The even more depressing thing ...
I keep on meaning to write at length about the spectre of cheating in sport, horrible as it is, that makes fools of us all, that won't go away. I haven't got the time or the heart, but here are just a few thoughts in light of recent events.
I admire the people that are so appalled by it that they sever contact with sports that they used to love - forget cycling, forget athletics, they say, and that's that.
If you're like me, however, and you're too much of an addict, you love the stats and the struggles and the stories, they keep your life ticking over, the truth is you have to lie to yourself a bit.
I haven't watched athletics and boxing over the last couple of decades without knowing there was a large percentage of cheaters in there, and I know that I don't have a perfect radar capable of picking out the baddies and the goodies. Plenty of my favourites will have cheated, I know that. They'll have lied and lied and cheated and cheated.
When the Salazar/Rupp/ Farah story broke, the fact that, at the same time, Allan Wells was being accused from all sides went relatively unnoticed. I mean, Allan Wells was a bit before my time to be a hero of mine, but still, I'd never had an inkling. Oh well.
Over the next decade or so, I'm quite sure lots of names of beloved, trusted sportspeople will be implicated, some will be proven, we'll have to rewrite our hagiographies.
Yes. it does devalue the sports we love. It sickens. It's horrible because sport stirs such strong emotions. How many of those names I revered over my "Greatest Moments" strand are hiding dark secrets? None? I doubt it.
The blatant cheats are easy. We've seen them for years. Usually, frankly, they're wearing the uniform of some country east of Austria and we don't believe it for a second. And we don't root for them so there's no emotinal investment. And we've been right.
But what of the ones we do invest in, the ones we think are clean, hope are clean. That's when cheating gets really hard to deal with.
Oh well, watch this space ...
I admire the people that are so appalled by it that they sever contact with sports that they used to love - forget cycling, forget athletics, they say, and that's that.
If you're like me, however, and you're too much of an addict, you love the stats and the struggles and the stories, they keep your life ticking over, the truth is you have to lie to yourself a bit.
I haven't watched athletics and boxing over the last couple of decades without knowing there was a large percentage of cheaters in there, and I know that I don't have a perfect radar capable of picking out the baddies and the goodies. Plenty of my favourites will have cheated, I know that. They'll have lied and lied and cheated and cheated.
When the Salazar/Rupp/ Farah story broke, the fact that, at the same time, Allan Wells was being accused from all sides went relatively unnoticed. I mean, Allan Wells was a bit before my time to be a hero of mine, but still, I'd never had an inkling. Oh well.
Over the next decade or so, I'm quite sure lots of names of beloved, trusted sportspeople will be implicated, some will be proven, we'll have to rewrite our hagiographies.
Yes. it does devalue the sports we love. It sickens. It's horrible because sport stirs such strong emotions. How many of those names I revered over my "Greatest Moments" strand are hiding dark secrets? None? I doubt it.
The blatant cheats are easy. We've seen them for years. Usually, frankly, they're wearing the uniform of some country east of Austria and we don't believe it for a second. And we don't root for them so there's no emotinal investment. And we've been right.
But what of the ones we do invest in, the ones we think are clean, hope are clean. That's when cheating gets really hard to deal with.
Oh well, watch this space ...
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