tag:theconversation.com,2011:/global/topics/iaaf-19166/articlesIAAF – The Conversation2023-07-14T10:14:18Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2097062023-07-14T10:14:18Z2023-07-14T10:14:18ZCaster Semenya’s legal victory is significant for human rights, but doesn’t necessarily mean she’ll be able to compete again – here’s why<p>Olympic athlete Caster Semenya has repeatedly come into conflict with competition rules set out by the athletics governing body, <a href="https://worldathletics.org/">World Athletics</a> (formerly known as the IAAF). These rules require athletes like Semenya, who has what is known as a difference of sexual development (DSD), to reduce their blood testosterone level when competing in a number of events. These rules have meant that Semenya has not been allowed to compete in her preferred events since 2019.</p>
<p>Semenya first brought legal action against these rules at the <a href="https://www.tas-cas.org/en/general-information/index/">court of arbitration for sport</a> (CAS), based in Switzerland. This challenge was rejected, as were several subsequent appeals.</p>
<p>Semenya has now had a legal victory at the European court of human rights, <a href="https://www.echr.coe.int/w/judgment-concerning-switzerland">which found</a> that the Swiss state violated her human rights in its handling of earlier cases. Four out of the court’s seven judges agreed that Switzlerand’s courts failed to consider Semenya’s human rights in sufficient depth when hearing her case.</p>
<p>This decision is an undoubted victory for Semenya, and is a landmark judgment as far as the relationship between sport and human rights is concerned. But it is important to be clear on the precise way in which the court found a violation of her human rights – and why it won’t necessarily result in a change to the rules on DSD athletes.</p>
<p>Cases before the human rights court are brought against states who have signed the European convention on human rights. It is not possible to bring a case against a private body such as a sports organisation. This means that the World Athletics regulations – which were <a href="https://www.runnersworld.com/news/a43401709/world-athletics-new-regulations-dsd-transgender-athletes/">updated earlier this year</a> to make it even harder for DSD athletes to compete – still stand. There is no immediate prospect of Semenya returning to international athletics. </p>
<h2>A long legal battle</h2>
<p>Doctors measure testosterone in <a href="https://theconversation.com/testosterone-why-defining-a-normal-level-is-hard-to-do-113587">nanomoles per litre</a> (nmol/l). In 2018 <a href="https://worldathletics.org/news/press-release/eligibility-regulations-for-female-classifica">the IAAF ruled</a> that athletes with certain DSDs would have to maintain a blood testosterone level of below five nmol/l for a continuous period of at least six months before competing in a number of restricted events. This could be done by taking medication such as <a href="https://worldathletics.org/news/press-release/eligibility-regulations-for-female-classifica">oral contraceptives</a>, which Semenya was reluctant to do because of their side effects. </p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/caster-semenya-how-much-testosterone-is-too-much-for-a-female-athlete-116391">Caster Semenya: how much testosterone is too much for a female athlete?</a>
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<p>Semenya challenged the IAAF rules before the court of arbitration for sport. In 2019, her <a href="https://olympics.com/en/news/caster-semenya-cas-testosterone-decision-iaaf">challenge was refused</a>. The court ruled that although the regulations were, in principle, discriminatory, they could be justified on the basis that they were a “necessary, reasonable and proportionate” way to ensure fair competition. </p>
<p>Given the CAS sits in Lausanne, Switzerland, Semenya’s first avenue for appeal was the Swiss Federal Tribunal. Her <a href="http://opiniojuris.org/2020/09/30/the-decision-of-the-swiss-federal-supreme-court-in-the-caster-semenya-case-a-human-rights-and-gender-analysis/">case was rejected</a>, leading her to file a further appeal claiming that her rights under the European convention on human rights had been violated. </p>
<p>This is the claim that has now been upheld. The <a href="https://www.echr.coe.int/w/judgment-concerning-switzerland">court ruled</a> that her right to non-discrimination in respect of her private and family life, as well as her right to an effective legal remedy, had been violated. </p>
<p>The court did not reach this decision on the basis of the content of the regulations, however, as the IAAF (now World Athletics) is a private organisation, and not directly bound by human rights treaties. Instead, the court said that the CAS and the Swiss federal tribunal had not looked in sufficient depth at the convention on human rights when considering the IAAF’s justification for the regulations. This meant that the Swiss state had not adequately safeguarded her human rights through the legal process open to her. </p>
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<img alt="Women running on an athletics track" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537346/original/file-20230713-29-keyl2p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537346/original/file-20230713-29-keyl2p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537346/original/file-20230713-29-keyl2p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537346/original/file-20230713-29-keyl2p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537346/original/file-20230713-29-keyl2p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537346/original/file-20230713-29-keyl2p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537346/original/file-20230713-29-keyl2p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Caster Semenya competes in the 800m at the Olympics in Rio.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/rio-de-janeiro-brazil-august-16-680557027">Celso Pupo/Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p>If Semenya wishes to establish that the regulations themselves violate her human rights, she will probably need to go back to court once again. She would, however, be armed with a judgment stipulating that her rights under the European convention on human rights must be fully considered.</p>
