Unless you have been living under a rock or you are a complete space cadet, spending your waking hours lazing with the tree people all day, everyday, you would have noticed quite a bit of hysteria surrounding the issue of drugs in sport recently.
The Lance Armstrong affair has of course been well in the news for months and continues to rumble on, the issue continuing to fire shots across the bow of the public’s sporting conscience.
Armstrong aside, the real shock for Australian sport fans came during the week when the National Crime Commission, in association with the Federal government, released a report which identified large scale doping rings, corruption and potential match fixing as rife in Australian sport and presented a scenario where the tentacles of Asian crime syndicates are reaching into our football codes to manipulate results and make big money.
Of course there was much hand wringing and silliness amongst journalists and administrators, as if they didn’t know what was going on, and the failure to identify the guilty or particular sports has enraged many stars of these aforementioned games and has lead to demands that the alleged perpetrators be named and shamed, dragged through the streets in chains where cabbages and rotten fruit can be discharged at them by enraged fans.
The usual behaviour which I have seen exhibited again and again by guilty cyclists desperately trying to avoid the glare of doping accusations, has been evident in the self righteous mutterings of several footballers and cricketers, decrying the cheats while vehemently defending the lackadaisical testing regimes of their chosen professional arena and all proclaiming that there is no such problem in their sport. Obviously they haven’t read the Crime Commission report!
The problem is certainly illuminated when dodgy promoters get involved with sport and produce debacles such as the circus describing itself as a boxing contest in which noted footballer and part-time pugilist, Sonny Bill Williams was a participant last night. I won’t go into details about the shoddy conduct exhibited by those charged with producing and managing this event but for those interested enough in reviewing it, the evident rottenness of modern professional sport should be readily apparent.
Professional sport, quite frankly has become a joke, an imaginary realm where results are contrived and manipulated and the public taken for a ride and their good faith treated as a rag to be cast aside or used as desired by the participants in these miscarriages of credibility.
Any endeavour where large sums of money are involved will of course attract the unsavoury element of society and with it those who will seek to cheat and lie in order to deprive the good natured of the world of their hard earned cash. This is as evident in everyday life as it is in sport. Charlatans prosper no matter what the enterprise.
At work or in day to day life we have come to expect the odd crook to be evident but sport is supposed to be leisure. It’s a game. We are meant to play it right. The best are supposed to win through hard work and ability and the travails and evils of humanity should be left behind to fester in the decadence of regular society.
I find myself watching cycling and wondering if this great sporting performance is merely a show, an exhibition contrived by a sports scientist pushing the boundaries of his chosen profession, trying to find the limits of human endurance as prescribed by medicine and his own devious methods. I do not take it seriously anymore. I regard it as a spectacle, not sport.
Of course, the sporting press in other nations will view this report and cast an ominous eye on the sporting prowess of Australians from now and forever more and from their pedestals on high cast aspersions at any performance of an athlete from down-under and claim the high moral ground, fitfully unaware or unwilling to admit the same problems are almost certainly bedevilling sport in their own countries. At the very least, the corruption of Australian sport has been recognized. But what can be done about it?
My own view is that sports scientists have come close to bringing professional sport to it’s knees. I would not allow any of these quacks anywhere near an Australian sport or team and any athlete or elite squad which may require the services of such should only use them under the strictest of terms and supervision by official or pertinent bodies.
Of course my own naivety knows no bounds and this sort of prohibition is almost certainly unenforceable but I have no doubt that the scourge of medicine is responsible for some of the decay which has overtaken the games which we play and watch.
Zero tolerance for drug cheats is a must. No one who plays professional sport can be so clueless as to not realise that performance enhancing drugs are illegal. The disease has grown so insufferable that it is time to suspend athletes for life for a first offence. No questions. No excuses. Any manager, coach, doctor implicated should suffer the same fate.
And it goes without saying that anyone of the same implicated in betting or match fixing should suffer the same fate. Harsh I know, but the condition has grown so bad that such terms need to be dictated.
Of course nothing will come of it. For most sports I would imagine it will be business as usual, a keen eye kept on the regulators lest they come sniffing around but there are always ways and means to cheat and delude officials.
There is nothing that Australian governments or law enforcement bureaus can do about overseas sport but lets hope that the fury unleashed during the week is maintained and some good comes of it. The sporting public of Australia, some of whom are the most serious spectators of athletic prowess in the world deserve it.
