What, in the eyes of the rest of athletics, is the worthiness of a coach? Not much it seems if a couple of recent events are anything to go by. Olympic 400m champion Jeremy Wariner and coach Clyde Hart (to speak by the way at the forthcoming European Coaches Conference in Glasgow) split at the beginning of the year in dispute over Warriner’s proposed 50% cut in Hart’s pay. The athlete’s agent’s fees were to remain untouched. And the IAAF has given scant and so far negative attention to a proposal to set up a Year of the Coach.
Half a century ago Harold Abrahams, a doyen of the IAAF and British athletics establishment, caustically referred to coaching as “bloody kidology.” He had no respect for the English professional team of national coaches for the simple reason that they were paid. It seemed to have slipped his memory that his 1924 Olympic sprint gold was the result of the work of a great professional coach, Sam Mussabini. The prodigious culture clash between Abrahams and Geoffrey Dyson, the first Director of Coaching, titans of amateurism and professionalism respectively in athletics, inevitably led to the latter leaving this country, a disillusioned and embittered man. He went to Canada and successfully replicated the coaching scheme that he had set up in Britain. There he received the respect, for his dynamism and professionalism, which was his due.
In America coaching has always been professional; it’s part of their sporting culture. In Britain the exact opposite pertains for the same reason. To accept money for coaching in athletics is still considered, somehow, infra dig, beyond the pale. Paula Radcliffe’s former coaches, Alex and Rosemary Stanton were genuinely horrified at the idea of receiving remuneration for their services and there are many of the same opinion. At club level paid coaching is unknown.
If athletics’ coaching is to move forward it needs to shed itself of this albatross around its neck. As we said in the previous Blog the lead in the sanctioning of payments to coaches and their subsequent professionalisation must come from governing bodies.
When the Minister for Sport says that behind every great athlete is a great coach he flies in the face of sport council strategy that tends to negate the influence of the individual coach in favour of squad systems with strict central control.
One of the great success stories of the old coaching scheme were the instructional booklets produced by the national coaches. These were excellent and had a worldwide reputation; they were a must for every coach’s bookshelf. No more. The coming of UK Athletics saw them banished to the outer reaches of Amazon’s used book lists, never to be replaced.
A discus thrower arrives at your club but there is no discus coach and you scroll the web looking for help. Nothing official is available. You wonder if CDs or DVDs are obtainable, either nationally or internationally and you wonder in vain. Where can we learn about the latest research in the events that we coach? Apart from the IAAF’s excellent but highly advanced New Studies in Athletics there is, in Britain anyway, nothing.
Unless this highly neglected area is addressed coaching will continue to stagnate or regress.
The imbalance between track and field successes in British athletics is reflected in coaching. There is a real lack of quality coaches in most of our jumping and throwing events and the sad news is that the governing body has never been pro-active in this area. We seem to believe that poor results are the consequence of acts of God. I’m sure this applies globally. Does the genetic make up of East Africans really preclude them from events other than distance running?
In Britain the recent history of women’s high jumping is a classic example of an event in apparent permanent decline as far as international participation is concerned.
Britain has been represented only once at global championship level this century (Susan Moncrieff in 2001). No women high jumper will compete in Beijing
Since 1990 no British woman has jumped higher than 1.91m in a major competition (Debbi Marti in 1992). .
Britain last had a competitor in the top eight in any global or European competition twenty years ago (Diana Davies in the Seoul Olympics).
This century in the nine junior (global and European) championships held, Britain has had only two finalists, Aileen Wilson (2001) and Vikki Hubbard (2007). Wilson cleared 1.87m but her performances have steadily declined since.
What has caused such deterioration in an event? Is it that raw material is not available? Possibly, there were only two competitors in the Under 19 high jump at the recent English Schools. Is it through a lack of quality coaches? Is it that our coaches lack the technical knowledge to take jumpers above a certain level? Or is it because our women high jumpers are not “podium material” so the event is neglected in the scramble of the gold rush? These are questions that UK Athletics should have been asking itself years ago.
