Well now they’ve really got to do SOMETHING
Yesterday’s revelations by Canadian Professor Richard McLaren of the US Anti-Doping Agency about Russia’s systematic state-organised doping programme between 2011 and 2015 must stand as one of the most courageous and forthright condemnations of cheating in the chequered history of world sport.
It will be fascinating to see how the International Olympic Committee and FIFA now respond to the challenge. The sheer scale of the deceit (1,000 athletes across 30 sports implicated) and Russia’s predictable mealy-mouthed reaction of bare-faced denial combined with what seems to me to be a sour attempt at mitigation via a “We’re not the only ones …” justification demonstrates just how far the problem extends. Despite the fact that as a sports-lover and pundit I am basing my opinions only on the media summaries and reports that I have come across in the last twelve hours, I do not think that I’m exaggerating when I say that the future of global sport depends upon how the world’s most important sporting administrators deal with this latest crisis.
There is no doubt that ever since the first two cavemen decided to have a foot race or even locked in mortal combat in order to win the hand of the original Eve – or even just for the hell of it – sporting competitors have resorted to seeking every advantage they could to give themselves a winning edge. Whether it was simply training harder or more often, or perhaps imbibing alcohol, dosing themselves with strychnine or even taking a lift in a vehicle (all of which reportedly occurred during the 1908 London Olympics marathon) or – in more recent times – doping in any or all of its forms, it has been an ever-present factor.
We must not forget that, as medical and nutritional science has advanced in leaps and bounds over the past 150 years, the moral aspect of law, rules and ‘level playing field’ fairness has become increasingly blurred if not lost altogether.
Much as great sporting gatherings like the Olympic Games and football’s World Cup are indisputably ‘good things’ in theory – that is, in terms of bringing the world’s population together in terms of shared experience, and in giving the human race role models and aspirational examples to promote the general notion that (if he or she works hard enough) any individual can achieve any dream or ambition they hatch, the means they adopt to ‘get there’ seem to have become purely a matter of personal choice, if not Hobson’s (in the latter regard, I’m talking about the notion that, if everyone else is cheating, it becomes a case of ‘if you cannot beat them, you may as well join them’).
Sadly, ‘the rules’ of the game’ have never been absolute. Possibly we’ve all been kidding ourselves that they could ever be. Different countries have different laws as to which practices and substances are legal. Different sporting bodies – indeed different anti-doping agencies – have different lists as regards the use of not only which medicines for common medical conditions are ‘allowed’ and which are not, but which ‘iffy’ drugs incur only minor penalties and which attract major ones.
Furthermore, of course, there is the aspect of whether the individual sportsman is ‘caught’ or not. The options are virtually limitless. Which performance-enhancing substances are permitted and which are not? Which banned substances are detectable and to what degree? And which ‘offences’ attract an ‘acceptable’ penalty if you are caught? For example, a four month ban for a first offence may be embarrassing but, if that allows you to return and take part in the Olympics nine months hence, is it not a risk that some might deem worth taking? And, of course, there’s the suspect ‘backbone’ of the authorities to chase down and make any charges stick – if you can get your lawyers out and endlessly appeal any findings against you, they may lose heart and let you off with a lesser penalty, or even altogether …
Policing drugs cheating is of course a logistical minefield. The great sporting bodies have an uneasy relationship with the concept. Again, nothing is absolute. Anti-doping agencies are given budgets. Almost certainly these are large enough to make it appear to the world that the problem is being taken seriously, but never sufficient to ensure that all drugs cheats are identifiable, not least because those engaged in drugs cheating are working just as hard to find ways of evading being caught as the anti-dopers are to develop fail-safe techniques to catch them – and thereby, quite often, the former manage to stay one step, or maybe more than that, ahead.
The hard-line attitude of this organ on the wrongful use of performance-enhancing drugs is well known. It’s a human issue but also a moral one that goes to the heart of what human beings really are. Sport is one of the most thrilling and spiritually rewarding activities that men and women can undertake – and indeed watch. But there’s an underlying assumption that the sports we follow or partake in are both ‘fair’ and ‘true’ (as in the comforting age-old adage that ‘on the day, the better individual, or team, won’).
Down through history, instances when suspicions have arisen that, on the day, the better side didn’t win have been controversial causes celebre and prompted long-held convictions in the losers (and their supporters) that justice wasn’t done or that ‘we wuz robbed’. This applies whether ‘the ball did (or didn’t) go over the line’; your key defender was unfairly sent off for an innocent tackle; the referee was outrageously poor; or indeed, when after the drugs tests come back, the first four finishers in the Men’s 100 metres final are proved to have been cheating.
Where this Russian doping scandal takes the problem up a whole new level is that it was apparently state-organised. Whilst British sports bodies tie themselves up in knots over whether, for example, an individual cyclist was or wasn’t ‘doing the right thing’ in taking certain medications before a Tour de France, generally-speaking government-level collusion or indeed systematic encouragement of illegal drug-taking rarely happens or comes to light.
The fact that modern Russia – and indeed Eastern European block countries from the 1950s to the Noughties – were ‘at it’ has been an open (dirty) secret for ages. Part of the problem is that the commercial benefits and prestige of winning Olympic gold medals or football World Cups are so great – and the administrators and hangers-on so numerous and well paid – that the authorities would far rather turn a blind eye, or ‘brush under the carpet’, instances of ill-doing when they find them than take them on (with the full force of sanction and penalty available to them) as a matter of principle. And on top of that, we should remind ourselves, they’ve always been careful not to look too hard to find them.
There’s a phrase for it, of course. There usually is. This one is a case of being careful ‘not to kill the goose that lays the golden egg’.
Let’s therefore wait and see how the IOC and FIFA react to Professor McLaren’s findings.
You’ll pardon me for being cynical and not bothering to hold my breath …
