The Olympic Games, by its very nature, has always been a magnet for controversy. The Nazi Olympics of 1936; the shooting of protesting students in Mexico City and the Black Power protests of 1968; the killing of kidnapped Israeli athletes in 1972; the boycotts of 1976, 1980 and 1984; the Ben Johnson doping scandal of 1988 and this year the protests over Tibet have all made news’, as opposed to just sporting, headlines.
Add to these the fact that the spiralling costs of building for and staging the Olympics has always been good copy and it is no wonder that the media in Britain, because they are aware of the Olympics’ propensity for disputation, have been metaphorically sharpening their pencils with glee ever since the awarding ceremony.
You have to go back exactly a hundred years to find the first glimmerings of such wrangling. The Games were held in London for the first time when the original host city Rome withdrew, some said through an eruption of Vesuvius causing the Italians economic difficulties. London volunteered and the IOC gratefully accepted.
The ‘story’ of these Games has always been that of Dorando, the diminutive Italian marathon runner, who staggered into the White City stadium in a state of total disorientated exhaustion, was helped over the finishing line by sympathetic officials to the tremendous cheering of the crowd and was promptly disqualified. It was rumoured that the taking of strychnine (common for distance runners in those days) had been a contributory factor to his fatigue. Another view, less charitable, was that the amount of alcohol offered to him (and accepted) from admiring pub owners as he journeyed through west London from Windsor explained his condition. Whatever, an admiring Queen Alexandra presented him with a cup almost as big as he was for his “sportsmanship.” Subsequently the English have always admired a good loser over a worthy winner.
But this was not the real controversy of 1908; this concerns what became known as the “Halswelle Affair” and it caused an enormous, acrimonious rift between the sporting authorities of Britain and those of the USA.
William Halswelle, born of Scottish parents in Mayfair, was a fine athlete. A product of Charterhouse School and of Sandhurst College this commissioned Army officer had won the AAA 440 yards title three times and had a respectable personal best of 48.4 seconds. On one memorable afternoon he won four running events at the Scottish Championships. In 1906 he won a silver medal in the “Interim Games” in Athens at 400 and a bronze at 800 metres and was undoubtedly the favourite for the gold medal in London.
The 25 year old sailed through the heats to the final and there he met three Americans, John Carpenter, William Corbett and John Baxter Taylor. In those far off days 400 metres was not run in lanes which often led, to say the least, to interesting racing. In the early stages of the Olympic final the Americans led, closely shadowed by Halswelle. As the field entered the home straight it was a battle between Halswelle and Carpenter. The Scotsman takes up the story.
“I did not attempt to pass Carpenter until the last corner,” he said, “reserving my efforts for the finishing straight. Here I attempted to pass Carpenter on the outside…Carpenter’s elbow undoubtedly touched my chest and as I moved outwards he did likewise keeping his right arm in front of me. In this way he bored me across two thirds of the track.”
Carpenter crossed the finish line first but just before he did the British officials lowered the tape and immediately declared the final “no race.”
To the Americans it was the final straw of a frustrating Olympics. They had been suspicious of the motives of the host nation ever since the opening ceremony when an American flag for the stadium could not be found. At the march past the US team did not dip their flag to King Edward. Friction was already in the air and they complained to the New York Herald: “The British ridiculed our flag; they fixed the lane draws in favour of local athletes and favoured their own Tug of War team.” They appealed the Carpenter disqualification.
The Jury of Appeal (all British) met and studied the evidence well into the night. The trackside officials were adamant that Halswelle had been fouled. One of them, Dr Roscoe Badger, said that Halswelle made a big effort down the finishing straight “but the faster he went the wider Carpenter went.”
The problem was that ‘blocking’ was allowed under USA rules, but not under those of either the AAA or the Olympics. The American case was not helped when a Harvard rower said that “Carpenter ran Halswelle off the track” and representatives of Belgium noted that the Scotsman was “bored in the most odious way possible.”
The Jury announced that Carpenter should be disqualified and the final re-run “in strings” so that athletes could not stray from their lanes. There was outrage in the American team and the remaining two American runners refused to take part in the re-run race.
Halswelle reluctantly went to his marks by himself. The Times recorded that he had expressed the wish, “in the best public school spirit not to run unless the Americans took part,” but he was persuaded to run solo in the interest of the Olympic Games.
The controversy went on long after the Games were over. The San Francisco Chronicle reported that the “American Athletic Union will break off relations with the British because of the spirit shown by them towards American athletes.” An American official, Gustavus T. Kirby produced a pamphlet that included a so called reconstruction of the Jury of Appeal’s deliberations which showed the errors of their conclusions. The British responded with a booklet of their own which, point by point, rebutted the American allegations.
Time healed these so called affronteries and by 1912 when the Games were held in Stockholm all was sweetness and light between the two countries. It was the year that the International Amateur Athletics Federation (IAAF) was founded and from then on judges and officials were recruited from around the world and a standardised set of competition rules evolved at a Congress in 1914.
Halswelle was tragically not able to enjoy his Olympic triumph for too long. Like millions of other men of his generation he perished in the mud of northern France, shot by a sniper’s bullet in 1915. He is remembered as a great Scotsman and a great Olympian.
Wednesday, 7 May 2008
Friday, 25 April 2008
Missing the Millions
Why are no billionaires attracted to track and field athletics? Where are the Roman Abramovich’s, Thaksin Shinawatra’s, Tom Hick’s et al who could at a stroke transform international and domestic athletics into something commercially attractive and truly professional?
Two billionaires, one Indian (Subhash Chandra) and one American, (Antigua-based American Allen Stanford) are investing tens of millions of dollars in cricket, especially in the relatively new concept of Twenty20, exciting, colourful and full of razzamatazz, which will, in most pundits’ estimation, transform the game over the next few years. Two tournaments offering unheard of (in cricket terms) appearance and prize money will start the process off. Those who thought that cricket, with its staple diet of three-day county or state games played in front of a few aged, retired colonels snoozing in deckchairs on hot summer afternoons, presented no challenge to athletics better think again. Commercially viable Twenty20 cricket could swiftly spread to countries where no one thought it could reach; it could swiftly revive the sport in schools. Even the dyed-in-the-wool English Cricket Board is waking up to the gauntlet being thrown down by the current ISL tournament in India and the projected one in the West Indies. It knows that unless it responds positively it could, like the old soldiers in their deckchairs, simply fade away.
Track and field has always had problems with the tribal nature of team sports as the only time tribalism (in our case nationalism) comes to the fore is at the major championships, Olympic, World and European, but even these meetings, as was shown in a recent Blog, are becoming less compelling to television viewers and if that trend continues, will be equally less compelling to television companies.
The truth is that the sort of sums needed to revolutionize (I use the word deliberately) athletics aren’t available to it because, frankly, it is mostly commercially unattractive, boring (Americans sprinters beating American sprinters etc), without purpose and far too spasmodic. At too high a competitive level athletics just isn’t entertaining. Its biggest problem though is that the IAAF and its constituent associations are seemingly content for it to be that way. It doesn’t help itself either by it being so publicly and loudly self righteous about “fighting a war against doping”; in view of recent revelations about junkie sprinters the public are slowly beginning to wonder if this protesting too much is hiding severe deficiencies in the testing systems.
In Britain two former Olympic medallists Alan Pascoe and Brendan Foster have become entrepreneurial millionaires thanks to athletics. They have and do run unashamedly profitable but very successful companies. Pascoe deals with televised events for UK Athletics, Foster concentrates on road running, his showpiece event being the internationally renowned Great North Run. Both keep the public profile of the sport in Britain higher than it deserves and so you would think that athletics would be duly grateful. Not a bit of it. There is general resentment, especially at club level, about large sums of money being made from athletics; money that those slaving away at the grassroots believe should come to them. What they would do with it is unspecified, however.
Perhaps this ambivalence towards professionalism is at the heart of athletics’ problem, accounting of its love- hate relationship with its full-time executives down the years. In the mid-nineties, when Andy Norman and honorary treasurer John Lister left the old British Athletics Federation (BAF), there was much delight in the hearts of the “voluntary” sector. It was a pyrrhic victory. The latter took over the asylum and what had been a highly successful commercial enterprise soon went down the pan. Within a couple of years BAF was shamefully bankrupt.
A new federation rose from the ashes of disgrace. But, given this and the visceral antipathy to fundraising membership schemes from the voluntary sector die-hards, UKA had no choice but to forge a Faustian pact with government quangoes. But, sadly, selling its soul has not brought forth the glory that was anticipated or indeed promised. It has failed because the apparatchiks of both government quangoes, in imposing a one-size-fits-all policy on all the sports they fund, have failed to comprehend the uniqueness of athletics in that it is almost twenty sports in one. Britain’s performances internationally over the decade since UKA was formed have been the poorest since the Olympics of 1936.
These thoughts went through my mind as I travelled north from attending Andy Norman’s Memorial Service. To many present in St Giles church in central London, Andy was a flawed athletics genius who, back in the eighties, single-handedly transformed not only athletics in Britain but throughout Europe also.
Jonathan Edwards and Sebastian Coe gave fulsome tributes, acknowledging the tremendous debt that each owed to him. Jonathan told the story of his attending a press conference at Gateshead, well before his stunning world records, when Andy introduced him as “the man to jump over 18 metres”, which not only nonplussed the audience but Jonathan as well. But part of Andy’s genius was this intuitive ability to spot real talent; the story of his letter to Linford Christie in 1985 urging him to train hard to become European champion (Linford’s best at the time was 10.42) is well known and Ron Roddan, the man who guided Linford to his Olympic and World golds, told me that he thought that Andy had had “great intuition based on great knowledge.”
