Friday 17 August 2012

Russian gold in Predictable Trial Outcome

The final event of the Olympics was won by Russia, five days after the official end of the games.

Faced with a stiff challenge from neighbours Ukraine - who jailed former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoschenko on trumped-up corruption charges - and new Asian challengers Bahrain, for locking up human rights activist Nabeel Rajab, former Predictable Trial Outcomes champion Russia needed a big play to regain their crown.

They found such a play in the Pussy Riot trial, one universally slated as irregular and unfair, on charges of holliganism motivated by religious hatred. The PTO judges scored it highly on the spurious nature of the charges, the lack of time for a defence to be mounted and the concealment of the real reasons to punish the three defendants. All of these contributed to a highly predictable outcome, coming with a high degree of difficulty.

Ukraine took silver with the highly predictable Tymoschenko outcome with Bahrain taking bronze. Both entries scored highly, but fell down on the difficulty aspect with judges saying "there's predictable and then there's bleedin' obvious. Bahrain just weren't trying hard enough to be convoluted. I mean, human rights activist in a Middle Eastern kingdom ruled by an autocratic family? Yaawwwnn".

Russia expect to defend their title strongly in four years time, but are openly wary of some strong contenders coming through. "It's the Saudis we fear most", said the Russian chef de mission, "who will probably lock a woman up for having one toenail slightly longer than the decency police determine it should be. We're very happy to have won this gold, but realise competition is only getting stronger all around the world".

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