Tough times when you want to know what’s what …
These days it’s perhaps simultaneously both healthy and damned disappointing that in the 21st Century the safest approach for the average member of the public is to reach for a large pinch of salt when analysing everything they see or hear.
Whether it’s anything that US President Trump manages to do, think or tweet … or the suspicion your Alexa device in the corner of the room is ‘listening’ to everything you appear to google, say or mention and then sends you customised adverts to your smartphone or computer (an experience that frightens the bejaysus out of me!) … or the umpteenth ‘cold call’ received on your land-line this week from someone “just conducting a survey … no, I’m not trying to sell you anything … [“click” – as they ring off when they realise you may be 68 but you haven’t yet reached the point where you’re ga-ga enough to read out over the phone to them your bank account number and password so that they can remove £10,000’s worth of your savings “for safekeeping” further to some police fraud investigation that they’ve invented in their back bedroom in Harringay] … or even every political candidate currently running in the UK’s General Election falling over themselves to claim that they’re offering more free “everything” to the voters than all the others, even though they don’t know where the money to pay for it is going to come from and in addition they said the complete opposite in their 2017 General Election manifesto [“But ah, that was last time …”] … or even Prince Andrew doing his accidental level best to end the Monarchy as a British institution by undertaking his interview with Newsnight’s Emily Maitlis that was broadcast on the BBC last Saturday evening … it’s become a cliché to say that none of us have any idea anymore what we can believe and what we cannot.
As I toured the sports pages of the UK newspaper websites overnight I came across some interesting examples – by which I mean to infer, reports that could be taking the world forward rather than backward:
SPORTS AUTHORITIES GETTING TOUGH?
In the context where in the past sports authorities have often got it in the neck from the Rust for being weak-kneed in the face of rules breaches etc., it is perhaps both notable and welcome to learn that the tide may be turning.
See here for links to two recent examples of apparent stiffened sinews and backbones reported on the web pages of The Guardian:
A PA Media report provides details of a Cricket Discipline Committee Disciplinary Panel decision to deduct Somerset 12 points in next year’s County Championship for the poor state of their Taunton pitch – see here – CRICKET
Meanwhile Robert Kitson confirms that the Saracens rugby club have decided not to appeal against their 35 point deduction and £5.3 million fine for salary cap breaches over the past three Premiership seasons (not to mention those ‘buried’ and now hopefully forgotten – but not quite by me – in the previous ‘four club’ deal with Premiership Rugby that addressed widespread activities before that) – see here – RUGBY
These might be instances of “too little, too late” but surely they’re a sign that things might be moving slowly in the right direction.
BRITISH CYCLING UNDER THE MICROSCOPE
There may always be something rotten in the state of Denmark, but few can feel that there isn’t potentially also something that whiffs a bit in the world of British cycling – both its culture and its administrative and medical practices.
From my distant perspective there seems to be at least a possibility that – for whatever reasons, justified or not – some investigative sports journalists have had it in for David Brailsford, Team Sky (Team Ineos?), Bradley Wiggins … and all who have sailed with them … from the start.
Was this attitude borne of idle curiosity, or perhaps fair suspicion or long-held convictions, that not everything was all that it purported to be in the way that some involved in the creation and development of a super-team went about their business?
Or alternatively – perhaps – cynicism, doubt and suspicion of hypocrisy and envy?
Partly it may have stemmed from the fact that anyone who sets themselves up as being lilly-white pure and determined to succeed solely by means of a combination of legitimate means and the much-fabled “marginal gains” – in order to become a beacon of integrity within a much-criticised sport – is always going to be there to be shot at if anything should ever emerge from “inside the machine” that smacked of the opposite.
Here’s a link to a piece by Sean Ingle on the latest from the General Medical Council tribunal into the activities of sometime Team Sky doctor Richard Freeman who is fighting to save his career: with all the accusations flying around – substantiated or not – it hardly makes for an edifying spectacle – BMC CYCLING TRIBUNAL
RUSSIA’S MURKY RELATIONSHIP WITH THE USE OF DRUGS IN SPORT
Here’s a link to a piece by Tom Morgan upon the latest in the ongoing tussle between WADA the IOC and Russia, as appears upon the website of the Daily Telegraph.
On this organ we take an uncompromising attitude to drugs cheating in sport – especially of the systematic kind – but (not for the first time) our esteemed sports authorities seem to be in danger of getting themselves into an unholy mess because their desire to keep the miscreants within the “world sporting family” is incompatible with the priority to stamp out wrong-doing wherever they find it.
See here – RUSSIA AND DRUGS