It will come as something of a surprise to those that knew him and were guided by him when I say that, in a way and compared with today, Andy came from a chivalrous age of athletics, a golden era of exacting and very exciting sporting combat between athletes of extraordinary talent. He transformed athletics meetings, as European vice-president Sven Arne Hansen said, both in Britain and across Europe but all that he did he did for athletes.
Although, in recent years, he worked behind the scenes for England, European athletics and the IAAF, he was scornful of the present tick-a-box bureaucracy and those who have no sense of the history of the sport. “The age of chivalry is gone,” said Edmund Burke in another context, “that of sophisters, economists and calculators has succeeded…” It was a pity that the hierarchy of UK and England athletics were not present at St Giles church to pay official tribute to a man that steered British athletics through its golden decade. One top official is purported to have said that he was “not impressed” when he met the man. Sadly that says more about those who presently govern us than it does about Andy.
Two billionaires, one Indian (Subhash Chandra) and one American, (Antigua-based American Allen Stanford) are investing tens of millions of dollars in cricket, especially in the relatively new concept of Twenty20, exciting, colourful and full of razzamatazz, which will, in most pundits’ estimation, transform the game over the next few years. Two tournaments offering unheard of (in cricket terms) appearance and prize money will start the process off. Those who thought that cricket, with its staple diet of three-day county or state games played in front of a few aged, retired colonels snoozing in deckchairs on hot summer afternoons, presented no challenge to athletics better think again. Commercially viable Twenty20 cricket could swiftly spread to countries where no one thought it could reach; it could swiftly revive the sport in schools. Even the dyed-in-the-wool English Cricket Board is waking up to the gauntlet being thrown down by the current ISL tournament in India and the projected one in the West Indies. It knows that unless it responds positively it could, like the old soldiers in their deckchairs, simply fade away.
Track and field has always had problems with the tribal nature of team sports as the only time tribalism (in our case nationalism) comes to the fore is at the major championships, Olympic, World and European, but even these meetings, as was shown in a recent Blog, are becoming less compelling to television viewers and if that trend continues, will be equally less compelling to television companies.
The truth is that the sort of sums needed to revolutionize (I use the word deliberately) athletics aren’t available to it because, frankly, it is mostly commercially unattractive, boring (Americans sprinters beating American sprinters etc), without purpose and far too spasmodic. At too high a competitive level athletics just isn’t entertaining. Its biggest problem though is that the IAAF and its constituent associations are seemingly content for it to be that way. It doesn’t help itself either by it being so publicly and loudly self righteous about “fighting a war against doping”; in view of recent revelations about junkie sprinters the public are slowly beginning to wonder if this protesting too much is hiding severe deficiencies in the testing systems.
In Britain two former Olympic medallists Alan Pascoe and Brendan Foster have become entrepreneurial millionaires thanks to athletics. They have and do run unashamedly profitable but very successful companies. Pascoe deals with televised events for UK Athletics, Foster concentrates on road running, his showpiece event being the internationally renowned Great North Run. Both keep the public profile of the sport in Britain higher than it deserves and so you would think that athletics would be duly grateful. Not a bit of it. There is general resentment, especially at club level, about large sums of money being made from athletics; money that those slaving away at the grassroots believe should come to them. What they would do with it is unspecified, however.
Perhaps this ambivalence towards professionalism is at the heart of athletics’ problem, accounting of its love- hate relationship with its full-time executives down the years. In the mid-nineties, when Andy Norman and honorary treasurer John Lister left the old British Athletics Federation (BAF), there was much delight in the hearts of the “voluntary” sector. It was a pyrrhic victory. The latter took over the asylum and what had been a highly successful commercial enterprise soon went down the pan. Within a couple of years BAF was shamefully bankrupt.
A new federation rose from the ashes of disgrace. But, given this and the visceral antipathy to fundraising membership schemes from the voluntary sector die-hards, UKA had no choice but to forge a Faustian pact with government quangoes. But, sadly, selling its soul has not brought forth the glory that was anticipated or indeed promised. It has failed because the apparatchiks of both government quangoes, in imposing a one-size-fits-all policy on all the sports they fund, have failed to comprehend the uniqueness of athletics in that it is almost twenty sports in one. Britain’s performances internationally over the decade since UKA was formed have been the poorest since the Olympics of 1936.
These thoughts went through my mind as I travelled north from attending Andy Norman’s Memorial Service. To many present in St Giles church in central London, Andy was a flawed athletics genius who, back in the eighties, single-handedly transformed not only athletics in Britain but throughout Europe also.
Jonathan Edwards and Sebastian Coe gave fulsome tributes, acknowledging the tremendous debt that each owed to him. Jonathan told the story of his attending a press conference at Gateshead, well before his stunning world records, when Andy introduced him as “the man to jump over 18 metres”, which not only nonplussed the audience but Jonathan as well. But part of Andy’s genius was this intuitive ability to spot real talent; the story of his letter to Linford Christie in 1985 urging him to train hard to become European champion (Linford’s best at the time was 10.42) is well known and Ron Roddan, the man who guided Linford to his Olympic and World golds, told me that he thought that Andy had had “great intuition based on great knowledge.”
It will come as something of a surprise to those that knew him and were guided by him when I say that, in a way and compared with today, Andy came from a chivalrous age of athletics, a golden era of exacting and very exciting sporting combat between athletes of extraordinary talent. He transformed athletics meetings, as European vice-president Sven Arne Hansen said, both in Britain and across Europe but all that he did he did for athletes.
Although, in recent years, he worked behind the scenes for England, European athletics and the IAAF, he was scornful of the present tick-a-box bureaucracy and those who have no sense of the history of the sport. “The age of chivalry is gone,” said Edmund Burke in another context, “that of sophisters, economists and calculators has succeeded…” It was a pity that the hierarchy of UK and England athletics were not present at St Giles church to pay official tribute to a man that steered British athletics through its golden decade. One top official is purported to have said that he was “not impressed” when he met the man. Sadly that says more about those who presently govern us than it does about Andy.
Friday, 11 April 2008
Ain’t no mountain high enough
It was 1936, Olympic year and Brutus Hamilton, track coach to the University of California, took it upon himself to record what he thought would be ultimate performances in track and field; times, heights and distances which, he believed, no man or woman would ever exceed.
Most of his projections have, in the 72 years since he made them, been surpassed by very large margins but two of them stand out: he could not conceive of a 4 minute mile, nor could he contemplate anyone putting the shot further than had the current world record holder, Jack Torrance, known as “Elephant Baby” on account of his enormous stature and weight..
Men had dreamed of the 4 minute mile for decades, ever since Walter George ran 4:12¾ in 1886. What was significant about that run was that he reached the halfway mark in 2:02 so already, in the infancy of the modern sporting era, the dream mile seemed a possibility; it was a target with such beautiful symmetry: four laps in 60 seconds.
In 1936 the world record, by American Glenn Cunningham, stood at 4:06.8; Torrance’s best in the shot putt was 17.40 metres. What Hamilton, an Olympic silver medallist in decathlon in 1920, would have made of today’s records, of Bannister’s achievement, of Steve Scott running below 4 minutes 136 times and of two men having put over 23 metres we can only guess. Record breaking has continued inexorably. But for how long?
Records of all kinds, from world best’s to personal bests, represent a challenge. We always believe, sometimes secretly, that we can attain greater heights. The poet Robert Browning put it the most tidily: “…a man’s reach,” he wrote “must exceed his grasp or what’s a heaven for?”
But Andrew Berry who teaches evolutionary biology at Harvard has pointed out, for instance, the obvious fact that no one “will run the mile at the same speed that we run the 100 metres. The laws of oxygen exchange will not allow it.” He went on: “Human improvement must eventually bow to the basic constraints of biomechanics.”
So, Brutus Hamilton was right on one thing: record breaking is not infinite; there is a barrier out there in every event. The question is, where is it?
We may surmise (no more than that) that Man will never run a 100 metres in 9 seconds (about 25½ mph) though I instantly remind myself that Bob Hayes ran 8.7-8.9 seconds (times vary) on the sprint relay anchor leg, on cinders, at the Tokyo Olympics in 1964. But it is likely that the mile will not be run in 3:30, certainly not in 3 minutes (four laps of 45 seconds); it seems impossible that the high jump record will ever reach 3 metres. So finite performances lie somewhere between current world records and those improbable (I hedge my bets here) performances.
The graph shows the numbers of world records set in the last five decades. In the men’ events there has been a sharp decline in this first decade of the 21st century and unless there is an explosion of record breaking in the next two seasons the total, using a most liberal estimate, will be about a fifth of that of the 1960s.
The women’s events, although they show a similar pattern to the men’s, are distorted by two elements. Firstly, male administrators, once they assumed control of women’s events, took almost eighty years to concede parity, so that for most of the 60s women competed in only half of the events that they do today and the introduction of “new” events in latter decades created distortions. For instance the introduction of women’s pole vault (they had actually been vaulting since 1911) into international programmes in the 90s meant that almost half of the records set in the last two decades have come in vaulting.
Secondly, in the 70s and 80s, women’s athletics was dominated by the German Democratic Republic (GDR) with its institutionalised doping programme. You have to sympathise with today’s German women’s athletes when 13 of their records were set during those two decades.
Nevertheless the pattern of a sharp decline in the rate of world record breaking remains true for both sexes.
There are a number of events that make one wonder if the ultimate performance is near at hand. In the triple jump there have been only three world record holders in 33 years, Joäo Carlos de Oliveira of Brazil, Willie Banks of the USA and Britain’s Jonathan Edwards. The current world record (18.29m) has stood for thirteen years and only two men, Edwards and Kenny Harrison, have ever exceeded 18 metres, though Willie Banks achieved it wind-assisted in 1988. Before we start trying to evaluate the ultimate here, however, we should note that Jonathan leapt 18.43m at Villanueva D’Ascq aided by 2.4 mps wind in 1995.