And women’s high jumping is just an example; in the men’s shot, discus and hammer Britain has had just one finalist at global level in the last twenty years (Bob Weir; World discus; 1997). In the women’s throws you have to return to the mid-eighties to find finalists. The above questions surely also appertain here.
A review of coaching is apparently underway. How extensive the consultation process will be remains to be seen. It was a lack of consultation with experienced coaches ten years ago that led UK Athletics down its disastrous coaching pathway.
As long as those conducting the review and those who will sit in judgement on it know what they don’t know there may still be hope.
Thursday, 24 July 2008
Thursday, 3 July 2008
The Future of Coaching (1)
The announcement that a UK centre of excellence for coaching is to be set up at Leeds Met Carnegie is welcome. As usual with such launch announcements we are short of receiving the detail: we know the where, now we need to know the how, when and who. It is generally recognised that the quality of coaching in Britain falls far short of world standards across a whole range of sports (although many British coaches stubbornly refuse to recognise the fact). It is to be hoped that staff recruitment at the proposed centre will take in the whole world.
One statement by the Minster for Sport, Gerry Sutcliffe, intrigued me. “Behind every great athlete is a great coach,” he said “and we want to ensure that we have the best sports coaches and coaching system in the world both at the elite end and grass roots.” Does he know what’s been going on in British athletics, under Sport England’s last regimen, for a decade or so, where many believe that the emphasis has been on systems, squads and academies and not on supporting the individual coach?
For fifty years Britain’s athletics’ coaching scheme was the envy of the world, its pattern being copied by many countries. It was a simple one: regional professional coaches, under a Director of Coaching, entrusted with a bread and butter task of ‘teaching the teachers and coaching the coaches’. Men such as Geoff Dyson, Jim Alford, John Le Masurier, Denis Watts, Ron Pickering, Wilf Paish, Tom McNab, Frank Dick and John Anderson et al, became highly respected figures, both nationally and internationally. And, although it was not part of their remit they produced some of our really outstanding athletes, whose performances have stood the rigorous test of time.
Sutcliffe highlighted the vital importance of coach-athlete partnerships and again we can reel off a roll of honour that is well known to those with a sense of history of British athletics: Coe and Coe; Ovett and Wilson; Christie and Roddan; Jackson and Arnold; Sanderson and Paish; Backley and Trower; Davies and Pickering; Rand and Le Masurier, Moorcroft and Anderson – the list goes back into the mists of time and on and on. Across the world the kernel of individual athletics success has always been the individual coach.
The advent of UK Athletics in 1998 changed all that and looking back over the ten years it is difficult to know why such a dramatic and disastrous change was made. Yes, the scheme needed tweaking but it didn’t need destroying. Separating Performance and Coaching was, as the past decade has shown, a cataclysmic act. Coach Development became Coach Education and the results of the latter can be sadly seen through the technical incompetence of young athletes at any meeting, right up to regional standard.
Meanwhile many millions have been spent on our elite athletes in an almost avaricious quest for gold. This has involved the setting up of squad systems and control from the centre which has sometimes meant the moving of an athlete away from a successful partnership. It hasn’t worked. In the ten years prior to 1997 GB won 42 medals at global championships; in the ten years since it has won 25. The final blow to coaching and a reflection of its worth by David Moorcroft and his cohorts, before they fled the ruin they had created, was the failure to appoint a coach as director of performance.
It will be interesting to see how many other countries have abandoned having an experienced coach at the helm of their Olympic team in Beijing. I think very few. Being selected as head coach and indeed to be part of an Olympic coaching team gave international recognition to the very best. No longer. It doesn’t matter if you’re a world class exponent of your particular coaching art; if you’re not employed by UK Athletics you’ll not get any such recognition.
Disillusioned coaches have either retired or retreated into their coaching cocoons. One of the key foundations of athletics success has been allowed to wither on the vine. And now we’re back to the hoary old question I first asked five or six years ago: who’s in charge of coaching?
At the moment, after UKA’s night of the long knives, no one is but a review is apparently taking place. Whether a widespread survey of coaches’ views is contemplated is not known (as far as I know rank and file coaches were not consulted in 1998) but if they are not it seems to me that we’re in danger of repeating recent history.