<h2>Changing the rules of sport</h2>
<p>Historically, sports governing bodies have been <a href="https://www.entsportslawjournal.com/article/id/840/">very attached</a> to the idea that they are autonomous and, therefore, fall outside the scrutiny of external legal norms. </p>
<p>However, <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/publications/guidingprinciplesbusinesshr_en.pdf">UN principles</a> state that businesses have a corporate responsibility to respect human rights. This applies to private bodies such as sports organisations. This decision from the human rights court suggests that courts in signatory states must consider human rights when reviewing disputes between athletes and sports governing bodies. </p>
<p>This should, in theory, mean that sports organisations will take more care to uphold human rights, mindful that subsequent legal challenges are likely to measure their activities against the European convention. Alternatively, sports bodies may well continue to turn a blind eye to their obligation to respect the convention and further cases will follow. </p>
<p>In 2019, the CAS praised Semenya for her “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2019/05/01/court-decides-against-caster-semenyas-appeal-controversial-rule/">grace and fortitude</a>” in this legal process. Her tenacity has been rewarded with a judgment that may well prove to be a pivotal point in the protection of athletes’ human rights. That would be some legacy, though probably not the one Semenya dreamt of.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/209706/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Eleanor Drywood does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The judgment is a watershed moment for the relationship between sport and human rights.Eleanor Drywood, Senior Lecturer in Law, University of LiverpoolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1201352019-09-27T08:10:57Z2019-09-27T08:10:57ZWorld Athletics Championships: study busts myth of the hurdler’s start<p>Runners in the 2019 World <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/athletics-3374">Athletics</a> Championships in Qatar will know that, when winning depends on a difference of a few thousandths of a second, getting a good start is crucial. Intuition suggests the way athletes start a race should depend on the event. Hurdlers, for example, need to clear their first barrier after only seven or eight steps, while sprinters are faced with a clear track all the way to the finish line.</p>
<p>In fact, it’s a common belief that hurdlers “pop up” out of the blocks. That is, they adopt an upright posture more quickly because they need to clear that first hurdle, compared to sprinters’ continued forward lean for acceleration. <a href="http://ucoach.com/assets/uploads/files/Hurdling_For_Young_Athletes_2011.pdf">Coaching texts</a> have kept the idea of this apparent difference alive. But, until now, no one had directly compared exactly how hurdlers and sprinters start. Our <a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fspor.2019.00023/full">newly published study</a> suggests that, in reality, the two types of athlete start their races in quite a similar way. So there is lots to learn from each other about how they could improve their performance.</p>
<p>Our study, conducted at the most recent World Indoor Championships in Birmingham 2018, for the first time analysed in depth the sprint start techniques of the very best male athletes in the world. It gives an impression of how top athletes perform when gold medals are on the line. The project was led by our colleague <a href="https://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?user=78NK8vIAAAAJ&hl=en">Dr Athanassios Bissas</a> and backed by the <a href="https://www.iaaf.org/news/press-release/biomechanics-research-world-indoor-championsh">International Association of Athletics Federations</a>.</p>
<p>Coaches and scientists like to break down the sprinting action into different phases to help with their analyses. The sprint start is often divided into the initial push with both feet on the blocks, followed by the phase in which only the front foot remains pushing on the blocks. Then each step the athlete takes is composed of a flight phase and a ground contact phase. </p>
<p>Each of these phases can be analysed in minute detail to try to shave those vital fractions of a second from the final race time. Using four high-speed cameras around the arena, we created a detailed computer model of each of our male athletes. These were then combined to create overall models of performance separately for sprinters and hurdlers, for comparison.</p>
<p>Athletes can choose how close to the starting line to place their starting blocks. They typically want to be as close to the line as possible without being too hunched up in a way that would negatively affect their start. Our study shows that hurdlers set their blocks up nearer to the line than sprinters, probably because they are aware of the need to reach the first hurdle in only seven steps without having to overstretch.</p>