There is a similar pattern in the long jump. There have been only two world record holders in forty years, Bob Beamon and Mike Powell and the latter’s best (8.95m) has stood for seventeen years. Powell jumped a very windy 8.99m at altitude at Sestriere in 1992 so you have to surmise that 9 metres is a definite possibility; but 10 metres? I don’t think so.
The most likely men’s track event to be nearing the ultimate is the 800 metres and the question is will we ever see 1:39 man? Again only two men have held the world record in the last twenty-nine years, Sebastian Coe and Wilson Kipketer and the latter’s record (1:41.11) was set in 1997. Coe and Kipketer have been the only two record holders to run below 50 seconds for their opening laps and in both cases they were running six seconds slower than the 400m record. Do Berry’s “laws of oxygen exchange” apply here? Is it physically impossible to run, say, a 47/50 two lap race to achieve 1:37?
The distortions caused by doping scandals are more prevalent in women’s events. The top eleven performances in the 100 metres were achieved by Florence Griffiths-Joyner and Marion Jones. Griffiths-Joyner, who many suspected of doping, died at the age of 38 of an epileptic seizure and Jones was sentenced to a prison term last year for committing perjury in denying that she had ever taken drugs. Neither had ever tested positive.
Most of his projections have, in the 72 years since he made them, been surpassed by very large margins but two of them stand out: he could not conceive of a 4 minute mile, nor could he contemplate anyone putting the shot further than had the current world record holder, Jack Torrance, known as “Elephant Baby” on account of his enormous stature and weight..
Men had dreamed of the 4 minute mile for decades, ever since Walter George ran 4:12¾ in 1886. What was significant about that run was that he reached the halfway mark in 2:02 so already, in the infancy of the modern sporting era, the dream mile seemed a possibility; it was a target with such beautiful symmetry: four laps in 60 seconds.
In 1936 the world record, by American Glenn Cunningham, stood at 4:06.8; Torrance’s best in the shot putt was 17.40 metres. What Hamilton, an Olympic silver medallist in decathlon in 1920, would have made of today’s records, of Bannister’s achievement, of Steve Scott running below 4 minutes 136 times and of two men having put over 23 metres we can only guess. Record breaking has continued inexorably. But for how long?
Records of all kinds, from world best’s to personal bests, represent a challenge. We always believe, sometimes secretly, that we can attain greater heights. The poet Robert Browning put it the most tidily: “…a man’s reach,” he wrote “must exceed his grasp or what’s a heaven for?”
But Andrew Berry who teaches evolutionary biology at Harvard has pointed out, for instance, the obvious fact that no one “will run the mile at the same speed that we run the 100 metres. The laws of oxygen exchange will not allow it.” He went on: “Human improvement must eventually bow to the basic constraints of biomechanics.”
So, Brutus Hamilton was right on one thing: record breaking is not infinite; there is a barrier out there in every event. The question is, where is it?
We may surmise (no more than that) that Man will never run a 100 metres in 9 seconds (about 25½ mph) though I instantly remind myself that Bob Hayes ran 8.7-8.9 seconds (times vary) on the sprint relay anchor leg, on cinders, at the Tokyo Olympics in 1964. But it is likely that the mile will not be run in 3:30, certainly not in 3 minutes (four laps of 45 seconds); it seems impossible that the high jump record will ever reach 3 metres. So finite performances lie somewhere between current world records and those improbable (I hedge my bets here) performances.
The graph shows the numbers of world records set in the last five decades. In the men’ events there has been a sharp decline in this first decade of the 21st century and unless there is an explosion of record breaking in the next two seasons the total, using a most liberal estimate, will be about a fifth of that of the 1960s.The women’s events, although they show a similar pattern to the men’s, are distorted by two elements. Firstly, male administrators, once they assumed control of women’s events, took almost eighty years to concede parity, so that for most of the 60s women competed in only half of the events that they do today and the introduction of “new” events in latter decades created distortions. For instance the introduction of women’s pole vault (they had actually been vaulting since 1911) into international programmes in the 90s meant that almost half of the records set in the last two decades have come in vaulting.
Secondly, in the 70s and 80s, women’s athletics was dominated by the German Democratic Republic (GDR) with its institutionalised doping programme. You have to sympathise with today’s German women’s athletes when 13 of their records were set during those two decades.
Nevertheless the pattern of a sharp decline in the rate of world record breaking remains true for both sexes.
There are a number of events that make one wonder if the ultimate performance is near at hand. In the triple jump there have been only three world record holders in 33 years, Joäo Carlos de Oliveira of Brazil, Willie Banks of the USA and Britain’s Jonathan Edwards. The current world record (18.29m) has stood for thirteen years and only two men, Edwards and Kenny Harrison, have ever exceeded 18 metres, though Willie Banks achieved it wind-assisted in 1988. Before we start trying to evaluate the ultimate here, however, we should note that Jonathan leapt 18.43m at Villanueva D’Ascq aided by 2.4 mps wind in 1995.
There is a similar pattern in the long jump. There have been only two world record holders in forty years, Bob Beamon and Mike Powell and the latter’s best (8.95m) has stood for seventeen years. Powell jumped a very windy 8.99m at altitude at Sestriere in 1992 so you have to surmise that 9 metres is a definite possibility; but 10 metres? I don’t think so.
The most likely men’s track event to be nearing the ultimate is the 800 metres and the question is will we ever see 1:39 man? Again only two men have held the world record in the last twenty-nine years, Sebastian Coe and Wilson Kipketer and the latter’s record (1:41.11) was set in 1997. Coe and Kipketer have been the only two record holders to run below 50 seconds for their opening laps and in both cases they were running six seconds slower than the 400m record. Do Berry’s “laws of oxygen exchange” apply here? Is it physically impossible to run, say, a 47/50 two lap race to achieve 1:37?The distortions caused by doping scandals are more prevalent in women’s events. The top eleven performances in the 100 metres were achieved by Florence Griffiths-Joyner and Marion Jones. Griffiths-Joyner, who many suspected of doping, died at the age of 38 of an epileptic seizure and Jones was sentenced to a prison term last year for committing perjury in denying that she had ever taken drugs. Neither had ever tested positive.
Nine of the top ten all-time world performances in the women’s 400 metres were set in the 1980’s, half of them by the East German world record holder, Marita Koch; in the shot put the top 39 all-time performances were set in the 70’s and 80’s; there is a similar top twenty pattern in all the power events excluding those that have been introduced since 1989.
What is all this to do with ultimate performances? Because it seems likely to me that drug induced performances must quite obviously be closer to the ultimate. In the 400 metres great runners like Marie-José Peréc, Cathy Freeman and Sanya Richards are many metres away from Koch’s running. The latter ran the first 200 of her race in 22.4, a time that would have ranked her seventh at that event in 2007. Such a time would mean 400 metre specialists coming perilously close to their personal bests; could the basic biomechanical restraints in women runners allow them to attach 24 seconds and achieve 46.4?
All of this deeply affects the world of competition, the raison d’etre of our sport. The problem that we have mentioned before is that the basic ingredient of the international programme is the Golden League and Grand Prix events. In the early days the crowds were drawn by world record attempts, with pace-makers, which, to a certain extent, gave the meetings some purpose and some credibility. Unfortunately it also built up a culture of expectation that if a record wasn’t broken the event (and often the meeting) had been disappointing. This culture seems to have persisted and with the tempo of record breaking dramatically slowing the once great meetings at Oslo, Zurich and Brussels et al are fast losing their sheen.
What is all this to do with ultimate performances? Because it seems likely to me that drug induced performances must quite obviously be closer to the ultimate. In the 400 metres great runners like Marie-José Peréc, Cathy Freeman and Sanya Richards are many metres away from Koch’s running. The latter ran the first 200 of her race in 22.4, a time that would have ranked her seventh at that event in 2007. Such a time would mean 400 metre specialists coming perilously close to their personal bests; could the basic biomechanical restraints in women runners allow them to attach 24 seconds and achieve 46.4?
All of this deeply affects the world of competition, the raison d’etre of our sport. The problem that we have mentioned before is that the basic ingredient of the international programme is the Golden League and Grand Prix events. In the early days the crowds were drawn by world record attempts, with pace-makers, which, to a certain extent, gave the meetings some purpose and some credibility. Unfortunately it also built up a culture of expectation that if a record wasn’t broken the event (and often the meeting) had been disappointing. This culture seems to have persisted and with the tempo of record breaking dramatically slowing the once great meetings at Oslo, Zurich and Brussels et al are fast losing their sheen.
As European standards decline so do the Golden League meetings, a round robin of Americans beating Americans, Africans beating Africans with Europeans mostly in their wake on the track. Where athletes from Europe could shine, in the field events, promoters shun them like the plague. 104 events were staged on the Golden League circus in 2007 and 72% of them were on the track. Of the remainder only just over 7% were throwing events including just one for women. So the great throwers that thrilled spectators (and television viewers) in Osaka were mostly ignored.
The Golden League produced one world record, in the women’s 5000 metres in Oslo. The rest tried hard enough inviting Yelena Isinbaeva to all six meetings. Unfortunately the once prolific (last world record in 2005) Russian record breaker failed the avaricious promoters, though she lucratively won every event.
The best analogy I can think of is with friendly matches in team games. It wasn’t until the once true blue amateur rugby union went professional in 1995 with the formation of professional leagues a year later that the sport started to come alive. Prior to those quite momentous events most club matches were friendlies with little or no purpose, apart from a pint in the bar afterwards. Athletics seems unable to extricate itself from a similar predicament, from its straitjacket of meaningless competition outside of its major championships. Our sport from top to bottom seems afraid of adopting the radical change that is so urgently necessary.