First of all questions need to be asked. The government promised a few years ago to pump millions into the professionalisation of coaching. As far as athletics is concerned not much seems to have arrived in its coffers since that announcement was made. Or if some money has arrived what has it been spent on? Why has no pathway for a career in athletics coaching ever been developed? And if it has why does no one know about it?
What must happen in Britain is urgent planning for the professionalisation of athletics coaching. For too long we have relied on outmoded, time-consuming voluntary effort in this most important field. Parents of talented young athletes are amazed that they have to pay for ballet, violin, swimming, tennis et al tuition for their other offspring but that athletics coaching is free at the point of delivery. Not one of the many federations that have governed British athletics over the decades has ever suggested that paying for coaching is acceptable, let alone desirable. What is urgently required is a working group of coaches (probably Level 3 and above) to come up with a universally acceptable scheme for coaches to be recompensed for their work which, of course, must be regularly evaluated.
It has been suggested that any development of coaching must come through the clubs. This is arrant nonsense. Our clubs have, for too long, been the holy, untouchable cows of our sport. As a result of strident, sometimes abusive, voices raised in protest at any sign of evolutionary grassroots change none has taken place. There are a number of reasons why developing coaching, even through the 15% or so of our clubs that are viable entities, would not work.
Firstly, the priority of club administrators is the club; the priority of most coaches is the athletes. This leads to an acrimonious clash of interest when these priorities differ. Secondly, the development of coaching through clubs assumes that a full complement of events is being covered when we all know that in the majority of cases field events in particular, are neglected. A survey of clubs undertaken in the 90s indicated that in hurdles, jumps and throws almost 80% of clubs believed that they did not have enough coaches. The decline of the past decade can lead us to reasonably suppose that the situation has worsened rather than improved. There maybe a few concerning clubs at this state of affairs but I know of no initiative by any club to take positive steps to correct it, nor indeed of promoting coaching in any way.
Coaches should be linked to tracks and training venues rather than to clubs. In order to maximise our fast diminishing coaching resources each track should have a dedicated coaching team, ideally funded by the local authority. Where there are deficiencies coaches should be encouraged (probably through financial incentives) to expand their repertoire of events. The drive for new coaches should be via parents, employing good marketing techniques.
Recovery would certainly be aided by the appointment of nine regional coaches in England, similar in nature to the former National Coaches, men and women who would become the focal point of coaching in the area, who would know the region and know where particular problems lay.
What we urgently need is an audit of practising coaches. Then personal contact beginning with Levels 4 and 3, can be achieved via e-mail.. After ten years of neglect it is important that the governing body begins moves to make coaches feel an integral and important part of the sport. Dyson did this many years ago with a Coaching Newsletter sent free to every qualified coach. Today’s modern and swift means of communication would enable a two way dialogue between individual coaches and whoever will be running coaching, especially in a region.
This is not rocket science and there are obviously many other ideas out there to help coaching back to where it was, at the forefront of British athletics.
The former US Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld once famously said:
“…as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns - the ones we don't know we don't know.”
The trick is in ensuring that the way forward in coaching is not directed by those who don’t know what they don’t know. Unfortunately, with the sport’s propensity for operating behind closed doors, that probably includes most of us.
(We’ll continue to look at coaching, including international development, is next week’s Blog)
Who is the fastest man?
Tyson Gay’s winning time for 100 metres of 9.68 (aided by a 4.1 mps wind) at the US Olympic Trials in Eugene has prompted reader Brian Burdick from Pennsylvania to re-open that hoary old debate around since the professional sprinters of the 19th century strutted their stuff: who is the world’s fastest man? “Officials are now claiming that Tyson Gay has now been labelled as the fastest human ever,” Brian writes, “regardless of wind-aided-ness. Who would be faster, Tyson Gay with 100 meters or Bob Hayes and his 110 yards? And furthermore with Bob Hayes would the acceleration / transition zone be figured in or not?”
