For the next 16 days, my role with Radio Sport has me commentating the Games of the 31st Olympiad taking place in Rio de Janeiro.
And for the next 16 days, every single athlete that I call in commentary will be clean.
That’s right; none of them will be using illegal performance enhancing substances.
You are hearing me correctly, every single last one them, clean … yep, even the Russians.
Is that naivety?
It’s my choice.
You see I’ve had a gutsful of allowing my enjoyment of sport to be lessened by the spectre of drugs cheats.
I’m sick & tired of finding myself reacting with flippant scepticism when I hear of great sporting achievements.
A fortnight ago, when we heard the news that the women’s 100 metre hurdles world record was broken by American Kendra Harrison at the Diamond League meeting in London, Antz (producer of the All Sport Breakfast) & I looked at each other through the glass panel that divides the on-air studio from the producers suite, we both pressed our intercom buttons simultaneously & said virtually the same thing to each other – “wonder what she’s on”.
As I drove home from Auckland to Hamilton after the show later that morning, I got to thinking about that moment.
And more I thought about it the more I felt embarrassed & disappointed for my reaction.
This young lady (Harrison is 23 years old) has never failed a drugs test in her athletics career, but because she broke a record that had stood for 28 years; a record set by a Bulgarian athlete; a record set in an era that we now know saw Eastern Bloc countries artificially enhancing their athletes’ ability to perform, I cynically & unfoundedly tarred her with that same brush.
To Kendra Harrison, I unreservedly apologise.
The battle to root out doping in sport is ongoing & full victory may never be achieved, but I believe that more battles are being won that have been previously.
I mean, they did recently catch an entire country after all.
For a moment, forget about the weak, spineless, politically & financially driven non-decision of International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach not to issue a blanket ban of Russia from these Games; a World Anti-Doping Agency independent investigator discovered a state sponsored, systematic doping programme in one of the major sporting nations.
Can you imagine how different sport would be today had that same result had been achieved back in the eighties with the likes of … oh lets pick three countries as examples …East Germany, Bulgaria and … Russia.
It’s not a perfect system, one that sure as heck ain’t being helped by the person with the greatest power to reinforce its work on this global stage, but it’s a system that is finding PED users & we have to trust that those who try to cheat the system at Rio will get caught.
Commentary is about describing and painting a mental picture of what is happening in that moment in time.
That’s why I’m choosing to commentate as if everyone is clean because I believe I owe that much to the New Zealand athletes that I will call at these Games, who have undoubtedly reached this pinnacle event by being clean athletes & do not deserve their efforts to be broadcast in a manner tainted by perceptions of what may or may not happen in the future.
The majority of athletes at the Olympics strive to achieve the essence of the Olympic motto of "Faster, Higher, Stronger".
So why should we lend ourselves to cynicism created by the minority of athletes whose motto is “Ingest, Inject, Transfuse”?
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