Monday, 31 March 2008
Telling it how it isn't
The philosopher and secularist Bertrand Russell once gave a hypothetical answer to a hypothetical question (as philosophers do). The question was: what will you say if you die and are confronted by your Maker? His response was:”I should say, oh God, you did not give us enough evidence.”
I’ll remember his reply in case I arrive at the Pearly Gates to be met by the former President of the European AA and anti-drugs campaigner, Sir Arthur Gold to be accused of being soft on drugs and then handed irrefutable proof of widespread doping in sport. But Arthur, I would say, over a glass of our favourite malt, why aren’t these figures available down below?
The IAAF drug testing figures for 2007 indicate the problem. They tell us the number of tests carried out (3277), they tell us the number of positives (10) and they even name the athletes tested. What they don’t tell us is what the figures really mean.
You will have worked out that the percentage of positives of those tested is 0.3%. The IAAF says that the results of a number of cases are still pending so that the number of positives may well rise. But even if there were 100 positives they would only comprise 3% of the total. In Britain, in 2006-07, 7143 tests were carried out in all sports; 27 proved positive - 0.38% of the total.
What we do not get from the various bodies are their thoughts on what their testing figures indicate. They indicate, in actuality, one of two things: either the level of doping in athletics (and sport) is miniscule or the much vaunted testing programmes aren’t working. Either way the World Anti Doping Agency (WADA) has a problem in justifying the hundreds of millions of dollars globally being spent on testing in sport.
We’ve been here before, of course, and undoubtedly will be back again but it is the backdrop to some of the latest pronouncements on the subject. “It has been a long time since Dwain [I love the familiarity] was caught and there has been no effort by him to actually share information…there has not been a willingness to point fingers at those who helped him or to be honest about the drugs he was on.” The speaker is John Scott of UK Sport. Is this the same UK Sport that swiftly jumped on the bandwagon of the demonisation of Chambers through its CEO Liz Nichol? She made public a letter she had sent to UK Athletics, reminding them not to support its future World Indoor silver medallist. I’m afraid so. Some of you will recall that similar appeals were made to the accused in the witchcraft trials of Salem with one notable exception: the appeals in Salem came with an offer of redemption as were, incidentally, similar entreaties in the McCarthy political witch hunts of the 1950’s. Scott also urged athletes to grass on those they thought were into doping which may give an indication of establishment uncertainty about the efficacy of the drug testing programmes. It must rankle that Marion Jones was not caught cheating by USADA testing but by the fact that she committed perjury.
British sport and in particular UK Athletics (UKA) has come out of the last couple of months looking very silly indeed. Lamine Diack, the President of the IAAF, said as much in an interview he gave to the Observer this last weekend. He indicated that the actions of UKA’s Niels de Vos and others in attempting to stop Chambers running in the UK Indoor Championships and qualifying for Valencia were always doomed to failure because Chambers had served his time and had indeed previously been selected by UK Athletics, in 2006, after his two year ban was over.
Perhaps, most importantly of all for British athletics, was Diack’s anger that UKA's crass and unlawful stance on Chambers took away the limelight from other athletes in the British team. “The one who came back from suspension became the star,” Diack said. “Why was there all this fuss on Dwain Chambers?”
The UK Athletics board needs to seriously consider this question and its answer. It is because Niels de Vos lit the fire that is still, weeks later, still smouldering. The fact that those in the offices in Solihull clearly did not anticipate the consequences of the actions they were to undertake indicates an alarming lack of media savvy in the heart of the organisation.
Thirteen – unlucky for some
I don’t know if anyone in Team Chambers has a sight of this Blog but they should pass on the information that if history is anything to go by he should avoid Castleford and Rugby League like the plague.
Two well known British international athletes (also with no previous footballing experience) have, some time in the past, made such a move and neither lasted very long in their new sport.
In 1953 Emmanuel McDonald Bailey, Olympic bronze medallist (1952) and winner of fourteen AAA sprint titles decided that a very generous financial offer from Leigh was one he could not refuse. He had just one extremely petrifying game, was tackled, injured and taken off. In 1961 a somewhat more robust figure tried his hand at 13-aside rugby with Oldham. This was the European Shot Put champion Arthur Rowe, a man particularly fed up with lack of support from the athletics establishment. His career lasted only a little longer than McDonald Bailey's.
Meanwhile as reported in Inside the Games there is a growing feeling in the higher echelons of world sport that the BOA lifetime Olympic ban would be overturned under international law. The BOA is looking more and more isolated, despite the posturing of its Chairman, former Conservative Sports Minister Colin Moynihan. The BOA is now the only Olympic association or indeed national bodyin the world to have a byelaw that contravenes the charters of both WADA and the IAAF.
I’ll remember his reply in case I arrive at the Pearly Gates to be met by the former President of the European AA and anti-drugs campaigner, Sir Arthur Gold to be accused of being soft on drugs and then handed irrefutable proof of widespread doping in sport. But Arthur, I would say, over a glass of our favourite malt, why aren’t these figures available down below?
The IAAF drug testing figures for 2007 indicate the problem. They tell us the number of tests carried out (3277), they tell us the number of positives (10) and they even name the athletes tested. What they don’t tell us is what the figures really mean.
You will have worked out that the percentage of positives of those tested is 0.3%. The IAAF says that the results of a number of cases are still pending so that the number of positives may well rise. But even if there were 100 positives they would only comprise 3% of the total. In Britain, in 2006-07, 7143 tests were carried out in all sports; 27 proved positive - 0.38% of the total.
What we do not get from the various bodies are their thoughts on what their testing figures indicate. They indicate, in actuality, one of two things: either the level of doping in athletics (and sport) is miniscule or the much vaunted testing programmes aren’t working. Either way the World Anti Doping Agency (WADA) has a problem in justifying the hundreds of millions of dollars globally being spent on testing in sport.
We’ve been here before, of course, and undoubtedly will be back again but it is the backdrop to some of the latest pronouncements on the subject. “It has been a long time since Dwain [I love the familiarity] was caught and there has been no effort by him to actually share information…there has not been a willingness to point fingers at those who helped him or to be honest about the drugs he was on.” The speaker is John Scott of UK Sport. Is this the same UK Sport that swiftly jumped on the bandwagon of the demonisation of Chambers through its CEO Liz Nichol? She made public a letter she had sent to UK Athletics, reminding them not to support its future World Indoor silver medallist. I’m afraid so. Some of you will recall that similar appeals were made to the accused in the witchcraft trials of Salem with one notable exception: the appeals in Salem came with an offer of redemption as were, incidentally, similar entreaties in the McCarthy political witch hunts of the 1950’s. Scott also urged athletes to grass on those they thought were into doping which may give an indication of establishment uncertainty about the efficacy of the drug testing programmes. It must rankle that Marion Jones was not caught cheating by USADA testing but by the fact that she committed perjury.
British sport and in particular UK Athletics (UKA) has come out of the last couple of months looking very silly indeed. Lamine Diack, the President of the IAAF, said as much in an interview he gave to the Observer this last weekend. He indicated that the actions of UKA’s Niels de Vos and others in attempting to stop Chambers running in the UK Indoor Championships and qualifying for Valencia were always doomed to failure because Chambers had served his time and had indeed previously been selected by UK Athletics, in 2006, after his two year ban was over.
Perhaps, most importantly of all for British athletics, was Diack’s anger that UKA's crass and unlawful stance on Chambers took away the limelight from other athletes in the British team. “The one who came back from suspension became the star,” Diack said. “Why was there all this fuss on Dwain Chambers?”
The UK Athletics board needs to seriously consider this question and its answer. It is because Niels de Vos lit the fire that is still, weeks later, still smouldering. The fact that those in the offices in Solihull clearly did not anticipate the consequences of the actions they were to undertake indicates an alarming lack of media savvy in the heart of the organisation.
Thirteen – unlucky for some
I don’t know if anyone in Team Chambers has a sight of this Blog but they should pass on the information that if history is anything to go by he should avoid Castleford and Rugby League like the plague.
Two well known British international athletes (also with no previous footballing experience) have, some time in the past, made such a move and neither lasted very long in their new sport.
In 1953 Emmanuel McDonald Bailey, Olympic bronze medallist (1952) and winner of fourteen AAA sprint titles decided that a very generous financial offer from Leigh was one he could not refuse. He had just one extremely petrifying game, was tackled, injured and taken off. In 1961 a somewhat more robust figure tried his hand at 13-aside rugby with Oldham. This was the European Shot Put champion Arthur Rowe, a man particularly fed up with lack of support from the athletics establishment. His career lasted only a little longer than McDonald Bailey's.
Meanwhile as reported in Inside the Games there is a growing feeling in the higher echelons of world sport that the BOA lifetime Olympic ban would be overturned under international law. The BOA is looking more and more isolated, despite the posturing of its Chairman, former Conservative Sports Minister Colin Moynihan. The BOA is now the only Olympic association or indeed national bodyin the world to have a byelaw that contravenes the charters of both WADA and the IAAF.
Monday, 24 March 2008
Have we the Vision?
In the days before the 1982 European Championships in Athens the IAAF called a special Congress to discuss the future of the sport. Britain was to spearhead the drive for open athletics and the man chosen to make the crucial speech was the late Andy Norman, the hard-talking British entrepreneurial promoter already a dominant figure in what was becoming known as the European circuit.
Andy knew how important this speech was. He knew that if the Congress failed to accept the concept of open athletics and of payments to athletes then the world of “shamateurism” involving the world’s best runners could well destroy the sport that he loved. What Andy wanted was help in moulding his thoughts into a cohesive, telling speech. He turned to John Rodda of the Guardian, one of the most respected of sports writers.
