Games surrounded by our suspicions

Jan 16 2008 by Barry Gibson, Huddersfield Daily Examiner

SHE won three gold medals, but now she’s staring at a six-month prison sentence for lying about steroid abuse.

It’s been a dramatic fall from grace for American Marion Jones, who was once the fastest woman on Earth.

The sprinter, who won gold in the 100 metres, 200 metres and 4x400 metres relay at the 2000 Sydney Olympics, will begin her sentence in March.

But Jones is not the first person to have taken an Olympic medal with a little help from some chemical friends.

There was Ben Johnson, who “won” the 100 metres in 1988 while on steroids, and some East German athletes whose times still look impressive today, 20 years after their country collapsed.

And there will be more drug cheats in the future, that’s for sure.

Every athletic performance at this year’s Olympics in Beijing – whether legitimate or not – will be tainted by the whiff of suspicion.

As the medal ceremonies begin we will think: Did the beaming athlete on the podium get there through years of hard work or did they get a little extra help from a magic pill or two?

Racing sports such as running, cycling and swimming are particularly vulnerable to drug abuse. While all these activities require skill and technique they are really about raw power; strength, speed or stamina.

And these are all things that can be boosted chemically.

By contrast, in team games there is a limit to what drugs can do.

A professional footballer could use steroids to become quicker and stronger, but this would only take him so far.

There’s no drug around which could help him trap the ball better or time his tackling with more precision. Only skill and practice can do this.

Any sport which is based on simply doing something faster will always be open to suspicion.

And that’s a big problem for the Olympics, because its showpiece events are races.

But the other shortfall of the games, from my point of view, is that racing is fundamentally dull. It has none of the surprise of team games.

In the 100 metres the starter fires a gun and 10 seconds later one competitor has run slightly faster than all the others. That’s what has happened in every single 100 metres race that has ever been run.

It’s not exactly unpredictable is it?

Compare that to a team game like football, where any number of things can happen, from a sublime pass to a shocking tackle, a brilliant save to a stunning goal.

And maybe a good old-fashioned scrap thrown in for good measure.

The same is true of rugby, hockey and cricket as well.

They all provide unpredictability.

This is just one of the reasons that the prospect of the 2012 Olympics in London leaves me cold.

Who actually cares about the events that make up the backbone of the games? No-one watches the javelin or the hammer or the steeplechase at any other time.

Think back to the summer of 2006; remember the massive excitement before the World Cup, just because England had qualified.

Now think forward to early 2012. Is anyone in this country going to be thinking: “Only three months to go until the discus final, I can’t wait”?

I doubt it.

That’s what bravery really is

LAST week I wrote about the abuse of the word brave, which sees footballers who try to win a match praised for their “courage”.

A few days after I wrote that a man who epitomised what bravery truly means passed away.

Sir Edmund Hillary died in his native New Zealand at the age of 88. Back in 1953 he and Tenzing Norgay became the first men to conquer Mount Everest.

It was a supreme achievement given the deadly cold and the debilitating altitude. Their feat is even more remarkable when you consider that they climbed the world’s highest mountain with kit which even the humblest modern-day rambler would find laughably outdated.

Both men earned the adjective brave that day.

But there was more to admire about Hillary than that single achievement, no matter how remarkable.

His obituaries have focused on his decades of work building schools and hospitals in Nepal and his modesty about his own legendary status.

What particularly impressed me was the fact that for many years Hillary refused to say whether he or Tenzing had set foot on the summit first.

Hillary, who actually made it to the top first, was too honourable to say so. He seemed to fear that it would undermine Tenzing’s standing in South Asia where he was quite properly regarded as a hero.

It must have taken a special kind of person to have done something so remarkable yet never brag about it.

How tears swung it for Hillary

IT was apparently the moment that swung the US presidential primaries back in her favour.

Sitting in a coffee shop last week Hillary Clinton was asked how she keeps going through the gruelling election process.

She hesitated and her voice cracked as she spoke of how “personal” the presidential race was for her.

There were no tears, but it seems that even the hint of tears – the possibility that she might actually be able to cry – was enough, because the next day she scored an upset win over Barack Obama in the New Hampshire primary.

There’s still a long way to go, but it seems like Mrs Clinton is back on track for the White House.

Many pundits have asked whether the emotion she showed was real, but I don’t believe that’s the most relevant thing about this episode.

What is important is what that welling-up moment tells us about Mrs Clinton and about Americans.

First Hillary. Assuming the emotion was real it’s depressing that the only thing that can bring her to the brink of tears is the prospect of her political failure.

I can think of better reasons for her to be reaching for the hankie. Not least the fact that thousands of her young compatriots have died in a senseless war which she supported and continues to support.

Which brings us on to what the welling-up tells us about Americans.

If it’s true that a little show of emotion was enough for Hillary to win in New Hampshire it shows how easy it is to manipulate some Americans, to make them feel sympathy.

Or – as George W Bush has proved – to make them feel fear.