ATHLETICS:The centenary of the International Association of Athletics Federations would have have been an opportune time to expunge drug-tainted world records, writes IAN O'RIORDAN
I HEAR my friends in Monte Carlo are planning a massive blow-out for later in the year – not just to splash some of their Olympic cash. These aren’t the sort of people that ever need an excuse to party, and as the governors of world athletics, they’re getting irresistibly giddy, the champagne already on ice.
You wouldn’t believe the hard time I get in here for even suggesting that athletics is the headline act at the Olympics, as if some people really care more about the hockey and sailing. Try telling that to my friends at the International Association of Athletics Federations – better known as the IAAF – and they’ll laugh in your face, all the way to their tax-free bank accounts.
Because when it comes to the Olympics, the most important thing for the IAAF is not the winning, nor indeed the taking part, but the TV rights. NBC has already paid $1.2 billion (€900 million) to broadcast from London, in the US alone, and according to the latest Fortune magazine, also agreed a $4.4 billion (€3.3 billion) deal to cover the next four Olympics – winter and summer – from 2014 to 2020, again in the US alone.
That’s crazy money, and a lot of it will be going to the IAAF office in Monte Carlo: the International Olympic Committee (IOC) distributes the summer windfall using a five-tier system, and athletics is the only member of the top tier – reportedly getting a 40 per cent cut. Second-tier sports include swimming and basketball, third-tier sports equestrian and rowing, and the rest is shared among the two lowest tiers, which includes boxing, by the way.
It means the IAAF and the IOC are more than financially secure for at least the next eight years, and should give each other a symbiotic pat on the back. Indeed one essentially grew from the other, as that’s not all the IAAF are celebrating this year. They were actually founded in the immediate aftermath on the Stockholm Olympics, in 1912, for the purpose of growing athletics outside the so-called Olympic cycle, while also standardising world records – which of course makes 2012 their centenary, and that’s what the partying is mostly about.
It’s been an eventful century, and without boring you with the history, it wasn’t until 1985 that they formally abandoned their amateur ideals – later amending their name too, as they were founded as the International Amateur Athletic Federation. They’ll be nothing amateur about their centenary gala, planned for November, and in the meantime they’ve kicked off their celebrations with the creation of a IAAF Hall of Fame, announcing the first 12 inductees, eight men, and four women.
The men, in no particular order, are Jesse Owens, Abebe Bikila, Paavo Nurmi, Carl Lewis, Emil Zátopek, Al Oerter, Ed Moses and Adhemar da Silva; the women are Fanny Blankers-Koen, Betty Cuthbert, Jackie Joyner-Kersee, and Wang Junxia. Presumably, none of these athletes will need any introduction here, although to be honest, I did have to remind myself what was so great about Adhemar da Silva (he won back-to-back Olympic triple jumps, in 1952 and 1956, set four world records, and is so far the only South American on the list).
The IAAF will announce another 12 later in the year, then add further names as they see fit. But it’s not like anyone can apply: to be even considered, athletes must have won at least two Olympic or World Championships gold medals and set at least one world record.
Unfortunately that rules out any Irish athletes from getting in, and probably always will – unless they consider Sonia O’Sullivan’s world record over 2,000 metres, as she did win three World titles, after all, (and was possibly cheated out of at least one Olympic gold). But there’ll be no way in for the likes of John Treacy, Eamonn Coghlan, or even Ronnie Delany.
They’re not alone – off the top of my head there’s a very impressive list of athletes who definitely aren’t eligible, including Steve Ovett, John Walker, Herb Elliott, even Roger Bannister – who unluckily for them competed in the pre-World Championship era. But it’s the world record requirement that already undermines the credibility of this Hall of Fame – given so many of the IAAF world records are no longer “eligible” to begin with.
The likes of Usain Bolt and the African distance runners have at least kept some of the men’s world records ticking over, but a quick glance over the women’s world records makes the whole thing laughable.
The women’s track records alone now have a combined age of 303 years, or three times longer than the entire IAAF history, while the women’s field records are equally relic. The obvious explanation is that most of these records were set by athletes consuming industrial amounts of anabolic steroids, or some equally sinister substance of performing enhancement – not that anyone needs me to start pointing the finger. Chances are some of these records will outlive the women who set them, and in the case of Florence Griffith-Joyner, they already have.
Her 10.49 for 100m and 21.34 for 200m were set in 1988, 24 years ago, and whatever about the rumours of steroid abuse, the 10.49 was clocked at the US Olympic trials on a day the wind gauge suddenly malfunctioned, when everyone knew it was way over the legal limit. Sadly, Flo-Jo is no longer around to defend her case as she died in 1998, aged just 38, of a sudden epileptic seizure.
Even worse is the women’s 400m world record of 47.60, set in 1985, in Canberra, Australia, and still credited to Marita Koch of the former East Germany. It’s not just that Koch ran this time out of lane two, and that no other women has even broken 48 seconds in the 27 years since, but that the infamous Statsi files, published in 1991, presented ample evidence of East Germany’s systematic steroid abuse, listing the actually dosages administered to Koch.
It’s no coincidence Koch’s East German team-mates set the world 4x100m relay at that same meeting in Canberra, running 41.37 seconds, which also still stands. It’s also safe to assume the East Germans weren’t the only dodgy customers at the time, which explains why the former Czechoslovakian Jarmila Kratochvilova still claims the 800m world record with her 1:53.28, set in 1983, and the Bulgarian Yordanka Donkova the 100 metres hurdles world record of 12.21, set in 1988 – and check out those women on YouTube.
I can’t believe the IAAF had the nerve to include Wang Junxia in their Hall of Fame, when her 10,000m world record – along with the other Chinese records at 1,500m and 3,000m – are perhaps the most suspicious of the lot. Sure, Junxia never failed a drugs test, yet her 29:31.78, set in 1993, happened to coincide with the proliferation of a then undetectable drug known as EPO.
What is certain is that no other woman, including the all-conquering Africans, has run within 22 seconds in the 19 years since I just know the IAAF would have found a few more friends had they decided to mark their centenary year by cleaning the slate on their world records, or at least burying those effectively written in stone.
It would have been a nice time to start over, and even though they’d probably be hit with all sorts of litigation, it’s not like they couldn’t afford the pay out.
It would definitely make athletics the headline act in London, as if it wasn’t that already.
