My topic was a false start
In following the Rust’s stance of principle against the use of performance-enhancing drugs in sport, I have made use of a nose-peg and a healthy pinch of salt each time before tuning in to the World Athletics Championships now drawing to a close at the London Stadium.
There are so many things wrong with Track and Field as it presents itself to the spectating and onlooking audience these days. The first is the IAAF’s attitude towards drugs. The second is Lord Coe, who is many things, but as a ‘white knight’ crusader against corruption, subterfuge and deceit both at state-level and below he is no Martin Luther King. The third is the pretty mediocre nature of the performances being put on in London. And the fourth is the BBC’s television coverage.
Although long gone are the halcyon days of David Coleman and Ron Pickering, the BBC continues to persist with its Blue Peter/Newsround, sanitised but full-on hyperbole, presentational approach to the world of athletics, as if somehow the last 25 years’ worth of broadcasting technical innovation and development (as demonstrated to best effect by the likes of Sky Sports and BT Sport) had never happened.
I need to begin by exempting from criticism firstly, Gaby Logan – a consummate professional as anchor; secondly, Phil Jones, whose trackside post-race interviews are always direct and to the point, even if 75% of the time his interviewees are either too puffed or vacuous to spout anything other than stock or goofy platitudes; and thirdly, the USA all-time great Michael Johnson, who says what he thinks and knows plenty. I can only assume Johnson continues to be employed on the ‘honorary Brit’ basis – well, that and the fact that in North America track & field has now been relegated to quasi-minor sports status and therefore presumably there’s no work to be had on their television networks.
You’re never going to find me knocking ex-sports stars trying to make their way in new careers [well, let’s leave bleach-blond Iwan Thomas – now touting for appearances upon things like Strictly Come Dancing and, during these World Championships, reduced to doing break-fast time novelty inserts with the likes of Hero, the hedgehog mascot, out of this …], but the BBC powers-that-be clearly believe that Brits Jessica Ennis-Hill, Paula Radcliffe and most recently Daley Thompson – all of them pleasant but bland in the extreme – are worth their salt solely because (presumably) the public does at least recognise them.
They all do their best, but they’re slap bang in the tradition of the hapless Sally Gunnell who – though a 400 metre hurdler of outstanding quality in her time – was never going to make it as a media presenter/interviewer and was eventually dropped, albeit about two years too late to avoid being mercilessly mocked in the early days of the 21st Century social media revolution.
This summer’s BBC field sports Gunnell is Steve Backley – the former multi-silver medallist thrower of the javelin – who has the thankless task of pompously ‘building up’ the uniformly mundane preparations, techniques and then successes or failures – mainly failures, as it happens – of the various shot putters and hammer, discus and javelin throwers as they hang around waiting their turn to perform.
It’s all terribly, terribly second-rate. A bit like the sport, really.
Ironically, the original reason I was going to write on the 2017 World Athletics Championships today was because I had noticed – across nine days of dipping into the television coverage – that (unlike in virtually every global athletics meet I can ever recall when barely a race went by without one) they were remarkable because there had not been a single false start.
Then, just as I’d decided to blog about it, in the very next event I watched – a women’s hurdles race – there was one!
It’s a funny old world …
