Fings Ain't Wot They Used T'be

If proof were still needed that men’s endurance events in Britain are now in paralysis a glance at the all-time lists will suffice. Performances set in the opening decade of the 21st century comprise just 12.2% of the top twenty all-time lists for men’s events from 800m to the 50k walk. This is fractionally worse than the percentage of performances from the 1970s that are still extant there.
It is generally believed that European endurance is in the same parlous state but using the same criteria performances set this century by the continent’s endurance athletes comprise 47.2% of its all-time lists.
The great and the good of British endurance running down the years have recently met to cogitate on this. Ian Stewart, 5000m bronze medallist at the Munich Olympics (a man who, in 1975, won a European indoor 3000m title one weekend and an IAAF world cross-country one the next) has been handed the poisoned chalice of creating a revival back to more halcyon days. Whether he can successfully combine this task with that of promoting the televised events remains to be seen.
It is an indication of these sad running times that our current top male marathon runner, Andi Jones, with 2:15:20 running just five seconds faster than Paula Radcliffe’s best, complains of not being considered for the World Championships in Berlin. It is enough to make Jim Peters stir angrily in his grave.
A number of questions pose themselves: do we still have the natural talent; is our coaching good enough; do our athletes compete enough; is periodisation to blame; is ‘fear of Africans’ a factor; do our runners neglect speed?
Do we still have the natural talent? The emphatic answer is, no. Using the same criteria over five endurance events for the Under 20 athletes the situation is fractionally worse. Just 11% of the all-time top twenty performances by junior athletes have been set this century; worse still only 11% were set in the 1990s which means that only around one fifth of our best junior all-time performances have been run in the past nineteen years. In other words our reservoir of talent has dried up over two decades. There are dwindling fields in county and regional championships; there has been a steady decline in schools’ interest in athletics over a quarter of a century; our junior competitive structures are woeful involving hours of travelling to depressing league meetings often of pathetic standard.
Is our coaching good enough? There is no doubt that over the past decade or so endurance coaching (and therefore running) has been badly led and mismanaged and only the necessary cull after the Beijing Olympics gives any cause for hope. For our endurance runners to be told by one of the supposedly top coaches that “the Africans will never be beaten,” beggars belief, but it happened. There are too many coaches now operating who feel that attending a weekend course to gain the Level 2 award transforms them into highly qualified experts who require no further knowledge. All of this will take time to repair.
Do our athletes compete enough? Our summer season has barely begun and the one in the US is almost over, except that their best athletes now leave for competitions in Europe prior to the World Championships in Berlin. We have long had a culture in Britain of our best athletes “coming out late”, some even delaying a serious appearance until the championships/trials itself. The leading world performance at 800 metres as I write is 1:43.09 by Abubaker Kaki of Sudan set in early May. Five men have run under 1:44. Similarly the top British performance so far is 1:46.31 by Michael Rimmer with only six men below 1:48. Will Kaki and co be in contention come Berlin? Almost certainly. Britain? The last 800m finalist that we had in a global championship came in 1993 in Stuttgart. Are there lessons to be learnt here?
The man lying 20th on the all-time list for the marathon is Bill Adcocks who set his performance of 2:10:48 twenty-one years ago. Only three British men have run faster than Bill this century. In 1968 he finished fifth in the Mexico City Olympics run at altitude. That year he ran four marathons plus a host of other road races and track 10000 metres. To miss a weekly race for Adcocks, Hill, Alder, Kilby et al was something of a personal disaster. Racing was their raison d’être. “We were,” Bill once said to me, “learning our trade.” This notion of such regular, week-in, week-out competition was criticised by the former head of endurance, Alan Storey and although this sense of preciousness didn’t begin under his watch he continued to perpetuate it.
Should blame be laid at the concept of ‘periodisation’? There is much argument about this theory of training introduced by the Russian Professor L P Matveev and eagerly seized upon by western enthusiasts. It now seems to be generally accepted that although it might have suited Eastern European runners in the fifties and sixties international modern competition structures now make it obsolete. But are some of our coaches still rigidly adhered to the theory with disastrous consequences?
I have dealt with fear of Africans in an earlier Blog. Their total dominance of endurance events, their ability to maintain an almost metronomic tempo of fast running over twenty-five laps is disheartening to many runners. There was a similar belief in the 20s and 30s of the last century concerning the great Finns and although it is fairly certain that they would have continued such domination at the 1940 Olympics had they been held it is equally certain that it would not have continued ad infinitum. For all the theorising in western coaching no one has come up with ideas to counter the African success. Perhaps training as hard as they do would be a start.
Speed. That seemingly elusive quality (rather more speed-endurance than pure speed) that is ignored by so many coaches and so many athletes. It has been my good fortune to listen and talk to over the years to some our greatest endurance coaches: “The need is for repeatable speed always available on demand, ”said the late Peter Coe; “Speed has always been the dominant influence in my approach,” says John Anderson; “Speed is the essence,” says Wilf Paish. British coaches and athletes ignore it at their peril.
But in the end it is down to good coaching. And good coaching is about what it always has been: perpetual learning. I talked with former National Coach for Wales, Jim Alford shortly before he died at the grand old age of 90. He was coaching until the end of his life at the Tooting Bec track in London (when he got tired the athletes brought an armchair out for him). “I’m still learning all the time,” Jim said to me, “as a coach you never stop learning.” That is why it is encouraging to hear Kevin Tyler, UKA’s new coaching director from Canada, say, “ we interviewed over 50 of the world’s top coaches and without exception they identified mentoring and informal learning as the two most important factors in their development.”
Picasso said: “Bad artists copy; good artists steal.” This applies also to the world of ideas in coaching. When Cerutty brought to fruition the huge talent of Herb Elliott on the dunes at Portsea the world rushed to sand hills to copy him; when Lydiard had 800m runner Peter Snell running the marathon distance in training everyone began Long Slow Distance (LSD). As Bruce Tulloh once wrote runners are always looking for “something that will turn them from scrubbers to supermen, if not overnight, at least by next Saturday.” But the basics and terminology are now intrinsic and good coaches adapt the fundamentals to suit their ideas and their runners’ needs. They are always attentive to what is going on in their sphere and, like Picasso, have no compunction in stealing such ideas and maybe developing them further.
Where have we gone wrong? It is 21 years since our men won a medal at an endurance event at a global championship, two decades of perhaps believing that the triumphs of the golden era were the gifts of the Gods and would return. No longer can we believe that; no longer can we believe (and worse still announce) that every new bright talent is the next Coe or Cram. But we do need some derring do on the track, some courage to move towards the front in races and not, seemingly inevitably, towards the rear. Our coaches must awaken from their moribund slumber of despair and plan and prepare for a new dawn and as they do so whisper to themselves the million dollar question: why can’t our men run more like our women?

