LOCKERROOM: In this job it gets harder and harder to ferret out the heroes. It's easy, of course, to find the stars, just tough to get them to talk to you. And nine times out of 10 you come away wondering why you bothered.
My own hero at the moment is a journalistic colleague who got up from an interview with an Irish soccer international a few weeks ago and said: "Listen, you're just wasting my time." And then he left.
Just after the Winter Olympics went into drug-scandal meltdown and just before the ITV Digital collapse virtually disintegrated the Football League we had occasion to chat to a visitor about, of all things, skateboarding. Skateboarding hasn't got many stars but television wants to provide an entire galaxy worth.
In this country skateboarders have inherited the same outlaw status as corner-boys and boot-boys owned in their time. Young people hanging around in groups, eh? The insurance knot is used as an excuse by local authorities to prevent the kids from having decent facilities so kids roll over speed bumps on the road and any other concrete undulations they can find.
Skateboarding is interesting, though, because in more enlightened places skateboarders devote themselves to a non-competitive sporting lifestyle. That's a world which those of us over the age of 30 have no chance of understanding but have every chance of destroying. Skateboarding is popular with the kids, who are in turn popular with the advertisers, who are popular with TV execs. So naturally television can't wait to corporatise it with stars and manufactured heroes and hokey tournaments bearing the names of sponsors.
And the kids know when television is done with their thing it will drop skateboarding quicker than you can say "new big thing". Television will move on and the kids will be left with sappy competitions that no sponsor wants. So skateboarders suffer the encroachments of television and cling to this quaint idea of people enjoying a sport because it is fun. It's probably something we should be getting our heads around.
Why? Because virtually everything else is bunched and most of what is wrong relates to television. Somewhere along the line when sports realised that selling itself to television would make the sport bigger rather than making attendances smaller we began increasing the rewards and temptations until tradition and ethics became meaningless and big-time sport became an arm of the entertainment industry.
Today the industry is run by executives, who worry about market share and market penetration. Take Hein Verbruggen, the astonishingly resilient president of the International Cycling Union (UCI). Despite everything that has happened in cycling Hein holds down a position on the board of WADA, the world drugs police. One would imagine this could only be the case so Hein can bring his experiences of failure to the table for the perusal and education of his WADA colleagues.
One would imagine wrongly, of course. Hein has a case to make. Hein is tetchy. The world is flat after all, he says. Contrary to the standard scientific view that tests of both blood and urine are necessary to detect EPO, Hein argues the testing of urine alone is sufficient. As security measures go this is the equivalent of asking bank robbers to promise not to rob banks.
So Hein claims a new test performed on urine is sufficient and top scientists claim differently. Educated pointy-heads that they are, they point out that a new form of EPO, indistinguishable from the hormone produced by humans, might not even be detectable by combined use of blood and urine tests. Hein makes these claims even while the trial of alleged doping mastermind Dr Michele Ferrari proceeds in Italy, its daily revelations making ever more darkly comical the circus over which Hein has presided with such pomp.
Hein makes his claim in the same month a fresh doping scandal erupted elsewhere on Europe's cycleways. Bernard Sainz, physiotherapist to Belgian cyclist Frank Vandenbroucke, was arrested last month after police found amphetamines and syringes in his car when he was stopped for a speeding offence. Following that the police raided Vandenbroucke's home and seized some EPO, some morphine, and some of the steroid, clenbuterol.
Who are you going to put your trust in? In Long Island, New York last week Hein Verbruggen went around accusing scientists of putting obstacles in the way of UCI's efforts to get a urine-only EPO test accepted. Arne Ljungqvist, scientist and IOC member, noted of Hein's behaviour: "It is irresponsible for an influential sports leader to do this, especially since his career is rising within the IOC. I have never experienced anything like this."
What exactly is Hein's problem? He claims blood tests are too difficult. As things stand a positive or suspect blood test leads to a subsequent urine test for EPO (erythropoietin) and if the results match up the cyclist incurs an automatic two-week suspension - the ICU has followed this policy since April 2001. For instance, last month's race was the sixth in a row that blood testing was carried out extensively at the Paris-Nice race. Scientists note the latitude given to competitors is immense and the window of opportunity for catching somebody with critically high haematrocrit level is tiny. Even so, cycling needs its illusions back.
Hein needs to get a credible version of his sport back on TV quickly or Hein will have no job. Science has different priorities like proof and exactitude but cycling needs to feed us heroes and guys with shiny smiles who can be trusted to sell the products they endorse. Cycling needs a clean bill of health to hand to the TV people. It matters not a whit if that note is forged.
Thinking of skateboarding and its quiet resistance to TV and contemplating its patient emphasis on participation and enjoyment, one couldn't help paraphrasing Galileo's answer to the old question, unhappy the land that has no stars? No, unhappy the land that needs stars.
So let's hope skateboarding dodges the bullet of world domination through television, that kids rediscover the spirit of play and start sweating in their replica jerseys rather than watching TV in them and maybe the next generation can reclaim the lost soul of sport.
