Sport – and the same old, same old …

No apologies as today I revisit two of the Rust’s favourite vexed sporting subjects, corruption and performance-enhancing drugs.

THE OLYMPIC MOVEMENT

Today the UK media’s ‘back pages’ – okay, European football apart – are full of reports about the IOC ceremony celebrating the award of the 2024 Summer Olympic Games to Paris and the 2028 ones to Los Angeles. However, the supplementary and rather unwelcome IOC story is that of further allegations and evidence emerging that the bidding processes for the Summer Olympics at Rio (2016) and Tokyo (2020) were waist-deep in corruption and bribes.

The aspect that doesn’t get much of a mention anywhere is the fact that – as the world hurtles towards the end of the first quarter of the 21st Century – the bald fact is that fewer and fewer potential ‘host cities’ for either the summer or winter versions of the Olympics are coming forward.

Bitter experiences by previous host cities from the past – let’s just mention the mandatory vast infrastructure and organising expenditure, leaving behind moth-eaten and unused ‘white elephant’ stadia and debts that take thirty or forty years to pay off, whilst (of course) the IOC and its cronies simply travel onwards, first class accommodation and front row tickets everywhere, free of all expenses and taxes by contractual requirement – have meant bidding cities pulling out of contention and/or becoming fearful that they might actually win.

I suppose at least the head IOC honchos can now collectively breath a heavy sigh of relief that two relatively-sane and powerful cities have taken on the prestige (but also the pain and cost) of 2024 and 2028 …

Here’s a link to a piece by Martha Kelner on both subjects that appears today upon the website of – THE GUARDIAN

One of the fundamental justifications for having as free a press as possible is so that elite and ‘Establishment’ cabals, secret bureaucracies and hypocritical power-brokers everywhere can be – if not perhaps ever actually hauled to account (unfortunately) for their actions – at least exposed in public for what they are.

I accept that there are limitless numbers of instances where the reptilian and equally hypocritical hacks of Fleet Street [to coin a phrase] go too far and conduct vendettas against ordinary innocent people; or get their facts wrong; and/or simply omit or ignore extenuating circumstances; and/or ‘invent’ or embellish evidence and innuendo that tends to support the ‘story’ they’ve decided to tell; and/or break one or more laws in order to gain the evidence they need; and/or (inevitably) on occasions ‘take a chance’ with stories that don’t quite stack up as they should but nevertheless get published because they’re bound to get headlines around the world and/or make money … and they’re hoping they’ll get away with it because (at the end of the day) ‘the end always justifies the means’.

Yet, despite all the above, I still feel strangely and fundamentally reassured – as a scribe and a fan – every time the administrative bodies and law-makers, agents, team owners and huge vested interests who dominate and control the great sports of the world get their dirty linen washed in public.

Long may it continue. Speaking of which …

PERFORMANCE-ENHANCING DRUGS

Today I also spotted an excellent article by Marina Hyde on the subject of the tennis world governing bodies’ ineffectual approach to dealing with the problem of drugs in their sport – see here, also on the website of – THE GUARDIAN

The irony, of course, with both these ‘topics de jour’ is that deep down all fans are all too aware of the stench of corruption that pervades every sport they follow. But they accept that it ‘comes with the territory’ and is never going to go away, and that meanwhile all sorts of morally-questionable back-room deals and cover-ups are being done every week, which then either later dribble out into the public consciousness so long after the event that they’re forgotten and/or treated as irrelevant because they’re history – i.e. when what’s really important right now is the outcome of the next match on Saturday afternoon – or else never come to light in any meaningful way at all.

All I urge Rust readers to do is wake up every morning,  ‘smell the coffee’ and keep their eyes and ears open …