What Brian is referring to is Hayes’ run on the last leg of the sprint relay at the Tokyo Olympics in 1964 that has long been considered the fastest timed run by a human being. Taking the baton in fifth place Hayes was 3 metres behind the French anchor man, Jocelyn Delecour. He finished 3 metres ahead. He was unofficially clocked at times varying between 8.5 and 8.9 seconds as he stormed past four teams to win gold for the USA. Neil Allen, the Times athletics correspondent at the time wrote that he’d never seen any sprinting that impressed him as much as Hayes’ final leg. “The man just exploded,” Neil wrote, “he was absolutely fantastic, just like a clenched fist travelling along the track…it was the greatest explosion of speed I had ever seen.”
I think we can assume that the timings would have been carried out by athletics statisticians and that they would have carefully timed Hayes from the 100 metre mark in the final take-over zone. Whether the wind-speed on the final leg of the relay in Tokyo matched that of the 100 metre final in Eugene we shall never know but it is anyway an incidental point.
It should also be remembered that Hayes’ run took place on cinders whereas Gay ran on an advantageous synthetic surface in Oregon (synthetic tracks arrived circa 1966). However Hayes would have arrived at the commencement of his 100 metres at speed, whereas Gay would have started normally.
If my maths is correct (doubtful) Gay ran an average of 37.18 kph (23.10 mph) whilst Hayes ran, taking the slowest of the times taken 40.44 kph (25.12mph). Contest over then?
One statement by the Minster for Sport, Gerry Sutcliffe, intrigued me. “Behind every great athlete is a great coach,” he said “and we want to ensure that we have the best sports coaches and coaching system in the world both at the elite end and grass roots.” Does he know what’s been going on in British athletics, under Sport England’s last regimen, for a decade or so, where many believe that the emphasis has been on systems, squads and academies and not on supporting the individual coach?
For fifty years Britain’s athletics’ coaching scheme was the envy of the world, its pattern being copied by many countries. It was a simple one: regional professional coaches, under a Director of Coaching, entrusted with a bread and butter task of ‘teaching the teachers and coaching the coaches’. Men such as Geoff Dyson, Jim Alford, John Le Masurier, Denis Watts, Ron Pickering, Wilf Paish, Tom McNab, Frank Dick and John Anderson et al, became highly respected figures, both nationally and internationally. And, although it was not part of their remit they produced some of our really outstanding athletes, whose performances have stood the rigorous test of time.
Sutcliffe highlighted the vital importance of coach-athlete partnerships and again we can reel off a roll of honour that is well known to those with a sense of history of British athletics: Coe and Coe; Ovett and Wilson; Christie and Roddan; Jackson and Arnold; Sanderson and Paish; Backley and Trower; Davies and Pickering; Rand and Le Masurier, Moorcroft and Anderson – the list goes back into the mists of time and on and on. Across the world the kernel of individual athletics success has always been the individual coach.
The advent of UK Athletics in 1998 changed all that and looking back over the ten years it is difficult to know why such a dramatic and disastrous change was made. Yes, the scheme needed tweaking but it didn’t need destroying. Separating Performance and Coaching was, as the past decade has shown, a cataclysmic act. Coach Development became Coach Education and the results of the latter can be sadly seen through the technical incompetence of young athletes at any meeting, right up to regional standard.
Meanwhile many millions have been spent on our elite athletes in an almost avaricious quest for gold. This has involved the setting up of squad systems and control from the centre which has sometimes meant the moving of an athlete away from a successful partnership. It hasn’t worked. In the ten years prior to 1997 GB won 42 medals at global championships; in the ten years since it has won 25. The final blow to coaching and a reflection of its worth by David Moorcroft and his cohorts, before they fled the ruin they had created, was the failure to appoint a coach as director of performance.
It will be interesting to see how many other countries have abandoned having an experienced coach at the helm of their Olympic team in Beijing. I think very few. Being selected as head coach and indeed to be part of an Olympic coaching team gave international recognition to the very best. No longer. It doesn’t matter if you’re a world class exponent of your particular coaching art; if you’re not employed by UK Athletics you’ll not get any such recognition.
Disillusioned coaches have either retired or retreated into their coaching cocoons. One of the key foundations of athletics success has been allowed to wither on the vine. And now we’re back to the hoary old question I first asked five or six years ago: who’s in charge of coaching?
