Andrei Aramnau will miss Olympics, still an asshole

This is the best article I found on Andrei Aramnau, a weightlifter in the 105kg weight class, not partaking in the 2012 Olympic Games in London.

“I was in great shape, but for whatever reason my coach had asked me to compete in a meaningless competition, where I first suffered the injury,”

There he goes again, throwing his coach under the bus. The 24 year old Aramnau didn’t learn any humility when he won his Olympic gold medal as a 20 year old at the 2008 Beijing games; he’s always been a dickhead.

It started with drunk driving. I’ll never understand why financially sound athletes bother to get behind the wheel of a car after drinking; Aramnau would probably make friends with NFL players.

Olympic champion Aramnau gets ban for drinking
Olympic Champion Andrei Aramnau of Belarus was handed a two-year suspended ban from competition on Friday after driving while intoxicated for the second time in less than three months.
The 20-year-old, who won gold in Beijing by breaking several world records in the 105kg weight class, was first caught driving drunk in December before he repeated the offence last month, just a day after receiving keys for a new apartment.
Belarus Sports Minister Alexander Grigorov, who headed the disciplinary hearing, told Reuters: “The Olympic success obviously went to his head. He is young and he couldn’t handle it in a right way. We gave him a suspended sentence because we didn’t want to lose him as an athlete.”
Aramnau, who also faces criminal charges for being a repeat offender, was stripped of a presidential monthly stipend worth more than $5,000.
However, Grigorov said Aramnau, who won his first world title in 2007 as a 19-year-old, could be given a second chance.
“If he retains the world title this year, he would get the stipend back,” Grigorov said. (source)

What they leave out is how he defended himself in this interview (translate with Chrome). When asked about the marijuana incident, he deflects it, says he had lots of stress and nerves as a result of the Belarus athletic governing body. Oh, that’s right, a champion goes and looks to substance abuse — regardless of the kind (he claimed he didn’t know there was weed in it) — to fix his problems.

And then when they brought up the drunk driving citations, of which he had several, he claimed that because he could lift several tons of tonnage in his workouts that he could handle it. Sorry, just because you’re strong doesn’t mean alcohol doesn’t effect you, and just because there are murals of you in the city doesn’t mean the law doesn’t apply to you. Then he goes onto claim that beer has significant recovery agents, as if that’s the reason he was drinking it to begin with. Can you believe this fucking guy? That’s either him continuing to deflect blame or he’s a god damn idiot. Either way it’s unacceptable.

I’ve never hidden the fact that I don’t like Aramnau, and it’s not because I’ve been a fan of Klokov for 4 years. It’s because Aramnau is always making excuses. He may train hard in the gym, as evidenced by his world records and gold medal, but he doesn’t do the things outside of the gym that make him admirable. You never hear these stories about Klokov because he conducts his life to be the greatest he can be. That much is apparent by his physique; he’s trying to get the most musculature for his weight class while Aramnau is a doughy beer drinker. Sure, he’s a doughy beer drinker with a gold medal while Klokov only has a silver, but that lack of effort in life means something to me.

I hate Aramnau’s attitude. He’s still young, but all of the best athletes in the world are young. What makes him so special that he can be a fucking dick head and get away with it? Nothing. He’s whiny, he deflects blame to others, and he’s an asshole. I’m happy that he’s not in the Olympics, because he hasn’t lived his life the past four years to deserve it.

More videos of Aramnau can be found here.