Sport – Hypocrisy of Sheer Dishonesty
Even the most cursory review of modern sport would leave the avid sport enthusiast decidedly bothered, perhaps disturbed, by what is being done, seen and unfortunately, pathetic.
To those who are close to sport what is happening in sport may be passed off as hypocritical.
To some of us, we can only appropriately define it as sheer dishonesty.
In this week’s Column, we bring to the fore some of the issues in sport that compels us to insist on the need for a new international sports order before everything is lost to the whims and fancies of the rich, powerful and particularly greedy.
Salt Lake City Scandal et al
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has, from inception, been something of a rich boys club dominated by eurocentrism, gender inequity and political patronage, phenomena that the institution’s leaders continue to deny.
Seeing itself above the vagaries of the norms of the societies in which it operates, the IOC presented itself as almost infallible, eagerly creating its own fundamental principles which it imposed on the rest of the world, albeit in and through sport.
The insistence of the IOC to host the Olympics of 1936 in Hitler’s Berlin, Germany, should never have happened. But those who led the organisation believed in their own infallibility and somehow hoped that the Games would have made a difference in the geo-politics of the day. Following the conclusion of the Games racism not only continued but its global spread expanded. The IOC remained silent as the USA left the likes of Jesse Owens and Muhammad Ali (formerly Cassius Clay) like innocent lambs, to be slaughtered on the burning crosses of the KKK. All that has changed today is that racism in sport has returned to a more overt form in an ever-expanding number of international sport.
The Salt Lake City scandal of the IOC would never be erased from the organisation’s legacy. Samaranch’s strategy to have the likes of US Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, lead an investigation appeared more of an attempted panacea rather than a more sweeping movement for change. The fundamentals of the IOC remained the same but with the ‘engagement’ of ‘stakeholders’ seemingly intended to give the appearance ‘democracy’.
The Salt Lake City scandal rendered the naked dishonesty of those in the IOC who were prepared to sell their votes to the city best prepared to incentivise them. Only after this debacle occurred did we hear that the practice of passing bribes to IOC members was commonplace in the organisation and extended to the decision-making of the host for the Summer Olympics of 2000, eventually awarded to Sydney, Australia.
Was it possible that the IOC President at the time, Juan Antonio Samaranch, was completely unaware of the ‘corrupt’ and ‘dishonest’ of the honourable men who sat alongside him at the IOC’s table and who he eventually expunged from the institution? Hardly likely.
Was there any surprise that Samaranch’s son was eventually accorded membership of the IOC? Hardly likely.
Has the ‘corrupt’ practice of selling votes by members of the IOC come to an end? Hardly likely.
Indeed, the allegations against former president of the then International Association of Athletics Federations (now World Athletics – WA), Lamine Diack of Senegal, included one of exchanging his vote for favours with someone in Japan, all associated with Tokyo’s bid to host the Olympic Games of 2020.
Unfortunately, the world is yet to hear details of any full-scale investigation into the allegation in respect of Lamine Diack. We know he was removed from the IOC but that’s about all from the IOC.
What a full-scale investigation may have yielded we would never know but it leaves the average sport analysts concerned about how much the IOC has changed it modus operandi through history.
Cricket World Cup 2007
Many should recall the joy with which the cricket bosses of the Caribbean embraced the businessman, Jack Rosseau, complete with his private plane.
There were many of the longstanding leaders of the sport in member countries who were simply beyond themselves with the fact that Rousseau was wealthy.
Chris Dehring became the CEO under Rousseau’s tenure.
Did anything change in West Indies cricket under their watch? One remains rather circumspect in responding to this question.
Some may suggest that we witnessed access to sponsors of the team from organisations operating in the Caribbean. In respect of the on-field activities, the fortunes of the regional team did not change.
Rousseau and Dehring left the leadership of the sport in the region but led the charge for the hosting of Cricket World Cup 2007 (CWC2007).
There is yet to be a comprehensive critical analysis of the impact of CWC2007 on the Caribbean after so much was promised.
Several of the overly-expansive facilities constructed across the region for the CWC2007 have not been able to pay for themselves through the sport.