But I won’t hold my breath.
The Lance Armstrong affair has of course been well in the news for months and continues to rumble on, the issue continuing to fire shots across the bow of the public’s sporting conscience.
Armstrong aside, the real shock for Australian sport fans came during the week when the National Crime Commission, in association with the Federal government, released a report which identified large scale doping rings, corruption and potential match fixing as rife in Australian sport and presented a scenario where the tentacles of Asian crime syndicates are reaching into our football codes to manipulate results and make big money.
Of course there was much hand wringing and silliness amongst journalists and administrators, as if they didn’t know what was going on, and the failure to identify the guilty or particular sports has enraged many stars of these aforementioned games and has lead to demands that the alleged perpetrators be named and shamed, dragged through the streets in chains where cabbages and rotten fruit can be discharged at them by enraged fans.
The usual behaviour which I have seen exhibited again and again by guilty cyclists desperately trying to avoid the glare of doping accusations, has been evident in the self righteous mutterings of several footballers and cricketers, decrying the cheats while vehemently defending the lackadaisical testing regimes of their chosen professional arena and all proclaiming that there is no such problem in their sport. Obviously they haven’t read the Crime Commission report!
The problem is certainly illuminated when dodgy promoters get involved with sport and produce debacles such as the circus describing itself as a boxing contest in which noted footballer and part-time pugilist, Sonny Bill Williams was a participant last night. I won’t go into details about the shoddy conduct exhibited by those charged with producing and managing this event but for those interested enough in reviewing it, the evident rottenness of modern professional sport should be readily apparent.
Professional sport, quite frankly has become a joke, an imaginary realm where results are contrived and manipulated and the public taken for a ride and their good faith treated as a rag to be cast aside or used as desired by the participants in these miscarriages of credibility.
Any endeavour where large sums of money are involved will of course attract the unsavoury element of society and with it those who will seek to cheat and lie in order to deprive the good natured of the world of their hard earned cash. This is as evident in everyday life as it is in sport. Charlatans prosper no matter what the enterprise.
At work or in day to day life we have come to expect the odd crook to be evident but sport is supposed to be leisure. It’s a game. We are meant to play it right. The best are supposed to win through hard work and ability and the travails and evils of humanity should be left behind to fester in the decadence of regular society.
I find myself watching cycling and wondering if this great sporting performance is merely a show, an exhibition contrived by a sports scientist pushing the boundaries of his chosen profession, trying to find the limits of human endurance as prescribed by medicine and his own devious methods. I do not take it seriously anymore. I regard it as a spectacle, not sport.
Of course, the sporting press in other nations will view this report and cast an ominous eye on the sporting prowess of Australians from now and forever more and from their pedestals on high cast aspersions at any performance of an athlete from down-under and claim the high moral ground, fitfully unaware or unwilling to admit the same problems are almost certainly bedevilling sport in their own countries. At the very least, the corruption of Australian sport has been recognized. But what can be done about it?
My own view is that sports scientists have come close to bringing professional sport to it’s knees. I would not allow any of these quacks anywhere near an Australian sport or team and any athlete or elite squad which may require the services of such should only use them under the strictest of terms and supervision by official or pertinent bodies.
Of course my own naivety knows no bounds and this sort of prohibition is almost certainly unenforceable but I have no doubt that the scourge of medicine is responsible for some of the decay which has overtaken the games which we play and watch.
Zero tolerance for drug cheats is a must. No one who plays professional sport can be so clueless as to not realise that performance enhancing drugs are illegal. The disease has grown so insufferable that it is time to suspend athletes for life for a first offence. No questions. No excuses. Any manager, coach, doctor implicated should suffer the same fate.
And it goes without saying that anyone of the same implicated in betting or match fixing should suffer the same fate. Harsh I know, but the condition has grown so bad that such terms need to be dictated.
Of course nothing will come of it. For most sports I would imagine it will be business as usual, a keen eye kept on the regulators lest they come sniffing around but there are always ways and means to cheat and delude officials.
There is nothing that Australian governments or law enforcement bureaus can do about overseas sport but lets hope that the fury unleashed during the week is maintained and some good comes of it. The sporting public of Australia, some of whom are the most serious spectators of athletic prowess in the world deserve it.
But I won’t hold my breath.
Strange Notations From a Laborious Life 