Innovation

Watching (on television, in the dry) Usain Bolt splash his way to an astounding 150 metres world best time of 14.35 secs in a rain-soaked Manchester a few weeks ago was, for everyone, some experience. It certainly was for his fellow competitors who looked completely awe-struck at the finish. Marlon Devonish, who finished a distant second in the race, said in the understatement of the season so far: “I think Usain is in a different league right now.”
But this Blog isn’t about Bolt it’s about innovation and the good news is that some of the hierarchy of the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) were present to witness the event. They must know in their hearts that track and field worldwide is in deep trouble as far as popularity goes and that radical approaches are needed if our sport is to undergo a renaissance.
Bringing certain events out on to the streets is one way of re-galvanising public interest. It’s not new; there have been town square pole vault competitions around Europe for many years and in a recent interview Seb Coe enthused about a shot put competition held in a Stockholm market square, that attracted 5000 enthusiastic spectators the night before the DN Galan track meeting. And there must be some way to integrate the street athletics series for youngsters promoted and organised by Linford Christie and Darren Campbell into any future similar programmes.
Innovation must be in the air for we also have the inaugural Super 8 inter-city meeting in Cardiff on June 10. This is an idea with enormous potential for every section of the sport. What club athletics in Britain has failed to grasp for years is the fact that six hour long meetings combined with up to six hours of travelling is not the way to attract young people to (or to keep older people in) our sport. Super 8 lasts for just two hours, covers eleven events for both men and women and has eight cities battling it out. Attractively presented and properly promoted, especially locally, this could be an awakening for track and field on a local level. Providing the people of Cardiff (where the prototype is being held) know about it, it will surely be a great success.
Next year, if the prototype is successful (as it surely must be with international athletes taking part and with Sky television giving it coverage) the competition will go nationwide with cities being invited to bid for franchises and this is where some uncertainty creeps in and a number of questions need to be answered. The most pertinent concerns finance because without sufficient backing the idea will struggle. But this is not the time to ask too many pertinent questions but to wish the concept well and await reaction.
There is, however, a difference between innovation and turning the sport into a circus and there are many who are concerned that the new European Athletics Team Championship is about to do just that. The European Athletics Association (EAA) has long been under the misguided assumption that the declining popularity of the European Cup competition was down to its structure and over ten years ago began reducing the number of attempts allowed in field events in the erroneous belief that such a gesture would be welcomed by television. But television never ever showed a complete set of jumps and throws anyway so it was a futile gesture. The decline in the popularity of the European Cup was that it offered no financial incentives to those taking part and so many of the continent’s top stars stayed away. The complications of the new competition are too numerous to include here and at the risk of being tagged a purist I forecast that the competition, like Jeux Sans Frontiéres (Its a Knock Out), just might entertain an unknowledgeable audience but will not impress a knowledgeable one.