At the moment, after UKA’s night of the long knives, no one is but a review is apparently taking place. Whether a widespread survey of coaches’ views is contemplated is not known (as far as I know rank and file coaches were not consulted in 1998) but if they are not it seems to me that we’re in danger of repeating recent history.
First of all questions need to be asked. The government promised a few years ago to pump millions into the professionalisation of coaching. As far as athletics is concerned not much seems to have arrived in its coffers since that announcement was made. Or if some money has arrived what has it been spent on? Why has no pathway for a career in athletics coaching ever been developed? And if it has why does no one know about it?
What must happen in Britain is urgent planning for the professionalisation of athletics coaching. For too long we have relied on outmoded, time-consuming voluntary effort in this most important field. Parents of talented young athletes are amazed that they have to pay for ballet, violin, swimming, tennis et al tuition for their other offspring but that athletics coaching is free at the point of delivery. Not one of the many federations that have governed British athletics over the decades has ever suggested that paying for coaching is acceptable, let alone desirable. What is urgently required is a working group of coaches (probably Level 3 and above) to come up with a universally acceptable scheme for coaches to be recompensed for their work which, of course, must be regularly evaluated.
It has been suggested that any development of coaching must come through the clubs. This is arrant nonsense. Our clubs have, for too long, been the holy, untouchable cows of our sport. As a result of strident, sometimes abusive, voices raised in protest at any sign of evolutionary grassroots change none has taken place. There are a number of reasons why developing coaching, even through the 15% or so of our clubs that are viable entities, would not work.
Firstly, the priority of club administrators is the club; the priority of most coaches is the athletes. This leads to an acrimonious clash of interest when these priorities differ. Secondly, the development of coaching through clubs assumes that a full complement of events is being covered when we all know that in the majority of cases field events in particular, are neglected. A survey of clubs undertaken in the 90s indicated that in hurdles, jumps and throws almost 80% of clubs believed that they did not have enough coaches. The decline of the past decade can lead us to reasonably suppose that the situation has worsened rather than improved. There maybe a few concerning clubs at this state of affairs but I know of no initiative by any club to take positive steps to correct it, nor indeed of promoting coaching in any way.
Coaches should be linked to tracks and training venues rather than to clubs. In order to maximise our fast diminishing coaching resources each track should have a dedicated coaching team, ideally funded by the local authority. Where there are deficiencies coaches should be encouraged (probably through financial incentives) to expand their repertoire of events. The drive for new coaches should be via parents, employing good marketing techniques.
Recovery would certainly be aided by the appointment of nine regional coaches in England, similar in nature to the former National Coaches, men and women who would become the focal point of coaching in the area, who would know the region and know where particular problems lay.
What we urgently need is an audit of practising coaches. Then personal contact beginning with Levels 4 and 3, can be achieved via e-mail.. After ten years of neglect it is important that the governing body begins moves to make coaches feel an integral and important part of the sport. Dyson did this many years ago with a Coaching Newsletter sent free to every qualified coach. Today’s modern and swift means of communication would enable a two way dialogue between individual coaches and whoever will be running coaching, especially in a region.
This is not rocket science and there are obviously many other ideas out there to help coaching back to where it was, at the forefront of British athletics.
The former US Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld once famously said:
“…as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns - the ones we don't know we don't know.”
The trick is in ensuring that the way forward in coaching is not directed by those who don’t know what they don’t know. Unfortunately, with the sport’s propensity for operating behind closed doors, that probably includes most of us.
(We’ll continue to look at coaching, including international development, is next week’s Blog)
Who is the fastest man?
Tyson Gay’s winning time for 100 metres of 9.68 (aided by a 4.1 mps wind) at the US Olympic Trials in Eugene has prompted reader Brian Burdick from Pennsylvania to re-open that hoary old debate around since the professional sprinters of the 19th century strutted their stuff: who is the world’s fastest man? “Officials are now claiming that Tyson Gay has now been labelled as the fastest human ever,” Brian writes, “regardless of wind-aided-ness. Who would be faster, Tyson Gay with 100 meters or Bob Hayes and his 110 yards? And furthermore with Bob Hayes would the acceleration / transition zone be figured in or not?”
