Once more unto the beach …

Having never attended in the flesh either a major athletics championship or an Olympics – but always having instead relied upon either radio commentaries and/or television coverage of such things – I am not looking forward to Rio, whose Opening Ceremony occurs today, with any particular sense of anticipation or excitement.

I appreciate that if you an athlete or participant in an Olympics you are a rare, gifted and privileged individual and will have undoubtedly foregone many things – including perhaps a fun-filled, relaxed, possibly ill-disciplined and wayward hedonistic social life – along the way as you spent five to ten years training and straining to improve your performances even just to get selected to represent your country at the once-in-every-four-years supposed ‘Greatest Show On Earth’.

However, as one gets older and gradually succumbs to a jaundiced and cynical view of life and human society, I’m afraid that each advent of the Olympic Games in my calendar causes the sap to rise in my veins with decreasing strength and frequency.

Rio, of course, has its problems and it was always going to thus. It is one thing for the IOC to have an eye upon taking its circus to every corner (every continent) on the planet in an effort to cement ad grow its reach and popularity, but going to Rio – with its economic woes, social gulfs, underworld of violence and danger, poisonous beaches and waters, the Zika virus issue, the performance-enhancing drugs scandals, and its widely-publicised issues with delivering new infrastructure and accommodation public works and buildings on time – was always going to be a risk.

My daily trawl around the UK broadsheet newspaper websites this morning has revealed Rio stories about:

• a Russian diplomat dragging a would-be mugger into his car and shooting him dead;
• the Australian swimming team being pulled out of a pool training session when the water became suspiciously gloopy and cloudy;
• athletes from various countries complaining about the unfinished and/or unacceptably poor state of their accommodation;
• Professor Richard McLaren, the WADA-commissioned expert who recently produced a damning report on the state-sponsored drugs-cheating programme operated by Russia at the Sochi Olympics, complaining that the IOC had willingly misinterpreted and misrepresented his findings (and their implications) in making a complete Horlicks of first hinting that it was virtually considering banning Russian athletes from Rio, then announcing it was leaving specific decisions to the various individual world sports bodies, then over-ruling itself and saying that its own three-man panel would make the final decisions;
• and (this news just in) Michael O’Reilly, an Irish boxer in the 75kg class, has tested positive for a banned substance – believed to be a recreational drug – arising from a test taken before flying out to Rio.

I also take no pleasure from recording here my disquiet at the whole saga of GB cyclist Lizzie Armitstead’s three ‘no shows’ for drugs-tests over eighteen months and then her recent and belated ‘upheld’ appeal against the first of them which cleared her to take a place on the Rio start-line.

Without denying that there are injustices in the world, and that everyone should be considered innocent until actually proven guilty, I am afraid I have zero sympathy for La Armitstead.

Not because I’m alleging that she’s guilty of taking drugs or of cheating per se, you understand, but simply because – as a non-sporting couch potato television viewer and outsider – I cannot for the life of me understand why, when the official list of offences, rules and drug-testing protocols are published and presumably drummed into athletes by their coaches at every turn, any athlete should ever miss one ‘rendezvous’ with a drug-tester, let alone the specified two or three that (it has been decreed) cumulatively constitute an ‘offence’ on their own.

Let me emphasise the point.

I made passing reference earlier to the fact that to be an athlete capable of reaching Olympic standard, you have to be extraordinarily talented in the first place, and then apply yourself with a ruthless discipline to training regimes that most of us ordinary mortals would balk at after 2 hours, never mind 2 days, 2 weeks, 2 years or even 8 years. In addition, beside the normal pressures of everyday life that everyone has to cope with, you also have to endure the mental stress of coping with occasional (inexplicable) bad training sessions, injuries – both serious and little niggles – that leave you frustrated and unable to progress towards your ultimate goals, the pressures of attending your sponsors’ events and giving interviews, taking part in races, and indeed the whole grind of devoting your life completely to something that may or may not – often for reasons beyond your control – bring you fleeting fame and fortune.

In that context (please help me here, wouldn’t you agree?), I should have thought that ‘making a required rendevous with a drugs tester’ would be just another fact of life and discipline (on top of all the others involved in a dedicated sporting life) that I would just never miss. It would be just another one of say six, seven or eight things on my schedule upon any given day that I would barely even think about – well other than for the 15 or even 30 minutes that the process in its entirety would take. It would be as part of my daily schedule as breathing, eating or going to the lavatory.

Missing such a rendezvous would simply be out of the question.

And – if by any strange chance I did miss one – I’d made damned bloody certain that it never happened again. And/or – if there was any irregularity about the ‘miss’ – I’d appeal it straight away.

That’s why I’m afraid that, for me, the cloud of suspicion will hang over Lizzie Armitstead for the remainder of her sporting career.

As indeed it does for another GB ‘golden girl’, 400 metre runner Christine Ohuruogu, who (if memory serves) also fell foul of ‘three failed rendezvous for drugs tests’ stipulation and then went on to return to top competition and indeed championship medals.

In my book both Armitstead and Ohuruogu are ‘tainted’ athletes – simply because facts are facts. And a requirement to rendezvous for drugs-tests is a requirement – end of message.

I don’t doubt for a minute that over the next three weeks I shall find myself watching some events at Rio from time to time., But as I sit here at my computer this morning I face that prospect with surprisingly little enthusiasm.