The Emperor's New Clothes

It’s Christmas day morning and the Beckhams, David and Victoria, are up early watching their children open their presents. There comes a ring at the door. Is it Santa returning with an extra gift? Is it family on a Yuletide visit? The younger children hope to see Donner and Blitzen. Victoria opens the door and there is no Donner, no Blitzen, just the man from the World Anti Doping Agency (WADA), with test tubes and all, come to random test her husband at an allotted hour. Festive pleasantries are not exchanged.
A fantasy tale? Perhaps but it’s based on factual probability. It’s an example of the increasing infringement of the human rights of successful sportsmen and women, by the constant tightening of the “Whereabouts rule” where a sportsman or woman on the drug testing register has to signify a place and an hour of the day when he or she will be available 365 days of the year.
The playwright Arthur Miller, writing about his play, The Crucible, said that ever increasing Draconian penalties would lead us to a time when “the repressions of order were heavier than seemed warranted by the dangers against which the order was organised.” The World Anti Doping Agency (WADA) has reached that time. It has reached it because its autocratic president, John Fahey, insists that it’s new Whereabouts rule is not open to negotiation. Orwell, if he had been at all interested in sport (which he wasn’t), would have well understood this moment in its history.
Miller’s play is ostensibly about the witch trials in the village of Salem in 1692 when nineteen men and women and two dogs were convicted of witchcraft and hanged. It was also an allegory on an equally Manichean period in American history, the 1950s, when the proceedings of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) saw many men and women jailed or blacklisted from their work simply for their left-wing affiliations. Some committed suicide. Fear and paranoia stalked the land.
In the summer of 1990 I went to the National Theatre to see an excellent production of the play. The similarities with drug testing – the repressive measures, the innuendo, the fear and the hysterical outbursts - stirred within me a distinct unease about how drug abuse was being tackled in sport. My wife Gwenda and I discussed this during the interval, at dinner and on the way home and the conversation formed the basis of a chapter, Sporting Salem, in my book Athletics – The Golden Decade. Twenty years on that unease has not abated, quite the reverse.
But now a surprising voice is questioning the Whereabouts rule. In a Blog published on the website Inside the Games, Michelle Verroken, one time Head of Anti-Doping for UK Sport and a noted hardliner on drug taking, questions the ethics of the rule. She notes that the footballing authorities, FIFA and UEFA, together with other sporting organisations and indeed the European Union together with leading sportsmen are opposed to the rule in its new form. She writes:
“This is a point of principle...this is an issue about winning the hearts and minds of our athletes to support drug-free sport. I doubt if it is really having that kind of impact. Whereabouts could be the nemesis that turns the ‘drug free willing’ into the ‘whatever’ generation. Athletes are the target of anti-doping programmes in the same way they are the target of those who would seek ways around doping rules and supply performance enhancing drugs. The system relies upon athletes being on side.”
Fahey, along with other international and national sporting leaders, particularly Olympic president, Jacques Rogge, clearly fail to recognise this salient fact. Fahey’s “do what we say or else” stance is alienating many top sportsmen and women. The attitude of the authorities mirrors that of a drug tester who blew his top at an international athletics match many years ago and rounded on the assembled athletes impatiently waiting to be tested. Pointing a finger at each one he shouted “I think you’re on drugs, I think you’re on drugs...” For too long the attitude has been one of athletes having to prove themselves innocent rather than the authorities proving them guilty. The Diane Modahl case of the mid-nineties was a supreme example of such bias and injustice.
WADA, the IOC and certain governing bodies vigorously propagandize a drug menace threatening sport that they cannot quantify. Why? With a 2009 budget of almost 25 million US dollars, provided by Olympic associations and governments worldwide, WADA has to justify its existence. It has to convince its paymasters that the menace is so great that it threatens the integrity, the very soul of sport. And when President George W Bush in a State of the Union speech said in 2004 that the use of performance-enhancing drugs in sports is dangerous and that performance is now more important than character you have to say that the propaganda is working.
The one-time British Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli was credited with saying: “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics.” I am not accusing WADA and other testing authorities of falsifying statistics but I am suggesting that they massage them for their propaganda purposes.
Dr Babette Pluim is a respected worldwide authority on medical matters relating to tennis. Writing last year in the British Journal of Sports Medicine she reported that in her sport there were internationally 40 positive findings between 2003 and 2007 but that in 67.5% of the cases the independent reviewing panels accepted that there was “no intent to enhance performance”. So when it comes to an intention to cheat, 40 positives drops to 13 over the five year period.
Immediately her case became public World and Olympic 400m champion Christine Ohuruogu was labelled a drug cheat not only by the tabloids but also by her own federation. She can bitterly attest to her shameful treatment after she was found guilty of missing three tests and banned for a year. She suffered such abuse even though those sitting in judgement were categorical in their belief that there was no intention on her part to enhance her performances.
There is an ever-expanding WADA list of banned substances that by 2009 has already reached proportions that no sportsman could possibly keep abreast of (thus increasing the chances of minor accidental positives inflating statistics). Asthmatic sufferers and others with genuine medical conditions now have to go through a complicated, bureaucratic procedure to acquire a TUE (Therapeutic Use Exemption). And, as another medical authority, the Australian Dr Tim Wood has pointed out: “I also experience the frustration at the paperwork required to allow players with genuine medical conditions to take legitimate, scientifically proven drugs that do not advance performance.” This is also now required to allow an athlete to have intravenous fluid during elective surgery. Has sport gone mad?
There have been many appalling injustices over the years: Andrea Raducian losing a gymnastics gold medal at the Sydney Olympics for taking a Sudafed tablet; Filippo Volandri banned for three months for ‘abuse of salbutamol’ in treating a particularly violent asthma attack. The Italian tennis player was not only banned but fined the equivalent of most of his 2008 prize money. In athletics, in 2003, Bernard Legat’s ‘A’ sample test showed positive for EPO; he withdrew from the World Championships in Paris and did not run in any of the lucrative Grand Prix meetings that season. His ‘B’ sample proved negative. It was a botched test.
Ask any one in Britain what they think about athletics and they will almost certainly refer to it being a drug infested sport. High profile cases like those of Dwain Chambers and more recently that of the now former Olympic 1500m champion Rashid Ramzi have certainly confirmed that view for many people. But the Chambers’ publicity was actually self-inflicted by the British federation naively and vainly attempting to ban him from competing in 2008 even though two years had elapsed since he had completed his two year sentence for taking banned substances. Chambers’ return to the sport sparked outcries and much public breast beating with ex-Olympians on TV and federation officials talking of a massive menace and a war on drugs. It has always been thus but those determined to keep the propaganda going in order to justify the enormous financial outlay, have studiously neglected to mention that between 2004 and 2008 British athletics produced, according to UK Sport, just two cases that violated WADA rules (presumably one of those was that of Ohuruogu) giving just 1.1 positive cases in 1000 tests .
Finally do the statistics justify the hundreds of millions of dollars, the bad publicity and the abuse of human rights created by WADA and the independent testing agencies in the developed world?
In 1997 (two years before WADA was set up) international athletics totalled 68 drug cases, 62% of which attracted the maximum ban. In 2007, with WADA in full swing, there were 67 cases, 60% of which warranted the maximum ban. Not much progress there then. During that period, at a conservative estimate, a quarter of a billion dollars has been spent across the globe fighting drugs in sport with systems and procedures that are clearly not infallible. But it seems that WADA and Fahey have finally overstepped the mark. In a recent interview the IOC President Jacques Rogge, whilst defending the principle of Whereabouts (“because there is so much doping”) said: “This is something to be discussed between WADA and the athletes and between WADA and FIFA and other team sports.”
Like Hans Christian Anderson’s Emperor sport has succumbed to its own propaganda and persuaded the rest of the world to go with it. It is forty-two years since British cyclist Tommy Simpson died from doping and heat on the slopes of Mont Ventoux in the Tour de France and not much progress seems to have been made in tackling doping in sport in the interim. Is it time for the IOC and the major international sports bodies to realise that WADA isn’t working, was a bad mistake and to urgently look at a completely new way of solving the problem? I think it surely is.