<p>By the time the athletes have left the blocks, the hurdlers have pushed themselves slightly further forwards and upwards than the sprinters. But overall, their body positions are remarkably similar.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/293248/original/file-20190919-22450-bruh40.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/293248/original/file-20190919-22450-bruh40.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/293248/original/file-20190919-22450-bruh40.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=200&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/293248/original/file-20190919-22450-bruh40.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=200&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/293248/original/file-20190919-22450-bruh40.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=200&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/293248/original/file-20190919-22450-bruh40.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=251&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/293248/original/file-20190919-22450-bruh40.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=251&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/293248/original/file-20190919-22450-bruh40.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=251&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Sprinter’s (black stick figure) and hurdler’s (grey stick figure) body positions in the set position and when each foot comes off the starting block.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Bezodis et al. 2019</span></span>
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<p>At first foot contact with the track, upper bodies of hurdlers are in a more upright position than that of the sprinters, but their lower body positions are all similar. By the time the athletes have left the ground, both their upper and lower body positions match more closely across the groups. This pattern of differences repeats for the first three steps that we measured.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/293249/original/file-20190919-22433-sx0cl1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/293249/original/file-20190919-22433-sx0cl1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/293249/original/file-20190919-22433-sx0cl1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=292&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/293249/original/file-20190919-22433-sx0cl1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=292&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/293249/original/file-20190919-22433-sx0cl1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=292&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/293249/original/file-20190919-22433-sx0cl1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=367&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/293249/original/file-20190919-22433-sx0cl1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=367&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/293249/original/file-20190919-22433-sx0cl1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=367&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Sprinter’s (black stick figure) and hurdler’s (grey stick figure) body positions at touchdown and take-off of the first step after the blocks.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Bezodis et al. 2019</span></span>
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<p>The difference in upper body positions when the athletes’ feet hit the track is probably what creates the impression that there are large differences between sprinters and hurdlers. It’s what makes the hurdlers look like they are indeed “popping up”. But the hurdlers’ techniques looks much like that of the sprinters by the end of the first ground contact.</p>
<p>Extensive <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21364480">previous</a> research <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40279-019-01138-1">on sprinters</a> has shown how effective they are at projecting themselves forwards rather than upwards from the blocks. The similarities that we have found suggest that hurdlers are almost as effective at this forward propulsion, despite the imposing physical barriers in front of them.</p>
<h2>Implications for training</h2>
<p>We think our study has two major implications. First, it could be a lot easier for athletes to transfer from sprinting to hurdling than currently thought. There is little in our work to suggest that sprinters would struggle with performing an effective approach to the first hurdle. Giving hurdles a try might allow some sprinters to discover an event that they are more suited to.</p>
<p>Second, hurdlers can learn much about effective acceleration from sprinters. They should be encouraged to explore the range of their capabilities with and without hurdles. Coaches should focus on the similarities between the two events, rather than the perceived differences. This would offer more opportunities for coaches and athletes to improve.</p>
<p>There are many questions that remain unanswered, especially relating to hurdling technique, which has received much less scientific attention than <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-to-find-your-best-running-style-60398">that of sprinters</a>. For one thing, female hurdlers have to clear lower barriers so may not respond in the same way. Additionally, studies investigating how athletes change their technique as they progress from novice to national level to world class would be incredibly valuable to our understanding.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/120135/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ian Bezodis has previously received funding from Welsh Athletics and Sport Wales. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Josh Walker and Matthew Wood do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Coaches have long thought hurdlers and sprinters start their races differently – our research suggests they need to adjust their thinking.Ian Bezodis, Senior Lecturer in Sports Biomechanics, Cardiff Metropolitan UniversityJosh Walker, PhD Candidate in Sports Biomechanics, Leeds Beckett UniversityMatthew Wood, Lecturer in Performance Sport, Cardiff Metropolitan UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1176362019-05-27T12:40:23Z2019-05-27T12:40:23ZCaster Semenya: the legal and ethical issues that should concern us all<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/276098/original/file-20190523-187169-ry853r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Caster Semenya at the IAAF Diamond League athletics meeting in Doha, Qatar, 03 May 2019.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Noushad Thekkayil/EPA</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Early last year the <a href="https://www.iaaf.org/home">International Association of Athletics Federations</a> (IAAF) introduced regulations requiring South African 800m Olympic champion <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/sport/caster-semenya">Caster Semenya</a> – and other middle distance runners with differences of sex development – to lower their naturally high levels of testosterone. </p>
