EXCLUSIVE - Greg Rutherford: How I would fix athletics after doping nightmares
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ByEurosport
Updated 17/06/2016 at 16:35 GMT
With athletics occupying murky territory after a spate of doping tales and allegations, Greg Rutherford exclusively reveals in his Eurosport column his suggestions to help clean up the sport.
Greg Rutherford of Britain celebrates after winning gold in the men's long jump
Image credit: Reuters
Lifetime bans have to become a real possibility, but let’s start with 5 years
In my opinion, it is not actually the fact that some athletes cheat that harms our sport, there are cheats in all realms of life and sport is no different.
What really causes us lasting harm is that for some reason we appear to welcome our cheats back once proven. This is what’s killing us – athletes who are more famous for the fact they served a drugs ban than for their performances headline the sport’s biggest stages.
How on earth is a casual fan expected to find track and field an attractive place to invest their time and emotion with this the case?
It’s not just that the drugs may still provide benefit years down the line, it’s a moral issue. Certain athletes are taking the decision to cheat their fellow competitors out of potential podiums, out of earnings that would change their lives. If you worked in finance and were convicted of fraud, you’d be served your punishment and subsequently wouldn’t be readily employed in a bank again. Why is this proving different in sport? If you’ve been proven a cheat, it is only natural that you are forfeited your right to easily re-enter the sport.
The athletics fan inside me wants to cry loudly “compulsory lifetime bans for every cheat”, but there lies a risk in the blanket assumption that lifetime bans should be compulsory, so we must be cautious. With such a harsh penalty it becomes a much harder legal process to prosecute and guarantee a ban, conversely we could end up with less athletes punished as a result!
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Greg Rutherford of Britain competes
Image credit: Reuters
Where there is a clear cut case of someone deliberately and proactively cheating, authorities should however have the option of a lifetime ban easily at their disposal. As a second option, a five (as opposed to four) year ban plays an effective role for one simple reason, it's guaranteed to be longer than an Olympic cycle. In our sport, the Olympics are everything and we build our lives and identity in these four-year blocks. A cheat caught in the run up to one Games could receive a four-year ban, but right now they could know that they still have the chance of competing at the next games. Take that incentive away and suddenly sticking around in the sport becomes a great deal less attractive.
There’s a big piece of the jigsaw however that I believe is largely overlooked, and that’s punishing the wider network of the guilty athlete. I have a feeling that the athletes themselves are rarely the protagonists in any doping situation, merely the latest product of a small group of corrupt coaches, agents and support staff who appear to be above reproach. The recent revelations in Russia show this perfectly.
There needs to be a strong stance taken over their Olympic ban for people to take it seriously. For me, that’s by keeping them away from Rio. Obviously not every Russian athlete is cheating and I do feel bad for the guys who aren’t, but their federation’s stance has been very, very bad for the sport. If they aren’t banned from Rio I don’t know how we can stop this from happening again and again.
My proposal to fix athletics
I don't know if the current technology allows this, but I believe doping authorities should take every single athletes’ blood and urine at the start of every major championships and store it. Then, every year, retest every single sample against any new drugs or detection systems that have come to light for the maximum time possible (currently it’s 10 years).
If this were to be the case, any athlete who cheats knows they’ll most likely fail a test at some point, and until the statute of limitation expires they will never be truly able to relax. They will lead the next decade of their lives constantly looking over their shoulder. Any athlete considering breaking the rules may say: ‘you know what; I’m not going to risk it because eventually, it’ll tarnish my name’.
I’m under no illusion - this sort of policy would cost a huge amount of money and resources. But I ask governing bodies, where else are we going to spend our budget? Is there anything more important to the sport at this moment in history? The money is there, it’s just a choice of where to allocate it. Unless everything we have is funnelled into creating a system where people cannot cheat, we will never get rid of it.
Equally, athletes who have lost out on medals and prize money should be supported in legal action to reclaim their loss against the cheats.
Why can’t athletes sue a country that has systematically doped – like Russia – or indeed the cheats directly? They’ve stolen money, snatched notoriety and adversely impacted other people’s lives. Yet all the authorities say is: ‘give us your medal back and we’ll pass it on’. There’s still no real deterrent.
A New Testament for athletics is needed… but we’re not quite ready
It’s been suggested that we should wipe the slate clean and erase all world records before a certain date - I don’t ever think you can. Even with the suspicious records, we don’t know 100 per cent they were cheating. We don’t hold samples from previous eras, so you simply can’t be sure. And if you can’t prove it, you can’t legally declare someone as a drugs cheat – even if some of the performances are, of course, a joke.
It gets me down to see the sport in this way. I’ve long tried to look at doping as a very small handful of greedy individuals, but the recent revelations have painted a much starker picture. Even away from the drug storm, the sport is struggling.
Competitions that used to be hugely popular have closed due to a lack of finances, the standard at certain meets has declined. There’s no incentive for athletes to traipse across the world to compete against a headline rival, as a) there’s not enough money to run the meet, and b) there’s not enough money to pay the athlete. It’s a multifaceted problem – and there is not one easy answer.
But, what could be a good idea is restarting athletics afresh – a ‘New Testament of Athletics’ perhaps. The sport needs a break from its past, it is no longer a pleasant distraction for plucky amateurs, but it has not truly become a professional sport. We have the Old Testament, what we know of the sport thus far, and now we need a new age, taking advantage of some of the most exciting and novel ideas - street meets, more focus on placing rather than times, and a new approach to sponsorship and athlete’s rights. Then, once the New Testament is in place, perhaps then we can reset our records? We could start afresh… although things most likely will need to get worse before we are really ready to break away from the old and make the sport better.
The sad tale of my friend robbed by doping
My friend (and agent) Andrew Steele is set to retrospectively win an Olympic bronze medal from Beijing, with Russia likely to be disqualified from the 4x400m relay after pipping Great Britain to third. Imagine if that had happened in 2008. It would have changed his life dramatically.
These are his thoughts…
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Great Britain's Andrew Steele (L) and Bahamas' Michael Matieu (R) cross the finish line of the men's first round 400m race at the "Bird's Nest" National Stadium during the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games
Image credit: AFP
“My emotions sit in the Venn diagram of ‘joy’ and ‘anger’. I’ll be thrilled to call myself an Olympic medallist, however late, but that small change from fourth to third would have meant a lot more at the time, and it makes me angry to think of how things may have been different. I’ve calculated that I’ve probably missed out on over £300,000 in earnings – a far cry from the debt I plunged myself into trying to reach London 2012.
“Most importantly, if Russia hadn’t been in the picture, me and my team-mates would have also had that symbolic moment of receiving recognition for our work. Honestly, in a 12-year career, I’ve never had the luck to experience that kind of joy. I’ve only ever really known dissatisfaction with my results. It would have been such an important psychological (and financial) change if I had gotten that bronze at the time.
“I agree that technology permitting, every single participant in the Olympics should have their samples stored and retested once a year, that would be a much stronger deterrent than any other measure so far proposed.”
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