Geoff Dyson and the Appliance of Science

Tom Tellez was a top American coach, Head Track and Field Coach at the University of Houston. His finest athlete, Carl Lewis, was arguably the greatest the world has ever seen, Specialising at 100, 200 metres, long jump and sprint relay, Lewis won more combined Olympic and World gold medals than any other athlete in history. His sprinting and jumping techniques were impeccable.

At the drop of a hat Tellez would produce a well thumbed book and cry “this is my bible!” a book, written some twenty years before he was coaching Lewis, by an Englishman, G.H.G. Dyson and was titled the Mechanics of Athletics. Tellez told me, twenty years ago, that he had read it perhaps fifty times. “If I have had success as a coach I owe a great deal of it to Geoff Dyson,” he said. “His book started me on the trail of discovering the real facts about track and field.”

The Mechanics of Athletics, translated into French, Italian, Spanish and Japanese that ran to eight English editions, applied the immutable laws of motion of Sir Isaac Newton to every event. In his day Geoff Dyson, the British Chief National Coach of the time, toured the land preaching a gospel of the appliance of science to training, illustrating his mesmerizing presentations with turntables and film loops.

Dyson also instituted instructional booklets on every event that were soon coveted by coaches round the world; he encouraged those who were pioneering loop films, men like Guy Butler and the German Toni Nett, who obtained stadium access to film the greatest athletes of the time in action, which could then be globally marketed and repeatedly specto-analyzed in slow motion.. It was a trail-blazing, pioneering time, and for those of us privileged to be involved in Britain, very exciting. 

It is somehow symbolic to me that the Mechanics of Athletics is out of print, symbolic of the fact that the scheme that Dyson conceived sixty years ago, that became the envy of the world and was re-constructed in Canada, has been desecrated over the last decade or more by those who don’t know what they don’t know.

He conceived of the idea of a team of national coaches who would ‘teach the teachers and coach (my italics) the coaches’ in the different regions of Britain. I think the mantra was deliberate. Teachers would be taught but coaches would be coached in the art of applying the science they had gained. Different men down the years have filled the role with distinction, highly respected not only in their regions but also, in some cases, around the world of athletics. Many left in frustration and anger and when the British Athletics Federation went bankrupt in 1997 national coaches were unceremoniously swept aside and a mess of pottage replaced their work.  