What Brian is referring to is Hayes’ run on the last leg of the sprint relay at the Tokyo Olympics in 1964 that has long been considered the fastest timed run by a human being. Taking the baton in fifth place Hayes was 3 metres behind the French anchor man, Jocelyn Delecour. He finished 3 metres ahead. He was unofficially clocked at times varying between 8.5 and 8.9 seconds as he stormed past four teams to win gold for the USA. Neil Allen, the Times athletics correspondent at the time wrote that he’d never seen any sprinting that impressed him as much as Hayes’ final leg. “The man just exploded,” Neil wrote, “he was absolutely fantastic, just like a clenched fist travelling along the track…it was the greatest explosion of speed I had ever seen.”
I think we can assume that the timings would have been carried out by athletics statisticians and that they would have carefully timed Hayes from the 100 metre mark in the final take-over zone. Whether the wind-speed on the final leg of the relay in Tokyo matched that of the 100 metre final in Eugene we shall never know but it is anyway an incidental point.
It should also be remembered that Hayes’ run took place on cinders whereas Gay ran on an advantageous synthetic surface in Oregon (synthetic tracks arrived circa 1966). However Hayes would have arrived at the commencement of his 100 metres at speed, whereas Gay would have started normally.
If my maths is correct (doubtful) Gay ran an average of 37.18 kph (23.10 mph) whilst Hayes ran, taking the slowest of the times taken 40.44 kph (25.12mph). Contest over then?
Monday, 2 June 2008
Cool It
It is unfortunate for the new 100 metre record holder Usain Bolt and track and field generally that the latter has contrived to get itself into such a mess over doping that the general public, having been regularly and monotonously assured that there is a huge menace out there, will not believe that his performance was “clean.”
The conviction of coach Trevor Graham in a San Francisco courtroom last week and a possible re-trial on other charges has added to the list of those, including Marion Jones and Tim Montgomery, who have been found guilty not by the multi-million dollar testing systems but by lying to US federal agents investigating the BALCO drugs affair.
It is the height of irony that it was Graham who allegedly sent a syringe containing a hitherto unknown designer drug Tetrahydrogestrinone (THG) to US testing agencies thus exposing the sordid activities of Victor Conte and his unseemly crew at the Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative. Among those involved was the former Ukrainian sprint coach, 76 year old Remi Korchemny to whom British sprinter Dwain Chambers was successfully urged to submit his undoubted talent.
At a conservative estimate one hundred million dollars is spent annually on drug testing in sport, including 20 million on the World Anti Doping Agency (WADA) based in prestigious offices in Montreal. WADA is mainly funded by governments world wide and when cases like BALCO arise surely questions should be asked about the efficacy of the much vaunted testing programmes.
One of the major problems facing sport is that those involved with its governance are, when it comes to dealing with performing enhancing drugs, like the cowhand in a western saloon finding himself cheated at cards. The reaction, in both cases, is dramatically over emotional.
A classic case of this over-emotional response came in Britain earlier this year when Dwain Chambers decided to return to athletics after trying out at other sports. The relatively new CEO of the British federation, Neils de Vos, tried, despite the fact that Chambers had duly served a two year ban, to prevent him from competing in the UK World Indoor Trials thus contravening the existing IAAF and WADA laws. Promoters around Europe joined the bandwagon, jointly affirming that they would not invite “drug cheats” to their meetings. It is as if they had never heard of restraint of trade laws. Mr de Vos, who made many pronouncements, was made to look very silly indeed; Chambers ran and won, had to be selected for the World Indoor Championships and in Valencia duly won a silver medal.
It is emotional frustration surely that leads individuals and federations to flaunt their own rules when they feel they are inadequate. The British Olympic Association (BOA) has a sanctimonious by-law that bans anyone who has committed a drug offence from ever being selected for an Olympic Games. It not only flouts universal WADA laws but natural justice as well for it means sportsmen and women being tried twice for the same offence. It is the only such by-law in the world of sport (even condemned by the former head of WADA, Dick Pound, who found it unjust).
Then there are the cases when the testing systems have failed, most notably those of Diane Modahl, a case that not only made her bankrupt but was a major contributory factor in the British federation suffering a similar fate and that of Bernard Legat one of the world’s leading middle-distance runners plus many others in a number of sports.
