Sha'Carri Richardson got screwed out of a place in the Summer Olympics, but it was not because of the color of her skin.
It was because she's American, not Russian.
If ever there is a good time to be a Russian athlete, it's right now, during these Winter Olympics.
You can swallow any pill, inject any performance enhancing steroid, and flunk any test knowing you can still play.
Russian star figure skater Kamila Valieva failed a drug test, and she's competing anyways because her daddy is Big Bad Vlad.
The fear of Russia's unofficial czar, Vladimir Putin, is so great, the International Olympic Committee will let his athletes fail the type of drug tests that kept Richardson out of the Summer Olympics in Tokyo last year.
This latest double standard is not racism, but Russianism.
Last summer, Richardson was headed to Tokyo after winning a spot on the Team USA's Olympic squad at the U.S. Track and Field Trials.
Then she failed a drug test for cannabis. Her biological mother had died earlier in the month, and Richardson said she was using it to cope.
There is some debate whether a little weed actually helps an athlete. A few sprinters will say that it can help you calm your heart rate, but the overwhelming consensus is that weed is not an enhancer.
Either way, she knew weed was on the list, flunked the test and missed the chance to win a medal in the 100 meter dash.
Now we are in the Winter Olympics in Beijing, and Valieva failed a drug test in late December. She reportedly took Trimetazidine, a drug that strengthens the heart, despite there not being any indication that she's ever had a heart condition.
She's 15. She has no clue what her doctor, or trainer, handed her and said, "Swallow this pill."
She failed the test because Trimetazidine, like weed, is on the list of banned substances by the IOC.
If she finishes in the top three, there will be no medals ceremony. The Russian team will not receive its gold medal from the team competition held last week, either.
This all required an arbitrator, and the IOC ruled on Monday that she could compete because to ban her would cause her "irreparable harm."
"Can we get a solid answer on the difference of her situation and mines?" Richardson tweeted. "My mother died and I can't run and was also favored to place top three. The only difference I see is I'm a black young lady."
She also tweeted, "Not one BLACK athlete has been about to compete with a case going on, I don't care what they say!!!"
She's not wrong, and her problem is not because she's a Black young lady.
Her problem is that the IOC does not fear America.
The IOC fears Russia, and specifically its vindictive KGB-trained czar who has the entire world stressed over the prospect of a war with his army conducting "training exercises" near Ukraine.
The IOC wants no part of angering Putin, and having on its head that its decision to ban its newest young female sports prodigy is any reason tanks roll across the border.
In the past, the IOC has tried calm measures to deter Russia's well-documented history of state-supported cheating.
In 2019, the IOC banned the entire country from the Olympics because of its drug program, which was chronicled in the 2018 Academy Award-winning Netflix documentary, "Icarus."
Russia is technically out of the Olympics, but its athletes are there under not the name of the Motherland, but "ROC," Russia Olympic Committee.
Russia is banned, but Russians are not. Not sure how that works, but this two-year ban is scheduled to expire on Dec. 17, 2022.
The IOC could extend this sham ban through 3022, and it won't matter.
Under Putin, Russia will continue to dope, 'roid and cheat because that's what they do, and will do.
If the IOC is going to allow athletes who fail drug test to play, then it should go all in and call it "The All-Drug Olympics." Just let them all shoot up or pop pills as they perform.
The IOC should just speak Putin's language and ban both Russia and the Russians from the next Summer and Winter Olympics, and any major international event where the World Anti-Doping Agency is involved.
But it won't because it's afraid of Putin, so his athletes can compete even when they cheat.
If Sha'Carri Richardson was Russian, she would have been in the Olympics.
