Day Twenty - on sport

Day Twenty -

In an earlier post I mentioned that I do not watch much sport anymore and said I would return to that topic at some point.  Today’s revelation that Maria Sharapova has been on the 'juice' seems like a good incentive to turn my writing to that topic.

Background

My self-image used to be that of a sportsman and more particularly a sprinter.  From about age 6 or 7 years old I was faster than the average kid and won school sports day sprint races.  Into my teens I competed at 100m until I had reached the limits of my ability using the fast twitch muscles I was born with.  I then turned to the 200m and 400m, where training for speed endurance and the pain of lactic acid build up in the home straight made the events less attractive to the untrained folk.

As I got older, I started to run longer and longer events.  From sprinting I went to the 800m.  Then I moved over to road running and 10km.  That led to 10 milers and half marathons and eventually marathons and then eventually completing a couple of Ironman triathlons, including the ‘Everest’ of triathlons – the Hawaii World Championships, in 1999.

The reason for this lengthy autobiography is not to boast, but to explain that I should love sport and I used to.  Not only competing but watching as well.  I would watch rugby, football, swimming, tennis and cycling as well as my number one love, athletics or track and field as our American friends would say.

When I was living in the UK I would get the ferry over to France to catch some of Le Tour, such was my love.  I would go to soccer and rugby and Crystal Palace, the UK home of athletics before 2012 was my cathedral.  OK – so you get the picture.

No More

In my opinion there is no longer any point to watching most professional sport. I find it hard to be entertained when I know the results are subject to change. Thus results do not count and so the only reason to watch is to admire the (enhanced) athleticism.  

Cheating is not new and it has been growing for years and years.  As sport became commercialized and became a firm part of the entertainment industry, so the reasons to cheat increased.  In some sports that was easy as the administrators were either from a bygone era who really did not (want to?) understand, or they understood what this was about very well and were key players in the corrupt game sport had become.

When I was sprinting in the late 1970s and early 1980s there most certainly were those doping.  I knew two people ‘on the juice’ for sure and they claimed to know other and bigger names.  I cannot name them here for legal reasons, but they are some of the names in UK sprinting at the time who continue to deny to this day.

 

The problem in my opinion is the false "ideals" behind sport, the almost deliberate refusal to acknowledge that it is just entertainment and business and the idea that it is something more noble and righteous.  I am not sure in fact that it has ever been that, for when one actually starts to even look at sport in ancient Greece, there are many examples of cheating and fixing.

There are those in the Olympic movement and in football and tennis who like to look down on the popularity of professional wrestling and the likes of the NFL.  Yet to me that is just to deny that ultimately they are in the same business.  They want the sponsorship deals, they want the full stadiums of screaming fans and the big TV audiences.  The scandals in the governing bodies of FIFA, IAAF and the Olympic movement make that clear, in fact to me they are more corrupt that the owners of a wrestling franchise or an NFL team.   At least we are pretty clear about what they are.

The Dirtiest Race in History byRichard Moor is a great read that looks at the 1988 men’s 100m in Seoul, when the dirty little secrets of athletics exploded across the screens of the world.  I really do feel for big Ben Johnson (that is why you will see he is a friend on FB) and actually I have loads of respect for his coach, the late Charlie Francis, who after the event told it as it was, but nobody really wanted to listen. His book, Speedtrap is also an excellent read and if it had been taken notice of when it was published, then Lord Coe might not be in the mess he is now in athletics.  In short, there are just too many conflicts of interest.

My disgust is actually with some of the holier than thou prima donnas in that famous race, who were just as guilty, as history would prove.   Five of the eight finalists ened up with a PED conviction.  However is that really the dirtiest race?  Perhaps that title should go to Le Tour in cycling?  Or how about the women’s 100m in 2000 at Sydney where no gold medal was actually awarded in the end!  That is because after Marion Jones was disqualified, the silver medalist was Ekaterini Thanou, also a drug taker.  In fact if you go through the finalists, just like the mens race in 1988, five of the eight finalists ended up with bans for the use of PEDs.   So 12 years after Johnson and the same situation.

That brings us to the women’s 1500m in the London Olympics 2012, which currently looks like this! Another 12 years and still the same.

 

There is no point in this is there?   If the results are going to always be open to question and medals re-awarded, sometimes to athletes who later turn out to have doped themselves and then not awarded at all.  

What is the point?

So what is to be done?  I have some pretty radical solutions but as this already is too long and the longer the post the fewer readers I have, I am going to stop now.  This is now over a 1000 words and I am just getting warmed up!

As well as a possible solution, I will look at other aspects of sport that have turned me away from viewing and our strange attitude towards drugs.

Ironically, this post has been written while waiting for my daughter who is – playing tennis, and there is the rub!