<p>In February 2019 Semenya’s legal team argued that the policy was invalid. But in May the <a href="https://www.tas-cas.org/en/index.html">Court of Arbitration for Sport</a> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2019/may/01/caster-semenya-loses-landmark-legal-case-iaaf-athletics">ruled</a> that discrimination in sport is legal provided it is justified. In July, a Swiss court backed the IAAF’s ruling and she was <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2019/jul/30/caster-semenya-blocked-defending-800-metres-title-athletics-world-championships">barred from competing</a> at the World Championships in Doha.</p>
<p>The way in which the IAAF has gone about dealing with Semenya raises serious legal and ethical concerns. And Semenya isn’t the only athlete involved. This is an issue that goes beyond just the difference of sex development. It goes to the fundamental root of human dignity, of privacy of every athlete who participates at the World Championships.</p>
<p>There are ethical concerns about the way in which the research was conducted that led to the decision. The legal concerns revolve around serious fundamental rights concerns, in particular in the way a number of female athletes have been treated. </p>
<p>In a <a href="https://www.sportsandtaxation.com/2017/01/you-can-play-as-long-as-you-dont-win-legal-perspectives-on-the-regulations-pertaining-to-the-participation-of-women-with-hyperandrogenism-in-womens-athletics/">paper</a> I wrote two years ago – “You can play as long as you don’t win: Legal perspectives on the regulations pertaining to the participation of women with hyperandrogenism in women’s athletics” – I explored the big ethical and legal problems I believe are involved in Semenya’s case, as well as those of dozens of other women. </p>
<p>My view is that some women are being singled out because they are different. If Semenya looked different, if she was a blonde bombshell or if she didn’t win, we wouldn’t be having this debate today. </p>
<p>My big concern is that if this ruling by the Court for Arbitration in Sport remains unchallenged, this way of thinking and behaving might filter into the <a href="https://www.olympic.org/the-ioc">International Olympic Committee</a>, the overarching body that regulates sport. That, in turn, will affect all its affiliations. These include the national Olympic committees and international federations like the IAAF and Fifa and the national associations under them.</p>
<p>That’s fundamentally wrong.</p>
<h2>The ethics question</h2>
<p>The first problem lies in the way in which the IAAF conducted the research on which the regulations were purportedly based. </p>
<p>At an event like the World Athletics Champonships, the IAAF will be responsible for conducting anti-doping tests. It will set up anti-doping control stations and collect the samples from athletes. </p>
<p>As part of the process athletes who enter agreements to participate in World Athletics Championships will also give consent to the IAAF to conduct these tests. Part of that consent is also that they will, in terms of the rules, keep these samples for up to 10 years. They can re-test later for substances but they can also conduct research on anti-doping matters. </p>
<p>That’s important.</p>
<p>What happened in practice was that in 2011 and 2013 the IAAF instructed athletes to give both urine and blood samples. The reason given was that they were developing what is called a biological passport. This is an athlete’s biological profile that’s developed over a period of time. A sudden anomaly could indicate that there’s a doping or some other issue.</p>
<p>The problem is that IAAF passed these samples onto its medical commission, which conducted its own research to determine the hormone levels of the athletes. </p>
<p>The argument being forwarded by the IAAF is that this is about doping. But the World Anti-Doping Agency stated in the Dutee Chand case before the Court of Arbitration for Sport that the regulations on hyper-androgenism or difference of sex development had nothing to do with anti-doping. </p>
<p>This raises the question: if biological samples that have been collected for one purpose by one entity are passed onto another entity to do research for which consent has not been given, is this a lawful use of that sample?</p>
<p>The basis of modern ethical biological research and medical treatment is the <a href="https://www.wma.net/policies-post/wma-declaration-of-helsinki-ethical-principles-for-medical-research-involving-human-subjects/">Declaration of Helsinki</a>. Though not an internationally legally binding document, it’s nevertheless set the standard for a lot of countries, including South Africa, that have developed their own biomedical laws.</p>
<p>In South Korea – where the tests took place – the Helsinki Declaration led to the adoption of the Bioethics and Safety Act. This states that to conduct any form of biomedical research you need the informed consent of the individuals. But none of the athletes – and I have spoken to a number who have participated at these championships – have been informed these samples could be used on hormone research.</p>
<p>Lots of countries have similar rules. For example Monaco, where the IAAF is based, has a strong requirement that there must be proper, informed consent. </p>