In the case of our own St Vincent and the Grenadines, we are yet to get a comprehensive audit of the $52m ECD expended. The centrepiece of the facilities in our country, the Arnos Vale Sports Complex, is yet to have the toilets located in the newly constructed double-decker stands, functional after 14 years in disrepair, despite promises that this would be done.
Governments across the region hastily passed the ‘Sunset Legislation’ allowing freedom of movement across the entire region for the period of the competition but just as hastily ended this once the tournament was finished. This attempt at showcasing the importance of sport to the governmental heads at once also reflects their lack of genuine commitment to regional integration, a longstanding ‘pipe dream’ of the peoples of the Caribbean.
More than anything else, the region’s legacy of hosting the CWC2007, reflects the crass dishonesty of suggesting that sport was more important to those who managed the event than the peoples of the Caribbean and their long-held aspirations for Caribbean unity.
Hypocrisy or dishonesty? Readers are the best placed to judge.
Cycling’s Lance Armstrong
The sport of cycling has to live with the legacy of Lance Armstrong who turned out to be one of the sport’s biggest ‘con-men’. He was able to ‘fool’ the entire sporting world and global society, having established himself as sport’s ‘poster boy’ who survived cancer to rise to heroism as cycling’s biggest ‘hero’.
Armstrong’s ‘heroism’ was so readily accepted by the international cycling fraternity and sport enthusiasts everywhere that commercial sponsors readily paid him to be their endorsers.
When Floyd Landis, one of Armstrong’s teammates sought to expose him, the entire cycling fraternity and sport enthusiasts cried foul, throwing Landis ‘under the bus’.
When the truth was eventually revealed in an interview, hypocritically the world and the cycling fraternity proclaimed themselves as having been shocked. The truth hurts. But it hurts all the more when the stout defenders of corruption come face-to-face with their own unwillingness to apply their critical thinking skills to what was happening before their eyes for several years.
Was the international Cycling Union (UCI) completely unaware of Armstrong’s indiscretion?
How was it possible that for so many years he was able to take his entire team out to a mobile blooding-doping outfit to better prepare themselves to win at all costs and the authorities remain unaware?
The desire of some sports to establish and sustain themselves amongst the international sport community remains far more important to their legacies than honesty, transparency and accountability.
For one reason or another we have little evidence of sport scientists’ research on the capacity of the cyclist to achieve the performances associated with some of the ‘best’ in the sport, that are so often used as evidence of the results of training without the help received from performance-enhancing drugs and methodologies.
FIFA Debacle
Then there was the FIFA debacle that revealed the crass, unbridled corruption of the organisation’s leadership spread over numerous member countries.
Interestingly, the sport lost nothing as a result.
New leaders have replaced the old ones and the sport continues to go about its business – a multi-million dollar industry.
Amazingly, FIFA, like the IOC, has no shortage of commercial enterprises eager to commit millions to the sport’s many activities. While some may eagerly wish to see this as evidence of generosity and genuine philanthropy, it is important that closer critical analysis be undertaken and rigorously so.
Has the ‘arm of the law’ extended to the ‘corrupt’ reaches of the sport? Hardly likely.
We in the Caribbean are compelled to remember that while a few of the ‘corrupt’ have been identified, there may well be those who are yet to be brought to justice.
Why then should we believe that anything has changed in the sport of football.
AIBA/IOC Fracas
In the case of Boxing, it remains most interesting that the IOC, of all international sporting institutions, has taken on the challenge of trying to end corruption in the international boxing association (AIBA). In Caribbean parlance this may fall under the umbrella of the saying, ‘the pot calling the kettle black’.
The IOC created its own institutional framework for boxing’s inclusion on the competition programme of the Olympic Games in Tokyo, virtually sidelining AIBA. But its action here seems to beg more questions than there are answers and the IOC’s silence on the conduct of many other sports leaves many pondering its strategic and tactics, more generally.
Many ponder the criteria used by the IOC to determine in which sport it chooses to intervene at any given point in time and, more importantly, what does it do about its own internal ‘indiscretions’.
The fact is that generally, sport appears to have become so huge an industry that like other industries, the short, medium and long-term goals are all driven by the same factor, the financial bottom-line. In this sense, the end justifies the means. In this regard, therefore, dishonesty translates into ‘the best policy’, whatever the consequences for global society and the values they all seek to promote and sustain.