Dyson fought a losing battle to earn respect for coaches and coaching against the philistines of the AAA establishment. In his time there were those who sneeringly referred to coaching as “bloody kidology.” His battle still hasn’t been won. If you consider the question of how important is coaching to the development of the sport worldwide and then study the websites of the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), the European Athletics Association (EAA) and in Britain, UK Athletics (UKA) you have to conclude that it’s not very important at all. 

All you can find on the IAAF site are details of the various coaching awards available and information on how to obtain the very academic publication New Studies in Athletics; the EAA site is similarly bereft of information and news with just a link to the officers of the European Athletics Coaches Association (EACA) but not to the association’s website. In Britain, it’s the same story.  

But as to what is going on in the world of coaching - who’s producing the current crop of great athletes, what’s their philosophy, who’s innovating in the various events, is there new information to be gained in the crucial areas of strength training, gender, nutrition, sports psychology etc then internationally (and domestically in Britain) - there is nothing at all. The idea of sourcing and collating all such relevant information seems not to have entered the mindset of any of the relevant personnel.

In some ways you could say that Dyson’s ideas were globally ahead of his time; certainly, in Britain, they appear to be ahead of our time. With the availability of modern technology you have to ask where are the DVDs that show us frame-by-frame analysis of the great technicians; where are the event booklets that maybe would encourage coaches to consider events other than their speciality; where is there a film, for instance, of the greatest long jump of all-time, Powell (8.95) versus Lewis (8.91w) in Tokyo in 1991? 

In 1975 Dyson rose, at Olympia in Greece, to address the 19th session of the International Olympic Academy. It was almost thirty years since the creation of his coaching scheme in Britain and twelve since he had similarly launched the Royal Canadian Legion’s Sports Training Plan in Ontario. It was mainly a reflective lecture but in it he relevantly said:

“In his study of athletic performance the modern coach stands at the crossroads of several sciences. Thus, to the physiologist, athletic performance is a phenomenon of cells, humours, tissues and nutrient fluids obeying organic laws. The psychologist sees the athlete as a consciousness and a personality, while to the physicist he suggests a machine unique in its organisation, adaptiveness and complexity. To the imaginative coach the borders of these and other specialities are seen to overlap; the techniques of one science become meaningful and illuminating in others.”

2011 sees the 30th anniversary of his untimely death from a heart attack and surely the time would be right to resurrect his place in coaching history as a great genius, pioneer and innovator, the man who applied science to the most complicated sport of all. He has rightly been described as a prophet without honour in his own land. 

British athletics owed him so much and yet deigned to honour him in his lifetime, though belatedly he was recently inducted into a England Hall of Fame. There are many ways in which he can be remembered but perhaps one of the most enduring would be to recreate the Mechanics of Athletics electronically with appropriate film and commentary from the book so that a new generation of coaches can benefit from the man who single-handedly changed the concept of coaching in Britain.  

The Dyson Squad: Left to Right: Geoff Elliot (1954 Commonwealth Pole Vault Champion); Maureen Gardern-Dyson (1948 Olympic silver medallist); Dyson; Shirley Cawley (1952 Olympic long jump bronze medallist); John Savidge (1954 Commonwealth shot put champion).

