Comedian John Oliver takes on doping in athletics and destroys it
John Oliver, an English comedian who hosts an American late-night talk show, discussed doping in athletics on Sunday night ahead of Rio.
Comedian John Oliver hosts a weekly late-night talk show, Last Week Tonight, where he discusses a topic in international news from a satirical angle. This week, he tackled doping in athletics in light of the Russian scandal and the nation being banned from the Rio Olympics.
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The episode comes a week after the Russian athletics federation, the organization that oversees track and field, was banned from the Olympics. The International Olympic Committee supported the international governing body’s ban of the federation on Tuesday.
Right off the bat, the 39-year-old comedian and political commentator reminds viewers that the Olympics are “your biannual reminder that NBC exists.” He then goes on to discuss the recent doping scandal in international athletics and how some athletes have evaded tests through unorthodox methods relating to hiding clean urine samples.
The Russian scandal leads Oliver to say that the whole situation is making “FIFA look good,” which is a reference to the world soccer body’s allegations of corruptions including its former president, Sepp Blatter. The doping episode so far has 218,000 views since being posted late Sunday.
His videos regularly get more than a million views and his subscription list is more than three million people.
Oliver goes on to say that Russia is not the only offender of doping-related offences in international athletics and lists of names of athletes from the United States, notably Justin Gatlin and Tyson Gay, and also mentions Jamaica and Kenya. He uses an interview with American 800m runner Alysia Montaño to illustrate how doped athletes are “like machines.”
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The show ends with a spoof of an inspirational athlete profile in a more honest way, at least according to Oliver, including his rise to fame with the help of performance-enhancing drugs. The episode is 20 minutes.
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Oliver formerly was part of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart before getting his own show. Last week he discussed Britain leaving the European Union and the week before he talked about retirement plans in the United States. The program airs on HBO in Canada but is uploaded to YouTube shortly after the initial airing.
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