defects, hormonal changes and infertility. Ben Johnson's gold in '88 was turned over to American Carl Lewis, also a doper. But is this fair? Isn't it just the easy was out to say "Let's even the playing field" and let everyone cheat? It still won't be equal - there will be better, more expensive drugs, better trained physicians etc. - the only winners will be those who supply the enhancement. The athletes will be left behind, along with their health. Drug testing seems to be always behind the curve, so it's not an ideal solution - but it seems to me that the institutions and those who fund amateur sport will (long-term) disassociate themselves if doping/cheating continues.

Yes, I think you're correct And thanks for the link Domino...

Really? I thought it depended on the number of Chinese characters required to write the name of the country... but I think it makes more sense your way. So how many athletes does the Armenian team have? What were the uniforms like? Pics anyone?? While we're at it, anyone have a list of the Armenian athletes and their respective events?