There are also the Greek sprinters, Konstadinos Kederis and Ekaterini Thánou who became almost legendary in athletics through their evasions of random tests. Justice was finally achieved not by testing procedures finding them drug positive but by a test evasion too far in Athens on the eve of the 2004 Olympic Games.
Sport has also felt justified in bending its testing procedures in order to make sure that those it feels must be guilty do not escape sanction. In 1998 British shot putter Paul Edwards was found guilty of failing a test for a second time and was duly banned for life. His out of competition test was deeply flawed by shoddy procedures from the moment it was taken. Ten years on the case rumbles on with Edwards and his team constantly frustrated by prevarication and obfuscation by a government quango, UK Sport and its laboratory, including the flouting of Data Protection Laws. Again it is a feeling prevalent in sport that as far as drug testing goes the end justifies the means.
Sport has long felt that it so special, so precious that it should be considered above the law. It uses emotional language like “the war on drugs” in order to persuade politicians (to cough up more funding) and the public at large that it is involved in a massive fight against widespread drug abuse, when in fact its test figures show otherwise. Certainly in terms of test results the setting up of WADA in 1999 has not been justified; the results have stubbornly remained at around one percent positive.
Independent minds and cool judgments are needed in order to further promulgate dealing with doping in sport. Hair shirt type pronouncements must be abandoned; lessons must be learnt from the wider, social crusade against drug misuse; world wide rules and sanctions must be agreed and obeyed by all; there must be greater prominence given to campaigning and education; finally more emphasis must be placed on unearthing those who are encouraging drug taking and on those who supply them.
In Praise of…The BMC
A quarter of a century ago, when British miling was at a low ebb British coach Frank Horwill, a flamboyant and controversial character if ever there was one in athletics, suggested the formation of a specialist club to revive British middle-distance running. Today that organisation, the British Milers Club, through the work of many dedicated, voluntary running cognoscenti, stages literally hundreds of races, usually with a pacemaker, throughout the length and breadth of the land. Athletes have literally travelled hundreds of miles in order benefit from the races on its programme.
Though the club also organises coaching and training weekends it is in the field of competition where its greatest impact has lain. Those great middle-distance runners, Sebastian Coe and Steve Ovett, benefited from the BMC and their coaches, Peter Coe and the late Harry Wilson, were activists within the organisation.
There are, inevitably, criticisms of the club, some believing that its paced races lead to a general lack of tactical nous when it comes to major competition. But it is not the fault of the BMC if some coaches and athletes over indulge themselves with its races. A judicious mix of competition is what is required.
The amazing thing is that it is only in recent years that the UK federation has properly recognised the work of the BMC; even more amazing is the fact that other events or event groups have not followed suit.
The British Milers Club still remains a beacon of hope for British middle-distance running and long may it continue its great work.
The conviction of coach Trevor Graham in a San Francisco courtroom last week and a possible re-trial on other charges has added to the list of those, including Marion Jones and Tim Montgomery, who have been found guilty not by the multi-million dollar testing systems but by lying to US federal agents investigating the BALCO drugs affair.
It is the height of irony that it was Graham who allegedly sent a syringe containing a hitherto unknown designer drug Tetrahydrogestrinone (THG) to US testing agencies thus exposing the sordid activities of Victor Conte and his unseemly crew at the Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative. Among those involved was the former Ukrainian sprint coach, 76 year old Remi Korchemny to whom British sprinter Dwain Chambers was successfully urged to submit his undoubted talent.
At a conservative estimate one hundred million dollars is spent annually on drug testing in sport, including 20 million on the World Anti Doping Agency (WADA) based in prestigious offices in Montreal. WADA is mainly funded by governments world wide and when cases like BALCO arise surely questions should be asked about the efficacy of the much vaunted testing programmes.
One of the major problems facing sport is that those involved with its governance are, when it comes to dealing with performing enhancing drugs, like the cowhand in a western saloon finding himself cheated at cards. The reaction, in both cases, is dramatically over emotional.
