Athletics - the game is up
Some of the commenters on my post on Christine Ohuruogu's shameful win have demanded that I apologise for criticising the fact that she was allowed to compete and for calling her a cheat. As if! In my book someone who knowingly breaks the rules is a cheat, whether it's a footballer who dives in the area or an athlete who misses three drugs tests.
Her win, and more particularly the cheers with which it was greeted by some, represent everything wrong with athletics and why, as a sport, it no longer has the public attention of old. In short, it's no longer viewed as clean.
Martin Samuel, by quite a long way the best sports writer around, has a superb piece today on just this point:
When Ferdinand missed a drugs test at Manchester United’s training ground in 2003, he was dropped from England’s squad for a European Championship qualifier with Turkey and subsequently banned for eight months. The most self-serving rewriting of history that has followed Ohuruogu’s gold medal in Osaka is that Ferdinand received an easy ride and a hero’s welcome on his return, while poor little Christine is pilloried. Wrong. The mood around the England camp at that time was that of a war zone and when Sven-Göran Eriksson’s players threatened to strike over Ferdinand’s absence, the arguments grew lastingly ferocious.Some would. And the more Ohuruogu's win is celebrated, the more that will be.Some football writers lost good friends in the game over their hardline stance and being a nice guy or a silly old scatterbrain – the preposterous mitigation advanced on Ohuruogu’s behalf – counted for nothing in Rio’s case. Just to be sure that memory served, I checked what I wrote about Ferdinand that week. Here is a taste: “Nobody will ever prove whether Ferdinand was being absent-minded, ignorant or cunning when he didn’t turn up. Nobody will ever know what a drugs test on that day would have shown. Ferdinand may be an innocent man who is paying a heavy price for a mental off day. He may be a guilty one who will receive a far lighter punishment than he deserves because he knew how to play the system. We will never know and we shouldn’t care. There has been a very dangerous presumption in the last 24 hours that Ferdinand’s only possible crime is forgetfulness. It would appear to be beyond the imagination of many that there could be a nefarious reason a footballer might wish to delay giving a urine sample for two days.”
And that is exactly how I feel about Ohuruogu. I would never say she was at it; but I wouldn’t say that she was not. I don’t know. This uncertainty is what sets the hated sceptics apart from the cheerleaders of the athletics community, toadying to the UK Athletics chief executive, Nils de Vos, on Radio 5 Live and cluttering up the airwaves with their priggish outrage when anyone dare suggest a gold medal-winning athlete that missed not one, not two, but three drugs tests, and is now recording personal-best times after a year out of the sport, is a long way short of a cause for celebration. They want to establish as fact a statement that cannot possibly be verified. Christine Ohuruogu would not have tested positive on any of the days on which she missed a test.
Really? Prove it. It is unfortunate for Ohuruogu that her story has become the battleground for the wider issue of whether athletics can continue with its flag-waving culture and remain a credible sport in the eyes of the public. Some would say the battle is already lost.