The two men sat on Rodda’s room balcony at the Hotel Olympic in very warm sunshine. It was early morning and Rodda had had an ultra convivial evening with colleagues the night before; he had forgotten about the arrangement with Norman. The shrill ringing of his bedside phone therefore came as something of a shock. Now as he sipped orange juice to help his dehydration John listened and took notes as Andy hammered home his crucial points. He converted them and typed them into tough, cogent, convincing words and handed the script over. Rodda went back to bed and Norman
was ready to conquer the Congress.
Two other factors were in his favour. The year before the new President, Primo Nebiolo, had powered (some say elbowed) his way to the most important post in world athletics. Nebiolo realised that, to survive, athletics had to come into the twentieth century, had to accept some form of professionalism. Secondly, many of those sitting in the Congress hall were former athletes who knew that Andy knew that they had enjoyed financial fruits from their athletic labours. It would be an intelligent guess to think that some arm twisting had gone on.
It is important to remember that athletics had fiercely fought professionalism for a century with some of the great names of track left strewn around the battlefield; men like Walter George, Alfred Shrubb, William Snook (see earlier Blog), Paavo Nurmi, Gunder Hägg, Arne Anderson and finally in the mid-1950’s the American miler, Wes Santee - all banished for succumbing to the temptations of Mammon in brown envelopes.
The federations, including the IAAF had, after Santee, turned a blind eye to “illegal” payments and by the time Congress met in Athens it was an open secret that hundreds of thousands of dollars from the promoters of major European meetings had entered the pockets of star athletes; unless action was taken the IAAF could lose control of the sport.
In the end Congress accepted the majority of the proposals but there were crucial caveats: it baulked at prize money, it hid payments to athletes behind words like ‘subventions’ and ‘trust funds’. It took just the minimum measures required to save itself. The spirit of de Coubertin was (and is) still embedded in the collective psyche of the sport.
The reason for re-telling this episode is to not only show how important the moment was for athletics but also to indicate how the moment was lost. By not biting the bullet and opting for a dynamic professional sport at levels lower than the glitzy, razzmatazz projected world championships and grand prix meetings, the delegates at the Athens congress stifled all competitive development for twenty-six years.
If an athletics supremo from some far off planet visited Earth every twenty years or so to see what progress had been made he or she would gain a distinct sense of déjá-vu and disappointment. They would note the continuing tremendous enthusiasm and excitement engendered in stadia and on television by the major championships and in some rare cases by the grand prix events but they would also note that in each country it was but a fleeting annual glimpse of the very best that track and field had to offer.. The difference between what is served up on the IAAF World Athletics Tour and what is provided in domestic competition is as stark as it can be.
In 2002 the Commonwealth Games came to Manchester; it was a glorious week of competition that thrilled stadium and television audiences. Everybody wanted more; they didn’t get it. The stadium was handed over to a major football club because everyone realised that British athletics was incapable of providing regular, sustainable, exciting competition for public enjoyment. It is the same story in London, host city for the 2012 Olympics remember, where the only meeting to rouse the public is a Super Grand Prix meeting every August. All other meetings (from which international athletes are conspicuous by their absence) are so long, tedious and self-indulgent that the general public never attends, indeed is rarely notified of them. Nothing has changed in four decades.
Internationally the sport has tried to review competition but not so you’d notice. Early in 2005 I spoke at an IAAF conference on one-day meetings and the World Athletics Final where representatives of the IAAF, promoters, managers, athletes and coaches all contributed. We all said that the sport was failing the athletes, television and the public; we said that the grand prix meetings were too repetitive and becoming old hat; we urged the re-introduction of international matches and much more. Television representatives were particularly scathing.
The world governing body nodded sagely and said that it had listened and would cogitate. It has proved to be not only a dialogue with the deaf but with the blind as well, for the only real change has been to move the World Athletics Final from Monaco to Stuttgart. Meanwhile television viewing figures are plunging world wide. In a recent contest for coverage on the BBC (a staunch supporter of athletics) with the FA Cup and Six Nations Rugby, the World Indoor Championships from Valencia lost out badly gaining just half an hour of terrestrial coverage on the Friday night; the rest was confined to satellite inter-active. The Golden League, as it is now named, was once a given on terrestrial television, then it moved to satellite and, in Britain, is now only available on pay-per-view.
Britain too decided that a review of competition was needed. Former European 5000m champion Jack Buckner was assigned the task. He produced two preliminary reports with dire warnings that if the sport didn’t change it was doomed to mediocrity. We waited and waited for more concrete proposals; they never came. The umpteenth set of administrators to be set the task of putting British athletics to rights have obviously added the unfinished review to those collecting dust on the federation’s shelves.
Only the very best athletes can guarantee themselves a reasonable income from the sport. In Britain it is only a handful of top stars that can make a living. As I write James McIlroy, an up-and-down journeyman runner, ranked third in Britain at 800 metres last year, announces his immediate retirement, citing financial worries. “I wasn’t prepared to lose my house for Beijing,” he said. The sport does not engender enough sponsorship to make it truly professional; it needs to ask itself the reasons why.
Other sports, both domestically and internationally, have realised the need for radical change and moved on. In Britain you would not recognise professional soccer, rugby and cricket from what they were a few decades ago. But you would athletics. Our sport is stagnating and unable to have the vision to combat the professional team sports that are, more and more, dominating the media.
Athletics needs to create more meaningful competitions. It is no coincidence that what really excites people is the major international championships where the crucible of combat is at its most intensive. It is here that tribal nationalism, so prevalent in team sports, takes over. It is completely absent from the World Athletics Tour.
So here’s an idea. Let’s have a European City Cup – Paris v London; Berlin v Barcelona; Rome v Moscow et al., meetings of 3 hours or so in length full of international stars fighting it out for their domiciliary cities. You’d need massive sponsorship and television coverage but it is about time that our sport, the major Olympic sport, started to think big in terms of sponsorship instead of being satisfied with sums that Tiger Woods would consider pin money.
And such a competition could generate national competitions of a similar nature. In Britain (and I suspect elsewhere) the clubs are considered by the grassroots as the be-all and end-all of the sport; they are holy cows whose sanctity is vigorously and at times venomously guarded. But if you are to occasion public interest in competitions below international level then you have to widen that interest into teams that it can associate with. Having inter-city and town competitions would do that and also, with good marketing, could generate sufficient local sponsorship for the competition to be viable.
To continue to survive as a credible international and national sport athletics must begin thinking radically; begin thinking the unthinkable in terms of its present competitive structures. The question is: does it have the vision and the cojones to do so?
Andy knew how important this speech was. He knew that if the Congress failed to accept the concept of open athletics and of payments to athletes then the world of “shamateurism” involving the world’s best runners could well destroy the sport that he loved. What Andy wanted was help in moulding his thoughts into a cohesive, telling speech. He turned to John Rodda of the Guardian, one of the most respected of sports writers.
The two men sat on Rodda’s room balcony at the Hotel Olympic in very warm sunshine. It was early morning and Rodda had had an ultra convivial evening with colleagues the night before; he had forgotten about the arrangement with Norman. The shrill ringing of his bedside phone therefore came as something of a shock. Now as he sipped orange juice to help his dehydration John listened and took notes as Andy hammered home his crucial points. He converted them and typed them into tough, cogent, convincing words and handed the script over. Rodda went back to bed and Norman
was ready to conquer the Congress.Two other factors were in his favour. The year before the new President, Primo Nebiolo, had powered (some say elbowed) his way to the most important post in world athletics. Nebiolo realised that, to survive, athletics had to come into the twentieth century, had to accept some form of professionalism. Secondly, many of those sitting in the Congress hall were former athletes who knew that Andy knew that they had enjoyed financial fruits from their athletic labours. It would be an intelligent guess to think that some arm twisting had gone on.
It is important to remember that athletics had fiercely fought professionalism for a century with some of the great names of track left strewn around the battlefield; men like Walter George, Alfred Shrubb, William Snook (see earlier Blog), Paavo Nurmi, Gunder Hägg, Arne Anderson and finally in the mid-1950’s the American miler, Wes Santee - all banished for succumbing to the temptations of Mammon in brown envelopes.
The federations, including the IAAF had, after Santee, turned a blind eye to “illegal” payments and by the time Congress met in Athens it was an open secret that hundreds of thousands of dollars from the promoters of major European meetings had entered the pockets of star athletes; unless action was taken the IAAF could lose control of the sport.
In the end Congress accepted the majority of the proposals but there were crucial caveats: it baulked at prize money, it hid payments to athletes behind words like ‘subventions’ and ‘trust funds’. It took just the minimum measures required to save itself. The spirit of de Coubertin was (and is) still embedded in the collective psyche of the sport.
The reason for re-telling this episode is to not only show how important the moment was for athletics but also to indicate how the moment was lost. By not biting the bullet and opting for a dynamic professional sport at levels lower than the glitzy, razzmatazz projected world championships and grand prix meetings, the delegates at the Athens congress stifled all competitive development for twenty-six years.
If an athletics supremo from some far off planet visited Earth every twenty years or so to see what progress had been made he or she would gain a distinct sense of déjá-vu and disappointment. They would note the continuing tremendous enthusiasm and excitement engendered in stadia and on television by the major championships and in some rare cases by the grand prix events but they would also note that in each country it was but a fleeting annual glimpse of the very best that track and field had to offer.. The difference between what is served up on the IAAF World Athletics Tour and what is provided in domestic competition is as stark as it can be.