A Good Vintage

Since his arrival as Head Coach of UK Athletics (UKA), Charles van Commenee has shown how crass and destructive was the decision by the previous incumbents of Athletics House to appoint a sports psychologist to lead Britain’s international athletes, a man who misspent millions of pounds and subsequently failed to meet his own overly modest medal target in Beijing. The stupidity of Moorcroft’s decision is emphasized by the fact that van Commenee was working at UKA at the time, seemingly ignored because the CEO had decided, apparently on the advice of Sir Clive Woodward, that a coach was not the best person to lead athletes. The Dutchman soon flew back to Holland to take up duties there.
One fears that the decisions made between 1997 and 2006 will haunt British athletics for some years to come and indeed will have a detrimental effect on our performances in 2012 which is why (as I read somewhere) van Commenee’s resolve to resign if he does not meet his own target of eight medals in London is not one I agree with. He needs more time to right the wrongs of a decade of maladministration, especially in relation to coaching.
He may have problems in areas where he has no direct control. England Athletics’ unseemly rush to comply with its paymasters latest wheeze, abandoning its nine regions in the process, seems to have left coaching in an angry limbo. And coaches have been angry for some time, not so that England AA seems to have noticed. The new system, hardly in place, is already generating a lack of confidence in Level 3 and Level 4 coaches. Such coaches tell me that communication is non-existent, e-mails go unanswered. No one seems to know what is going on.
The current state of coaching would have made Geoff Dyson burst a blood vessel, something that those who knew him (as I did) would confirm he was always prone to do. With Geoff (founder of our coaching scheme back in 1948) it was always Apoplexy Now and it finally led to him being hounded out of British athletics in the early 1960s. But he left behind him a legacy that was the envy of the world. Traces of his work are still around us, some of it inevitably septuagenarian in nature, in men who have more coaching wisdom in their little fingers than the majority have in their whole bodies.
In van Commenee, by his actions and pronouncements, one recognises a man of similar persuasion, a man who knows athletics and athletes. He clearly does not suffer fools gladly so in British athletics he will have a hard time of it. He has been described as a volcano and I for one look forward to hearing the eruptions that are necessary to put Britain internationally back on the right track.
Talk Talk
Prior to the world’s finest athletes descending on Berlin’s Olympic stadium in August a few hundred administrators from around the globe will assemble for an IAAF Congress. I’ve been around a few of these massive talking shops and it has amazed me each time that so much time and money is spent and perhaps wasted on what, in the end, primarily turns out to be nitpicking of changes to the competition rules. It gives those who love to indulge themselves in such pedantry a field day. As usual on these occasions a very few self-appointed experts dominate the discussions; the rest are bored to tears.
It’s obviously too late to change the format for 2009 but surely the IAAF should think of doing so when mostly the same people gather again in Daeju, South Korea two years later. Our sport is not in such great shape that discussion on its future by the top administrators from each country would be a waste of time. Why not, over three days, have seminars on the three fundamental areas of athletics: coaching, competition (including officials) and facilities without which athletics could not function. It really is time that the world governing body interested itself in what is happening below its athletics ivory towers.
Living up to the hype
British performances at the world cross country championships in Amman disappointed many including many of the athletes themselves. The real question (and it applies even more to track and field as well as we shall see) is whether our athletes lived up to expectations. I think most of them did. What they didn’t live up to was the hype generated by good performances achieved in the gold fish bowls of British and European competitions. We were up to it again after last weekend eulogising runners for being in the top five in Europe; we have yet to learn that, in world terms, European standards no longer serve as any criteria.
One of the problems seems to be the spin spawned by the need to sell the televised meetings. Our young sprinters have had enormous pressure put upon them over recent years by being put on a par with the Americans and Jamaicans; heads to heads built up at Crystal Palace and Gateshead, arousing media and public expectation. The latest is Mark Lewis Francis “challenging” Usain Bolt in a street sprint at Manchester. Have you ever heard anything so ridiculous? A look at the world rankings lists is all it takes to bring about a sense of reality.
Let us take the careers of three young British sprinters: Mark Lewis Francis, Harry Aikines Aryeetey and Craig Pickering, all lauded to the skies as future Olympic champions, even world record holders. The former two won World Junior titles; Pickering was European Junior champion in 2005. After he won his title in 2000 Lewis Francis was named as his successor by the Olympic champion, Donovan Bailey; after his success in 2006 Aikines Aryeetey was dubbed Britain’s big hope for the 2012 Olympics. Pickering has somehow found himself to be the next big white hope. And of course it has been natural for the athletes to believe the stories, to revel in the interviews, to have expectations that, frankly, have exceeded their grasp. Such disappointments can be mind shattering.
90% of British athletes who will be contending in 2012 are probably known to us. Anyone contending for the final of the 100 metres in London should surely now be running sub-10 seconds. Only three British sprinters have ever run under that time, the last, Dwain Chambers, ten years ago. It is inconceivable to me that there will be a British 100 metre finalist, let alone a medallist, in three years time in London.
Shaping the destinies of sprinters in their teenage years to gain bums on seats is, to put it at its mildest, a dubious practice. Let us praise Lewis Francis, Aikines Aryeetey and Pickering for what they have achieved, not for what we would like them to.

More of the Same?

