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September 27
Johnson will be stripped of his 100m world record
1988: Johnson stripped of Olympic gold
England have
Sprinter Ben Johnson has been sent home from the Seoul Olympic Games in
disgrace.
The Canadian has also been stripped of his 100m gold medal after testing
positive for drugs.
Johnson has just arrived home in Toronto and has said he will appeal
against the International Olympics Committee"s verdict.
But the IOC has already said the athlete"s intended defence - that a herbal
drink he consumed before the race had been spiked - will not be accepted.
Samples of Johnson"s urine were tested for drugs immediately after the 100m
final three days ago which he won in a world record time of 9.79 seconds.
And Olympic officials confirmed last night that traces of the anabolic
steroid , Stanozol, had been detected.
The sprinter was woken in the early hours of the morning to be told the IOC
had decided to send him home.
Canada"s Prime Minister Brian Mulroney said it was the correct decision,
but a tragedy for Johnson and a great sadness for all Canadians.
But the athlete"s sister, Clare Rodney, told reporters she was convinced
the drug testers had made a mistake.
"I can really tell anybody from the depths of my heart that he is not
guilty," she said.
The Canadian media has labelled Johnson a cheat, but there was also
sympathy for the man who said he valued a gold medal over a world record because
no one could take it away from him.
Britain"s Linford Christie - who was awarded the silver medal after
Johnson"s disqualification - said he felt sorry for someone who had been a
"great ambassador" for the sport.
"I"m also sad for athletics because this has been a bad day for us," he
said.
The musical Hair opened at the Shaftesbury Theatre in London
1968: Musical Hair opens as censors withdraw
Artificially 1969: FilmTheTheAA The American hippy musical "Hair" has
opened in London - one day after the abolition of theatre censorship .
Until yesterday, some of the scenes in the musical, written by out-of-work
actors Gerome Ragni and James Rado, would have been considered too outrageous to
be shown on a stage in Britain.
The show, billed as an American tribal love-rock musical, first opened in
New York on 2 December last year.
Many were angered by scenes containing nudity and drug-taking as well as a
strong anti-war message at the height of the Vietnam conflict and the
desecration of the American flag on stage.
The show"s transfer to London"s West End would not have been possible
before the new Theatres Act which ended the Lord Chamberlain"s powers of
censorship dating back to 1737.
Prime Minister Sir Robert Walpole introduced play censorship to silence
shows like The Beggars" Opera which contained biting anti-government satire.
The new Theatres Act does not give playwrights a completely free hand.
Strong language and obscenity will still be liable for criminal prosecution.
Hair does contain some blasphemous and sexually explicit language.
But the scene that has aroused most controversy in the musical so far is
where the cast appears on stage in the nude, emerging from beneath a vast
sheet.
The director of the London production of Hair, Tom O"Horgan, said: "I think
that the famed nude scene has been greatly over-emphasised.
"It has very little importance in the show itself and much of the publicity
has obscured the important aspects of the play, which are also perhaps shocking
to people because they deal with things as they are. We tell it the way it
is."
Asked whether the timing of the opening was significant, he said: "We
couldn"t have done the play the way we"re doing it prior to this time without
drastic modifications."
The cast of the West End production appeared on Eamonn Andrews Independent
Television show last night but decided against performing the nude scene. Mr
O"Horgan said it would have given the wrong impression of the show.
Hair had a shaky start in New York. Its first two runs were cut short
before producer Michael Butler became involved. He brought in Tom O"Horgan as
director.
It took three months to re-vamp the musical - and when it finally appeared
at the Biltmore on Broadway it had 19 songs in the first act compared with just
nine in the original production.
Vocabulary:
strip : take away possessions from someone;(剥去，取消)
anabolic steroid: any of a group of synthetic steroid hormones used to
stimulate muscle and bone growth(合成代谢类固醇)
censorship: the office or power of a censor(审查机构)
obscenity : the trait of behaving in an obscene manner(淫秽) |
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发表于 2016-7-9 23:18:25