In 2002 the Commonwealth Games came to Manchester; it was a glorious week of competition that thrilled stadium and television audiences. Everybody wanted more; they didn’t get it. The stadium was handed over to a major football club because everyone realised that British athletics was incapable of providing regular, sustainable, exciting competition for public enjoyment. It is the same story in London, host city for the 2012 Olympics remember, where the only meeting to rouse the public is a Super Grand Prix meeting every August. All other meetings (from which international athletes are conspicuous by their absence) are so long, tedious and self-indulgent that the general public never attends, indeed is rarely notified of them. Nothing has changed in four decades.
Internationally the sport has tried to review competition but not so you’d notice. Early in 2005 I spoke at an IAAF conference on one-day meetings and the World Athletics Final where representatives of the IAAF, promoters, managers, athletes and coaches all contributed. We all said that the sport was failing the athletes, television and the public; we said that the grand prix meetings were too repetitive and becoming old hat; we urged the re-introduction of international matches and much more. Television representatives were particularly scathing.
The world governing body nodded sagely and said that it had listened and would cogitate. It has proved to be not only a dialogue with the deaf but with the blind as well, for the only real change has been to move the World Athletics Final from Monaco to Stuttgart. Meanwhile television viewing figures are plunging world wide. In a recent contest for coverage on the BBC (a staunch supporter of athletics) with the FA Cup and Six Nations Rugby, the World Indoor Championships from Valencia lost out badly gaining just half an hour of terrestrial coverage on the Friday night; the rest was confined to satellite inter-active. The Golden League, as it is now named, was once a given on terrestrial television, then it moved to satellite and, in Britain, is now only available on pay-per-view.
Britain too decided that a review of competition was needed. Former European 5000m champion Jack Buckner was assigned the task. He produced two preliminary reports with dire warnings that if the sport didn’t change it was doomed to mediocrity. We waited and waited for more concrete proposals; they never came. The umpteenth set of administrators to be set the task of putting British athletics to rights have obviously added the unfinished review to those collecting dust on the federation’s shelves.
Only the very best athletes can guarantee themselves a reasonable income from the sport. In Britain it is only a handful of top stars that can make a living. As I write James McIlroy, an up-and-down journeyman runner, ranked third in Britain at 800 metres last year, announces his immediate retirement, citing financial worries. “I wasn’t prepared to lose my house for Beijing,” he said. The sport does not engender enough sponsorship to make it truly professional; it needs to ask itself the reasons why.
Other sports, both domestically and internationally, have realised the need for radical change and moved on. In Britain you would not recognise professional soccer, rugby and cricket from what they were a few decades ago. But you would athletics. Our sport is stagnating and unable to have the vision to combat the professional team sports that are, more and more, dominating the media.
Athletics needs to create more meaningful competitions. It is no coincidence that what really excites people is the major international championships where the crucible of combat is at its most intensive. It is here that tribal nationalism, so prevalent in team sports, takes over. It is completely absent from the World Athletics Tour.
So here’s an idea. Let’s have a European City Cup – Paris v London; Berlin v Barcelona; Rome v Moscow et al., meetings of 3 hours or so in length full of international stars fighting it out for their domiciliary cities. You’d need massive sponsorship and television coverage but it is about time that our sport, the major Olympic sport, started to think big in terms of sponsorship instead of being satisfied with sums that Tiger Woods would consider pin money.
And such a competition could generate national competitions of a similar nature. In Britain (and I suspect elsewhere) the clubs are considered by the grassroots as the be-all and end-all of the sport; they are holy cows whose sanctity is vigorously and at times venomously guarded. But if you are to occasion public interest in competitions below international level then you have to widen that interest into teams that it can associate with. Having inter-city and town competitions would do that and also, with good marketing, could generate sufficient local sponsorship for the competition to be viable.To continue to survive as a credible international and national sport athletics must begin thinking radically; begin thinking the unthinkable in terms of its present competitive structures. The question is: does it have the vision and the cojones to do so?
Friday, 14 March 2008
Golden Moment and Moments of Madness
Those of you who followed the World Indoor Championships in Valencia on BBC Interactive will have witnessed one of those human moments in track and field epitomised by the facial expressions of Kelly Holmes after her run in the Olympic 800metres in 2004, expressions of triumph, doubt and then total joy beamed around the global village by television.
This time it was in the triple jump and featured the new World Indoor Champion, Philips Idowu. It was the last jump of the competition which he had already won with a superlative, lifetime best leap of 17.75 metres, an effort of seeming ease, rhythm and grace that reminded me so much of Jonathan Edwards’ world records in Gothenburg thirteen years previously.
Philips struggled to regain his concentration. The world indoor record of 17.83 metres was within his grasp but the enormity of what he had achieved, a first global title, had obviously infiltrated his concentration. He moved around, he put his face in his hands, desperate to regain composure and the cameras followed him. Often at moments like these athletes, shed of the anxieties of the competition, can produce wonders; not this time. Philips finally sped down the runway and produced a no jump.
But he had won gold. After an up and down career spanning 13 years, with more than a fair share of injuries, the 29 year old with the distinctive dyed red hair and headband had taken three steps to an athletic heaven. Well, not quite, for real heaven, I suppose, comes in just a few months time in Beijing.
It is eight years now since Britain won an individual global gold in the men’s events (also in the triple jump with Jonathan Edwards) and, in all honesty, Philips is our only male hope for a golden moment in the Chinese capital. Wisely though, in after competition interviews, he played it cool about his prospects, for he and his coach John Herbert carry enough experience between them to know of the vagaries of Olympic competition.
And Olsson awaits. The Swedish Olympic champion, also with a career severely blighted with injuries, will be anxious to defend the title he won in Athens. His best, that world indoor record, is now just eight centimetres ahead of Philips. It will be a great battle. Interesting to note too that it is twelve years since anyone (American Kenny Harrison) jumped over 18 metres. Surely another leap of that magnitude is overdue.
Moments of Madness
That great, Anglo-Irish satirist, Jonathan Swift would surely, if he had been born into this modern age, be running a Blog to entertain us all. And should he have been interested in sport what a wonderful time he would have been having with the recent machinations and contradictions surrounding drug testing and its punishments.
Jacques Rogge, President of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) is the latest to give forth on the clearly pernicious British Olympic Association (BOA) by-law that bans British drug miscreants from ever competing or indeed coaching at an Olympic Games.
His spokesman, Emmanuel Moreau, said: “We confirm that the president would be supportive of the lifetime ban of the BOA.”
Rogge, however, finds himself in direct contradiction with the former President of the World Anti Doping Agency (WADA), Dick Pound who had earlier reiterated his belief that sprinter Dwain Chambers should go to court to challenge the ban which, in Pound’s view, contravenes the WADA code (to which the British government and the BOA are signatories) which specifies a two year ban for a first-time offence.
At the present time I can find no comment from the new WADA president John Fahey on either the BOA by-law or the move by the European athletics promoters to retrospectively ban for all time drug miscreants from their meetings thus also contravening WADA rules and, probably, European commercial law concerning restraint of trade.
Swift would have loved all this as sport and in particular the IOC and WADA and international governing bodies tie themselves in knots in trying to fulfil their impossible dream of all countries, governments and sporting associations working in harmony implementing WADA laws.
The problem is that individual sports bodies and associations who do not like certain aspects of the laws (mostly finding the punishments too lenient) feel free to add by-laws to please themselves. They feel free because WADA has no direct jurisdiction over them and the IOC is happy to let any of its 205 organisations set whatever punishments they like with regard to participation in the Olympics. And when you get the two men who were instrumental in setting up WADA, Rogge and Pound, at loggerheads then you have to ask what chance the rest of sport stands in harmonising. One would relish their appearing as opposing witnesses in any future action that might be brought.
Meanwhile Colin Moynihan, Chairman of the BOA, has moved to join the ranks of those who are macho-posturizing over Chambers. You would think, listening to him, that sport faces some Armageddon if Dwain is not banished from its Olympian shores, becomes as Orwell put it “abolished, a non person”. In Churchillian tones Moynihan vows that the new World Indoor silver medallist will not reach China, “"We will pay whatever is necessary,” he trumpeted, “to have top lawyers represent us and put the strongest case in support of that ban.”
The question is, has he the right to spend public money in such a cavalier fashion especially when recent polls suggest that only a third of the public favour lifetime bans, the majority finding them I suspect, somewhat repugnant, repressive and unduly un-Christian. Rogge, instead of congratulating the BOA on its stance should ask himself why the other 204 global Olympic associations have elected not to have such banishments for their sportsmen and women.
It really is faintly ridiculous when those in authority lose their faculties of discernment, as Moynihan and others have done. It is more serious, however, when almost all the media, written and electronic follow suit and do not challenge the judgemental pronouncements being made. Writers and broadcasters whom I respect seem to have lost all sense of natural justice in this ongoing saga, seem to have joined the ranks of those revelling in the zealotry that vilifies Dwain Chambers, a man, after all, who confessed his sporting crime and was duly punished for it. I have espied no cool media analysis of the can of worms opened by Niels de Vos of UKA some weeks ago and certainly have read no call for WADA rules to prevail. One expects the tabloids to behave in the way that they have but I expected the broadsheets, radio and television to at least have reasonable debate on the issues involved.
The similarity with the witch hunts and trials of Salem three centuries ago unfortunately grows. The only apparent difference is that, tragically, as we now know, there were no witches whereas today there are clearly doping miscreants. There is, however, great similarity between the puritan ethics that fired the good people of Massachusetts to do what they did and of those who quixotically fight to eradicate doping in sport today by whatever means they deem necessary, injust or no.
And news comes through, as I write, of further madness. The Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority (ASADA)is secretly assessing the Medicare records of athletes, without their consent, surely in direct contravention of their human rights.
