Americans be like “look at the medal counts!”
The rest of the planet only cares about gold
Can someone who knows about sports tell me if all that stuff I heard growing up about the Russians cheating in the Olympics had any basis in fact, or is that just more bullshit propaganda I was fed as a kid.
I mean, it is thr Olympics if you aren't cheating you aren't trying hard enough
First, the documentary Rocky IV showed it's true, so jot that down.
Second, here's a documentary on doping in modern Russia that you might be interested in: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icarus_(2017_film) Obviously Russia =/= the Soviet Union, but assuming that documentary is credible, it's highly plausible that modern Russia didn't just invent a large, state-sponsored doping program from scratch.
Third, if you dig into this, remember the two cardinal rules when discussing anything about the Bad Countries: (1) even if there's some truth to the assertion, it's probably mixed in with a mountain of propaganda; and (2) the U.S. almost certainly did something similar (check out the medals we've had stripped), so context is crucial.