A classic case of this over-emotional response came in Britain earlier this year when Dwain Chambers decided to return to athletics after trying out at other sports. The relatively new CEO of the British federation, Neils de Vos, tried, despite the fact that Chambers had duly served a two year ban, to prevent him from competing in the UK World Indoor Trials thus contravening the existing IAAF and WADA laws. Promoters around Europe joined the bandwagon, jointly affirming that they would not invite “drug cheats” to their meetings. It is as if they had never heard of restraint of trade laws. Mr de Vos, who made many pronouncements, was made to look very silly indeed; Chambers ran and won, had to be selected for the World Indoor Championships and in Valencia duly won a silver medal.
It is emotional frustration surely that leads individuals and federations to flaunt their own rules when they feel they are inadequate. The British Olympic Association (BOA) has a sanctimonious by-law that bans anyone who has committed a drug offence from ever being selected for an Olympic Games. It not only flouts universal WADA laws but natural justice as well for it means sportsmen and women being tried twice for the same offence. It is the only such by-law in the world of sport (even condemned by the former head of WADA, Dick Pound, who found it unjust).
Then there are the cases when the testing systems have failed, most notably those of Diane Modahl, a case that not only made her bankrupt but was a major contributory factor in the British federation suffering a similar fate and that of Bernard Legat one of the world’s leading middle-distance runners plus many others in a number of sports.
There are also the Greek sprinters, Konstadinos Kederis and Ekaterini Thánou who became almost legendary in athletics through their evasions of random tests. Justice was finally achieved not by testing procedures finding them drug positive but by a test evasion too far in Athens on the eve of the 2004 Olympic Games.
Sport has also felt justified in bending its testing procedures in order to make sure that those it feels must be guilty do not escape sanction. In 1998 British shot putter Paul Edwards was found guilty of failing a test for a second time and was duly banned for life. His out of competition test was deeply flawed by shoddy procedures from the moment it was taken. Ten years on the case rumbles on with Edwards and his team constantly frustrated by prevarication and obfuscation by a government quango, UK Sport and its laboratory, including the flouting of Data Protection Laws. Again it is a feeling prevalent in sport that as far as drug testing goes the end justifies the means.
Sport has long felt that it so special, so precious that it should be considered above the law. It uses emotional language like “the war on drugs” in order to persuade politicians (to cough up more funding) and the public at large that it is involved in a massive fight against widespread drug abuse, when in fact its test figures show otherwise. Certainly in terms of test results the setting up of WADA in 1999 has not been justified; the results have stubbornly remained at around one percent positive.
Independent minds and cool judgments are needed in order to further promulgate dealing with doping in sport. Hair shirt type pronouncements must be abandoned; lessons must be learnt from the wider, social crusade against drug misuse; world wide rules and sanctions must be agreed and obeyed by all; there must be greater prominence given to campaigning and education; finally more emphasis must be placed on unearthing those who are encouraging drug taking and on those who supply them.
In Praise of…The BMC
A quarter of a century ago, when British miling was at a low ebb British coach Frank Horwill, a flamboyant and controversial character if ever there was one in athletics, suggested the formation of a specialist club to revive British middle-distance running. Today that organisation, the British Milers Club, through the work of many dedicated, voluntary running cognoscenti, stages literally hundreds of races, usually with a pacemaker, throughout the length and breadth of the land. Athletes have literally travelled hundreds of miles in order benefit from the races on its programme.
Though the club also organises coaching and training weekends it is in the field of competition where its greatest impact has lain. Those great middle-distance runners, Sebastian Coe and Steve Ovett, benefited from the BMC and their coaches, Peter Coe and the late Harry Wilson, were activists within the organisation.
There are, inevitably, criticisms of the club, some believing that its paced races lead to a general lack of tactical nous when it comes to major competition. But it is not the fault of the BMC if some coaches and athletes over indulge themselves with its races. A judicious mix of competition is what is required.
The amazing thing is that it is only in recent years that the UK federation has properly recognised the work of the BMC; even more amazing is the fact that other events or event groups have not followed suit.
The British Milers Club still remains a beacon of hope for British middle-distance running and long may it continue its great work.
Wednesday, 7 May 2008
Just William
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.
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.
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.
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