“Justice or injustice of the cause,” said Samuel Johnson “[should] be decided by a judge.” He was and is right. As drug testing spins out of control it must be challenged both politically and legally. In both spheres the actions of the BOA, the European promoters and far across the world of the Australian testers must be challenged. This issue is about much more than Dwain Chambers; it is about natural justice, human rights and above all about teaching sport that it is not above the law.
This time it was in the triple jump and featured the new World Indoor Champion, Philips Idowu. It was the last jump of the competition which he had already won with a superlative, lifetime best leap of 17.75 metres, an effort of seeming ease, rhythm and grace that reminded me so much of Jonathan Edwards’ world records in Gothenburg thirteen years previously.
Philips struggled to regain his concentration. The world indoor record of 17.83 metres was within his grasp but the enormity of what he had achieved, a first global title, had obviously infiltrated his concentration. He moved around, he put his face in his hands, desperate to regain composure and the cameras followed him. Often at moments like these athletes, shed of the anxieties of the competition, can produce wonders; not this time. Philips finally sped down the runway and produced a no jump.
But he had won gold. After an up and down career spanning 13 years, with more than a fair share of injuries, the 29 year old with the distinctive dyed red hair and headband had taken three steps to an athletic heaven. Well, not quite, for real heaven, I suppose, comes in just a few months time in Beijing.
It is eight years now since Britain won an individual global gold in the men’s events (also in the triple jump with Jonathan Edwards) and, in all honesty, Philips is our only male hope for a golden moment in the Chinese capital. Wisely though, in after competition interviews, he played it cool about his prospects, for he and his coach John Herbert carry enough experience between them to know of the vagaries of Olympic competition.
And Olsson awaits. The Swedish Olympic champion, also with a career severely blighted with injuries, will be anxious to defend the title he won in Athens. His best, that world indoor record, is now just eight centimetres ahead of Philips. It will be a great battle. Interesting to note too that it is twelve years since anyone (American Kenny Harrison) jumped over 18 metres. Surely another leap of that magnitude is overdue.
Moments of Madness
That great, Anglo-Irish satirist, Jonathan Swift would surely, if he had been born into this modern age, be running a Blog to entertain us all. And should he have been interested in sport what a wonderful time he would have been having with the recent machinations and contradictions surrounding drug testing and its punishments.
Jacques Rogge, President of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) is the latest to give forth on the clearly pernicious British Olympic Association (BOA) by-law that bans British drug miscreants from ever competing or indeed coaching at an Olympic Games.
His spokesman, Emmanuel Moreau, said: “We confirm that the president would be supportive of the lifetime ban of the BOA.”
Rogge, however, finds himself in direct contradiction with the former President of the World Anti Doping Agency (WADA), Dick Pound who had earlier reiterated his belief that sprinter Dwain Chambers should go to court to challenge the ban which, in Pound’s view, contravenes the WADA code (to which the British government and the BOA are signatories) which specifies a two year ban for a first-time offence.
At the present time I can find no comment from the new WADA president John Fahey on either the BOA by-law or the move by the European athletics promoters to retrospectively ban for all time drug miscreants from their meetings thus also contravening WADA rules and, probably, European commercial law concerning restraint of trade.
Swift would have loved all this as sport and in particular the IOC and WADA and international governing bodies tie themselves in knots in trying to fulfil their impossible dream of all countries, governments and sporting associations working in harmony implementing WADA laws.
The problem is that individual sports bodies and associations who do not like certain aspects of the laws (mostly finding the punishments too lenient) feel free to add by-laws to please themselves. They feel free because WADA has no direct jurisdiction over them and the IOC is happy to let any of its 205 organisations set whatever punishments they like with regard to participation in the Olympics. And when you get the two men who were instrumental in setting up WADA, Rogge and Pound, at loggerheads then you have to ask what chance the rest of sport stands in harmonising. One would relish their appearing as opposing witnesses in any future action that might be brought.
Meanwhile Colin Moynihan, Chairman of the BOA, has moved to join the ranks of those who are macho-posturizing over Chambers. You would think, listening to him, that sport faces some Armageddon if Dwain is not banished from its Olympian shores, becomes as Orwell put it “abolished, a non person”. In Churchillian tones Moynihan vows that the new World Indoor silver medallist will not reach China, “"We will pay whatever is necessary,” he trumpeted, “to have top lawyers represent us and put the strongest case in support of that ban.”
The question is, has he the right to spend public money in such a cavalier fashion especially when recent polls suggest that only a third of the public favour lifetime bans, the majority finding them I suspect, somewhat repugnant, repressive and unduly un-Christian. Rogge, instead of congratulating the BOA on its stance should ask himself why the other 204 global Olympic associations have elected not to have such banishments for their sportsmen and women.
It really is faintly ridiculous when those in authority lose their faculties of discernment, as Moynihan and others have done. It is more serious, however, when almost all the media, written and electronic follow suit and do not challenge the judgemental pronouncements being made. Writers and broadcasters whom I respect seem to have lost all sense of natural justice in this ongoing saga, seem to have joined the ranks of those revelling in the zealotry that vilifies Dwain Chambers, a man, after all, who confessed his sporting crime and was duly punished for it. I have espied no cool media analysis of the can of worms opened by Niels de Vos of UKA some weeks ago and certainly have read no call for WADA rules to prevail. One expects the tabloids to behave in the way that they have but I expected the broadsheets, radio and television to at least have reasonable debate on the issues involved.
The similarity with the witch hunts and trials of Salem three centuries ago unfortunately grows. The only apparent difference is that, tragically, as we now know, there were no witches whereas today there are clearly doping miscreants. There is, however, great similarity between the puritan ethics that fired the good people of Massachusetts to do what they did and of those who quixotically fight to eradicate doping in sport today by whatever means they deem necessary, injust or no.
And news comes through, as I write, of further madness. The Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority (ASADA)is secretly assessing the Medicare records of athletes, without their consent, surely in direct contravention of their human rights.
“Justice or injustice of the cause,” said Samuel Johnson “[should] be decided by a judge.” He was and is right. As drug testing spins out of control it must be challenged both politically and legally. In both spheres the actions of the BOA, the European promoters and far across the world of the Australian testers must be challenged. This issue is about much more than Dwain Chambers; it is about natural justice, human rights and above all about teaching sport that it is not above the law.
Thursday, 6 March 2008
How to Lose a War
Bad laws are the worst of tyranny – Edmund Burke
Many will remember Susan Chepkemei, if not from the streets of London, where she ran third in 2006, then from the wonderful 2004 ING New York marathon when she battled to the finish with Paula Radcliffe, who won.
Last summer the 32 year old Kenyan, who was pregnant, was rushed into a Nairobi hospital where she was treated for pneumonia. Suffering from breathing difficulties the doctors administered salbutamol to aid her. It is not recorded whether she was conscious at the time. In September she tested positive for the salbutamol which is a World Anti Doping Agency (WADA) banned substance.
In February Athletics Kenya magnanimously handed her a one year ban, accepting her mitigating circumstances.
Now I cannot imagine that anyone, other than the most fundamental apologists (of which there are many) for the strict liability clause in dope testing rules, would in any way defend or even start to understand this action taken in the so called War on Doping. The IAAF, so swift to go to arbitration if they feel a sentence is too lenient, has never appealed a sentence for being too harsh and so it is in this case. It has been silent. Chepkemei is now officially a drug cheat.
If the many that have been over vocal about the Chambers affair are true to their principles then Chepkemei will not grace the London Marathon again. And even if she were allowed to run those who were urging public demonstrations against Chambers must surely once more try to rally rabble rousers to boo and hiss along the route. And if he were to stage a 10,000 metres in his prestigious Ivo Van Damme meeting Wilfred Meert would surely decline to invite her. He like many others, has suffered a conversion on the road from BALCO
I heard him on my car radio some days ago talking on BBC Radio 5 Live about the legal threat posed by Christy Gaines suing the Euromeetings Group of 54 promoters who have taken a unilateral and retrospective decision not to invite former drug cheats to their meetings. We’re okay, Wilfred seemed to saying, “because these are invitational meetings and we can invite or not invite who we like.”
Not quite. The six Golden League meetings are part of the IAAF/TDK programme where one million dollars is at stake for those who win all six meetings. Any legal action by any former banned athlete (who could afford it) taken against their prohibition from the Golden League would surely have to incorporate the IAAF as well. The promoters seem to have forgotten, or have never heard of, the Meca-Medina/Malcen case that went before the European Court of Justice. It determined that sporting cases (including doping cases) do fall within the scope of Article 81 of the European Community Treaty.
Promoters and managers, Niels de Vos and Dame Tanni (I want an eight year ban) Grey Thompson should note carefully that Dick Pound, former head of WADA and a lawyer has, as I write, reiterated to BBC Sport his belief that the British Olympic Association bye law banning drug miscreants for life from the Olympics contravenes WADA legislation. “As a matter of law,” Pound said, “I think the BOA would be on shaky ground. The BOA is a signatory to Wada's code - those are the rules that govern doping infractions - and the sanction for a first offence is a two-year suspension.
"Chambers has served his ban and I think, depending on your view of criminal justice, if you serve the penalty that was deemed appropriate - for whatever the offence was - you are entitled to be reintegrated into society.”
The European promoters could be looked upon as an organised cabal promoting restraint of trade with the express purpose of subverting the laws of WADA and in athletics’ case, the IAAF.
Much of this is based on a visceral feeling among many in authority that, despite global and national tests showing a 99% negative return, most elite athletes are, or want to be, on performance enhancing drugs. It is a belief, held but rarely uttered, that goes back a long way.