Two initiatives, one international and the other national, have been put forward presumably to try and reverse athletics’ fortunes both in terms of public enthusiasm for and participation in our sport, both of which are seriously on the wane across the globe.
The first comes from the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) and the other from United Kingdom Athletics (UKA). In 2010 the IAAF is totally revamping the top tiers of its World Athletics Tour with the introduction of a Diamond League; UKA are hoping to introduce inter-city matches of short duration that will put the sport back on the map. The key element in both cases is whether the aim is to rekindle public interest rather than athletics being its usual self-indulgent self.
One of the factors in the decline in popularity of the major Olympic sport has been the stark contrast between the glamorous top competitions and the remaining levels of the sport. In favoured countries there is just one major international event that attracts the public; the rest of the fare is usually very lengthy and turgid. In Britain we are very fortunate in having two meetings lined up for the Diamond League that will be televised by the BBC but below that the level of competition gets progressively worse; the public doesn’t just not turn up to meetings, it doesn’t even know about them. My impression is that it’s the same across the globe with the possible exceptions of the USA and Jamaica with their intensive scholastic and university competitions.
What the IAAF doesn’t seem to recognise in its enthusiasm for its new competition is that by having central contracts with top international athletes it is hoovering up more stars who will not appear in their own countries. That was partly acceptable when the major grand prix meetings appeared on terrestrial television as they did in the golden era of the sport but it is quite another matter when the vast majority of meetings only appear in the outer reaches of satellite, pay-to-view television. That is why the role of IMG in selling the global television rights is so vital to the success of the Diamond League.
Part of the problem in recent years has been the repetitive nature of many events, American sprinters beating American sprinters and African runners beating African runners, all usually wearing the same new Nike vest. It was forcibly raised by TV representatives at a workshop on the One-Day meetings in Monaco four years ago but the penny seems to be taking an inordinately long time to drop. Even the magic of Usain Bolt would begin to pale for TV audiences if all his races became foregone conclusions.
On the plus side it is good news that all events will be catered for across the whole series with field event athletes and throwers in particular receiving an equal share of the $420,000 prize money available at each meeting and being able to win, along with their track peers, the top prize of a 4 carat diamond (worth $80,000) for gaining most points across the twelve or fifteen meetings series.
We really need to know a lot more detail about the proposed British inter-city competition, with a pilot this year and a launch in 2010, before due comment can be made but really the same criteria for the success of the Diamond League applies. Will the competition be sponsored thus giving it financial clout and publicity? Will it attract our top stars? And if it does will it attract television? Without the oxygen of publicity it will just be another valiant effort almost literally played out behind closed doors, like the current inter-city indoor matches and regional championships and league athletics. In my stint as Media spokesman for the sport I continually heard people bemoaning the fact that the public did not support their endeavours. I had a stock question in reply: Who knows? Almost invariably it transpired that no one did.
Globally and domestically there is not enough athletics competition going on. In the northern hemisphere summer the general public is aware of athletics from about mid-June to mid-August, too short a time span to create enthusiasm or even passing interest. Until that situation is addressed we will not move forward in any significant manner.
After the Ball
The Diamond League is good news for Britain which will be staging two of the meetings. It has also surely helped to finally settle the post-2012 debate on the downsized Olympic stadium, which will now become the national athletics stadium with a 25,000 seat capacity. Without it our capital city would have been almost alone in Europe in not having an athletics stadium worthy of the name.
The crowds that sweep to the now obsolete Crystal Palace will ensure that big meetings in East London are well supported but UK Athletics and England Athletics must guarantee that top meetings regularly go there throughout the track season.
The sport has done little, with an ongoing silence, to counter the speculation about the stadium’s future. Precious little has been heard from either UKA or England about their competition plans for post-2012. Luckily English soccer’s aversion to having a track around a pitch has killed off most of the conjecture but definite plans should be outlined as soon as possible
The UK and England Championships should be permanent annual fixtures; there should be other international events (perhaps a revival of the hugely popular floodlit meetings) and certainly opportunity must be made for young athletes to have their moments on the Olympic track. If accommodation requirements can be met surely it would be an ideal permanent venue for the English Schools?
Huge crowds of 40 to 50 thousand used to pack the old White City stadium half a century or so ago when, of course, other attractions were in short supply. Those days are well gone. But the new stadium can be the catalyst for revival. It is interesting to note that all the major sports have their headquarters and their major stadia in the capital, at Wembley, Wimbledon, Lords and Twickenham and British athletics must seriously consider moving its headquarters to what will always be known as the Olympic stadium. It would be a sign, worryingly missing to date, of serious intent by the sport.

A few words to the Wise
How wise of the IAAF Council to step back from the brink, accept legal advice and not attempt to ban Dwain Chambers for bringing the sport into disrepute through certain passages in his drugs memoir,masquerading as an autobiography. To have done so would have opened up a Pandora’s Box of legalities and prolonged the media agony of a sport in the grip of its own zealotry.
The Council could be wiser still if it now decided put its collective emotions aside, put its house in order as far as drug taking and punishment is concerned and ensure that there is consistency across the sport by setting rules that everyone - athletes, federations and promoters - must adhere to. Allowing the application of so called individual consciences creates loopholes and makes for bad law.

Racing Demons

At the Seoul Olympics in 1988 the sprinter Ben Johnson, who had won gold in the 100 metres, tested positive for an anabolic steroid, was immediately stripped of his medal, his world record and unceremoniously bundled back to Canada midst a global media frenzy.
He became demonized. Humankind always seems to need an embodiment of what it loves or hates and as far as athletics and indeed sport was concerned Johnson perfectly fitted the bill for “cheating”. He was banned, vilified and hauled before the Dubin Enquiry in Canada and the nation expected public recantation and remorse. Other Canadian athletes were caught up in the Dubin net and confessed to drug taking. It was a dark time for Canadian athletics. But Johnson would not do what everyone wanted and creep away into the night. He attempted a comeback; it was unsuccessful. Sport was mightily relieved when he finally retired; it could pretend that the nightmare had never happened.
Fast forward two decades and we now have demonized Dwain, the new European indoor champion and record holder, the third fastest man over 60 metres in the history of the sport. The extraordinary thing about his case is that after testing positive Chambers was ‘sentenced’ to a 2 year ban for THG, served his time, tried out other sports and then decided to return to athletics for a second time in 2008, two and a quarter years after he was eligible to do so.
I say for a second time because what seems to have been forgotten midst the holier-than-thou chest beating and wailing is that he actually returned from his ban in 2006, ran second in the European Cup and, more significantly, competed in the Gateshead Grand Prix in June. So what had changed by February 2008 to make his second coming such a global cause celebre and to have him banned by European promoters and constantly vilified?
It was his association with the sensational revelations surrounding the Bay Area Laboratory Cooperative (BALCO), the jailing of Marion Jones for perjury, the insidious winks and hints from BALCO owner Victor Conte, the disclosures about world record holders Tim Montgomery and Justin Gatlin and baseball legend Barry Bonds. For the second time in two decades athletics had been dragged through the mud. In the eyes of many Chambers is a living personification of all that. And because he too will not creep away into the night the demonization continues apace, fuelled by avaricious tabloids.
This coming June the Gateshead Grand Prix will be held again but, as things stand, Chambers will not be there. He is the same athlete with the same sins that competed in 2006; it’s the same promoter and the same federation. The IAAF tells me: “There is no "ban" by Euro meetings - there is a recommendation NOT to invite doped athletes. They can’t ban anyone - only the IAAF can do that.” So why is UK Athletics welcoming back Dwain Chambers on the one hand (and revelling in his success) but banning him from its two lucrative televised meetings on the other? Who’s in charge, UKA or its promotions arm, Fasttrack?

