Of course, perhaps their major perk was they had opportunities to defect to the West.
And maybe we should give the old USSR a posthumous Gold Medal for "celebrating diversity" sexually speaking, decades before the West did. Remember those XXY chromosome wo-men who were on their women's track teams? They were told to disguise their voices, and had to secretly shave off body hair constantly. Talk about true believers in "gender fluidity". Har!
Speaking of "perks for the losers," Wasn't it Saddam who threw his entire losing national soccer team into a wood chipper? Or was that just an urban myth?
“I hadn’t heard what happened to them *after* their days as an Olympian were over.”
I heard from Soviet athletes and defectors. Remember Boris Onischenko who cheated in the pentathlon in the Montreal Games in 1976? I asked this Russian defector I knew, who also knew Onischenko, why he did it.
He said that Onischenko was losing it as he aged, and he didn’t want to lose the crappy apartment, the car, the refrigerator, and the other pathetic emoluments that went with winning.
“For example, I read of the USSR men’s hockey team’s perks.”
I don’t doubt that they got perks, particularly sexual services, but remember, nothing that the USSR said could be believed in not the slightest particular.
“Of course, perhaps their major perk was they had opportunities to defect to the West.”
You got that right. I knew one guy who swam a good portion of the Black Sea to get out.
“Remember those XXY chromosome wo-men who were on their women’s track teams?”
What about the XY “women” they had lifting weights?
“Speaking of “perks for the losers,” Wasn’t it Saddam who threw his entire losing national soccer team into a wood chipper? Or was that just an urban myth?”
Sounds like something he would do, but I don’t really know.