On a windy summer’s evening in 1990 at the Gateshead International Stadium Dr Martin Lucking, then a prominent figure in UK drug testing, was supervising procedures in an international match with Canada and East Germany. A group of athletes were waiting to be tested. The delay was causing irritation, complaint and friction. Lucking (who was later to chair the panel that erroneously found Diane Modahl guilty) suddenly snapped, whirled round and pointing a finger in turn at each of the athletes present, shouted each time: “I think you’re on drugs and I think you’re on drugs, until you’ve proved otherwise.”
This was an extraordinary incident that indicated the suspicion by sporting administrators of universal guilt. It is clearly still prevalent. They believe it with the religious conviction of a fundamentalist, unwittingly confirming what the gullible Ben Johnson and Dwain Chambers and others were told by their mentors.
And if you are solemnly looked in the eye and told that the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on testing is to act as a deterrent then you know that sport and in particular athletics has completely lost its way on this important issue and that through its own laws as well as the subverting of them and, in particular, through the Chepkemei case, it is slowly bringing itself into disrepute.
Good times at the NIA
On to more congenial affairs. In recent years when I have visited meetings of all grades around the country I’ve usually done it with a personal interest in just one athlete. The rest of the competition normally goes by in some sort of a blur unless there is an athlete of particular standing taking part. When I went to Birmingham’s NIA for the England age group championships ten days or so ago I expected to find myself in a similar position. That I didn’t was down to two reasons.
The first was that the competition was intense and exciting and belied the theory that our relative lack of international success is because of a dearth of talent – talent was present at the NIA in droves. Carefully nurtured, some of those present will grace future British teams with considerable distinction. Secondly, it was great to meet up again with some former top stars who were now back in the sport successfully coaching young talent. After such an invigorating weekend one could easily be led into thinking that the future of our sport and in particular success in 2012 was pretty well assured.
The operative phrase though is “carefully nurtured”, which conveniently leads us to the coaching scheme still trying hard to survive under burdensome coach education, which has for almost a decade slowly choked coaching to death. Coach education has been an unmitigated disaster. Its main aim seems to have been to satisfy the insatiable Sport England demand for more and more coaches with little or no thought as to the quality being produced; witness Sport England’s frankly ludicrous demand for 2000 more Level 1 coaches between 2007 and 2009.
What has been sadly neglected is coach development. Where is pro-active encouragement of coaches to increase their knowledge? Where has UKA published the latest track and field research? After the sad demise of the highly acclaimed AAA/BAAB coaching booklets (sold around the world) where are the replacement booklets and DVDs? Why doesn’t UKA attempt to keep in regular contact with its Level 3 and Level 4 coaches using the internet? Some months ago a semi-autonomous Coaches Guild, that would have incorporated all of the above, was mooted to top management at UKA. Their response, as reported to me, was “we don’t want to fund a trade union.”
But there was hope at the NIA. In the warm-up area were former international athletes Geoff Capes, Clarence Callender, Mike McFarlane, Tony Jarrett, Lloyd Cowan and Lorna Boothe (as well as a number of other very well qualified coaches) all bringing their knowledge and experience to our most promising young stars. It was great to meet up again, however transitorily. Sprinting, as you can see, is well catered for in coaching terms; now the trick for whoever will be driving coaching forward in the coming years, will be to muster such talent in all the other events.
Many will remember Susan Chepkemei, if not from the streets of London, where she ran third in 2006, then from the wonderful 2004 ING New York marathon when she battled to the finish with Paula Radcliffe, who won.
Last summer the 32 year old Kenyan, who was pregnant, was rushed into a Nairobi hospital where she was treated for pneumonia. Suffering from breathing difficulties the doctors administered salbutamol to aid her. It is not recorded whether she was conscious at the time. In September she tested positive for the salbutamol which is a World Anti Doping Agency (WADA) banned substance.
In February Athletics Kenya magnanimously handed her a one year ban, accepting her mitigating circumstances.
Now I cannot imagine that anyone, other than the most fundamental apologists (of which there are many) for the strict liability clause in dope testing rules, would in any way defend or even start to understand this action taken in the so called War on Doping. The IAAF, so swift to go to arbitration if they feel a sentence is too lenient, has never appealed a sentence for being too harsh and so it is in this case. It has been silent. Chepkemei is now officially a drug cheat.
If the many that have been over vocal about the Chambers affair are true to their principles then Chepkemei will not grace the London Marathon again. And even if she were allowed to run those who were urging public demonstrations against Chambers must surely once more try to rally rabble rousers to boo and hiss along the route. And if he were to stage a 10,000 metres in his prestigious Ivo Van Damme meeting Wilfred Meert would surely decline to invite her. He like many others, has suffered a conversion on the road from BALCO
I heard him on my car radio some days ago talking on BBC Radio 5 Live about the legal threat posed by Christy Gaines suing the Euromeetings Group of 54 promoters who have taken a unilateral and retrospective decision not to invite former drug cheats to their meetings. We’re okay, Wilfred seemed to saying, “because these are invitational meetings and we can invite or not invite who we like.”
Not quite. The six Golden League meetings are part of the IAAF/TDK programme where one million dollars is at stake for those who win all six meetings. Any legal action by any former banned athlete (who could afford it) taken against their prohibition from the Golden League would surely have to incorporate the IAAF as well. The promoters seem to have forgotten, or have never heard of, the Meca-Medina/Malcen case that went before the European Court of Justice. It determined that sporting cases (including doping cases) do fall within the scope of Article 81 of the European Community Treaty.
Promoters and managers, Niels de Vos and Dame Tanni (I want an eight year ban) Grey Thompson should note carefully that Dick Pound, former head of WADA and a lawyer has, as I write, reiterated to BBC Sport his belief that the British Olympic Association bye law banning drug miscreants for life from the Olympics contravenes WADA legislation. “As a matter of law,” Pound said, “I think the BOA would be on shaky ground. The BOA is a signatory to Wada's code - those are the rules that govern doping infractions - and the sanction for a first offence is a two-year suspension.
"Chambers has served his ban and I think, depending on your view of criminal justice, if you serve the penalty that was deemed appropriate - for whatever the offence was - you are entitled to be reintegrated into society.”
The European promoters could be looked upon as an organised cabal promoting restraint of trade with the express purpose of subverting the laws of WADA and in athletics’ case, the IAAF.
Much of this is based on a visceral feeling among many in authority that, despite global and national tests showing a 99% negative return, most elite athletes are, or want to be, on performance enhancing drugs. It is a belief, held but rarely uttered, that goes back a long way.
On a windy summer’s evening in 1990 at the Gateshead International Stadium Dr Martin Lucking, then a prominent figure in UK drug testing, was supervising procedures in an international match with Canada and East Germany. A group of athletes were waiting to be tested. The delay was causing irritation, complaint and friction. Lucking (who was later to chair the panel that erroneously found Diane Modahl guilty) suddenly snapped, whirled round and pointing a finger in turn at each of the athletes present, shouted each time: “I think you’re on drugs and I think you’re on drugs, until you’ve proved otherwise.”
This was an extraordinary incident that indicated the suspicion by sporting administrators of universal guilt. It is clearly still prevalent. They believe it with the religious conviction of a fundamentalist, unwittingly confirming what the gullible Ben Johnson and Dwain Chambers and others were told by their mentors.
And if you are solemnly looked in the eye and told that the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on testing is to act as a deterrent then you know that sport and in particular athletics has completely lost its way on this important issue and that through its own laws as well as the subverting of them and, in particular, through the Chepkemei case, it is slowly bringing itself into disrepute.
Good times at the NIA
On to more congenial affairs. In recent years when I have visited meetings of all grades around the country I’ve usually done it with a personal interest in just one athlete. The rest of the competition normally goes by in some sort of a blur unless there is an athlete of particular standing taking part. When I went to Birmingham’s NIA for the England age group championships ten days or so ago I expected to find myself in a similar position. That I didn’t was down to two reasons.
The first was that the competition was intense and exciting and belied the theory that our relative lack of international success is because of a dearth of talent – talent was present at the NIA in droves. Carefully nurtured, some of those present will grace future British teams with considerable distinction. Secondly, it was great to meet up again with some former top stars who were now back in the sport successfully coaching young talent. After such an invigorating weekend one could easily be led into thinking that the future of our sport and in particular success in 2012 was pretty well assured.
The operative phrase though is “carefully nurtured”, which conveniently leads us to the coaching scheme still trying hard to survive under burdensome coach education, which has for almost a decade slowly choked coaching to death. Coach education has been an unmitigated disaster. Its main aim seems to have been to satisfy the insatiable Sport England demand for more and more coaches with little or no thought as to the quality being produced; witness Sport England’s frankly ludicrous demand for 2000 more Level 1 coaches between 2007 and 2009.
What has been sadly neglected is coach development. Where is pro-active encouragement of coaches to increase their knowledge? Where has UKA published the latest track and field research? After the sad demise of the highly acclaimed AAA/BAAB coaching booklets (sold around the world) where are the replacement booklets and DVDs? Why doesn’t UKA attempt to keep in regular contact with its Level 3 and Level 4 coaches using the internet? Some months ago a semi-autonomous Coaches Guild, that would have incorporated all of the above, was mooted to top management at UKA. Their response, as reported to me, was “we don’t want to fund a trade union.”
But there was hope at the NIA. In the warm-up area were former international athletes Geoff Capes, Clarence Callender, Mike McFarlane, Tony Jarrett, Lloyd Cowan and Lorna Boothe (as well as a number of other very well qualified coaches) all bringing their knowledge and experience to our most promising young stars. It was great to meet up again, however transitorily. Sprinting, as you can see, is well catered for in coaching terms; now the trick for whoever will be driving coaching forward in the coming years, will be to muster such talent in all the other events.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)