I have asked UKA these questions but they have disdained to reply. We now have organizations that are no more than cabals under our sports quangos, cabals who believe that their actions are not the business of the sport as a whole.

The question as to who is the final arbiter as far as our grand prix meetings are concerned becomes even more pertinent with the news that Gerard Janetzky, the promoter of the opening Golden League meeting of 2009, the DKB-ISTAF meeting in Berlin, has decided that enough is enough and invited Chambers to compete at his meeting, on 14 June.

“I’m surprised Chambers is viewed as the root of all evil,” Janetzky said, putting it in a nutshell. “There have been plenty of athletes who were allowed to start after sitting out their ban, so why should Chamber’s punishment be worse?”

But Chambers seems determined on keeping himself a pariah. Firstly his book about his time as a doped up sprinter hit the stands around the same time as he was winning a gold medal for Britain. Secondly it has transpired that he is keeping in contact with Conte and taking his advice. Who is advising this man? Is anyone advising him? My argument is not about Chambers but about justice and underhand attempts to circumvent the law.

Chambers is a lost soul in the wilderness and if British Athletics is to continue to revel in his success it must do more to help him. It could begin by scourging the hypocrisy in its midst, and let him compete in its televised meetings.

The IAAF bemoans the fact that it did not have a rule, when Chambers returned to the sport, that specified that all his ill gotten gains from athletics (put at $200,000) when he was on drugs, must be paid back before he could compete again. With the Euromeets ban this would effectively mean a lifetime ban. The world governing body needs to make its mind up. If it wants a lifetime ban for drug taking then it should institute one and test it in the courts.

John Rodda
I was deeply saddened to read of the death of John Rodda, who wrote on athletics for the Guardian between 1960 and 1992. John was the doyen and most respected of athletics writers. His contacts with the sport were at the very highest level as those of us, on the other side of the fence as it were, all too frequently discovered.
I had known John for many years but we came into closer and more frequent contact during my decade- long tenure as Media spokesman for the sport. Those were the halcyon days of the 80s and early 90s when British athletes ruled Europe and in some events the world. John was an exceptional writer; his work was incisive and imbued with tremendous knowledge. His finest journalistic moment came in 1968 and had nothing to do with athletics. He was in Mexico City for the Olympics when hundreds of student demonstrators were gunned down just before the Games opened. John was the only Guardian correspondent in Mexico and his dispatches from the capital showed that he would have been a top journalist no matter what the field.
He wrote a history of the Olympics with the IOC President, Lord Killanin; he served on the IAAF Press Commission for many years; he covered ten Olympic Games for his paper; he helped Seb Coe make a report to the IOC; he assisted Andy Norman make a presentation to an IAAF Congress that changed the face of international athletics; he knew Olympic politics inside out. John was not only a reporter on athletics but a lover of the sport as well.
His other sporting love was boxing, which he also covered for his paper, writing on some of the great title fights of the second half of the 20th century.
My best memory of John is of the European Championships in Helsinki in 1994. I was walking through the grounds of the Athlete’s Village when my mobile rang. A familiar voice greeted me and then said: “Can you confirm that a British athlete has tested positive?” I couldn’t so I said that I would get back to him. I turned heel and went back to the restaurant where team manager Verona Elder and team doctor Malcolm Brown were in very close conference. They stopped talking. “I know,” I said, “what you’ve been talking about.” It was the celebrated case of Solomon Wariso and a supplement called Up Your Gas and John had obtained yet another scoop.
John’s retirement lunch was held at the celebrated Ivy Restaurant in London. One of the gifts presented to him was a photograph of him sitting next to the then IAAF President, Primo Nebiolo, who was obviously desperately trying to talk himself out of a probing question. The expression, peering over his reading glasses, on John’s face was wonderfully sceptical. He loved athletes but was rightly suspicious of most administrators.
When you think of John it is of a remembrance of times past, of an era when athletics was always in the news. Those days are gone but we will long remember him as, in the very best sense, a fine gentleman.