<p>One thing all of these laws have in common is that the consent can be withdrawn at any stage and there should be no penalty for that. And it’s a criminal offence if one does not obtain the proper, informed consent.</p>
<p>This issue has been raised repeatedly with the IAAF throughout the process. But to no avail.</p>
<p>I’m still to see that there is a single form or indication that any athlete has been properly informed of the nature of the research conducted, who will conduct the research, what the possible consequences are, what it means for the athlete and how their identity is being protected in the process.</p>
<p>The IAAF has not been able to produce any of this. And the Court of Arbitration for Sport dismissed these arguments and considered all the evidence that had been collected in spite of the lack of informed consent. </p>
<h2>Human rights</h2>
<p>The second major issue relates to massive human rights concerns.</p>
<p>The rights I’m referring to are set out in the <a href="https://www.echr.coe.int/Documents/Convention_ENG.pdf">European Convention on Human Rights</a>, in particular Articles 2 and 8. </p>
<p>Let me begin with Article 8 which I believe should have been applied and was in fact raised before the court. It provides that everyone has the right to respect for private and family life. In the case of <a href="https://swarb.co.uk/solomakhin-v-ukraine-echr-15-mar-2012/">Solomakhin v Ukraine</a>, for example, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that any compulsory medical intervention, even if it was of a minor importance, constituted an interference with this right. </p>
<p>Effectively coercing a healthy athlete into taking hormone treatment is certainly a compulsory medical intervention. They can argue that she has the choice. But there is no choice.</p>
<p>For its part, Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine provides that the interest of welfare of each human being takes precedence over the interest of society. </p>
<p>Even the IAAF’s <a href="https://www.iaaf.org/about-iaaf/documents/constitution">constitution</a>, in article 3, gives a commitment to human rights with ethical values, while the Olympic Charter is against any form of discrimination and is for the promotion of women, equality of men and women, sport for all.</p>
<p>These have all been laid bare as empty promises.</p>
<p><em>Correction: The article has been corrected to clarify that the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) was not responsible for the collection and handling of the anti-doping samples at the 2011 and 2013 IAAF World Championships and the ethical concerns raised are not attributable to WADA. The author apologises to WADA for this oversight and any embarrassment or inconvenience it may have caused.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/117636/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Steve Cornelius receives funding from the National Research Foundation. He was part of the legal team which presented the case for Athletics South Africa before the Court of Arbitration for Sport. </span></em></p>If the Semenya ruling by the Court for Arbitration in Sport remains unchallenged, this way of thinking and behaving might filter into the International Olympic CommitteeSteve Cornelius, Professor of Private Law, University of PretoriaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1164952019-05-03T21:02:27Z2019-05-03T21:02:27ZThe demonization of Caster Semenya continues<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/272567/original/file-20190503-103068-1hdwfh2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C270%2C5472%2C3366&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">South Africa's Caster Semenya in the moments before the women's 800-meter final during the Diamond League athletics event in Doha, Qatar on May 3. The world champion easily won the race, but her future remains in doubt.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Kamran Jebreili)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Caster Semenya, one of the world’s greatest female middle-distance runners, may be forced to quit the event she has dominated for a decade. After easily winning the 800-metre race at an international meet in Doha on May 3, the South African athlete was defiant in saying she won’t comply with new restrictions that will be placed on her at future competitions.</p>
<p>“No man, or any other human, can stop me from running,” she said after the race, her first — and possibly last — competition since a controversial ruling by the supreme court of international sport.</p>
<p>Her defiant words were in reaction to <a href="https://www.tas-cas.org/fileadmin/user_upload/Media_Release_Semenya_ASA_IAAF_decision.pdf">a horrible ruling by the Court of Arbitration for Sport</a>, which denied an appeal by Semenya against the policy of track and field’s international governing body.</p>
<p>The International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) had previously ruled that female athletes like Semenya who have naturally high levels of testosterone must now take hormone-suppressing drugs to compete in any event between 400 metres and one mile. (There are five such events at the international level.) The court decision means the IAAF rules go into effect May 8.</p>
<p>The IAAF policy is based on bad science, flies in the face of best practice in policy making, overrides human rights and will cause tremendous anxiety and even harm among the female athletes in the world, particularly those in the Global South.</p>
<h2>Rules could cause harm</h2>
<p>Even the Court of Arbitration for Sport cautions that there are serious problems with the IAAF policy, including the potential for harmful side effects that hormonal treatment could cause for the athletes who must now take the medication to compete.</p>
<p>The Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sports, which directs Canada’s anti-doping program, the Canadian Association for the Advancement of Women and Sports and AthletesCAN, the association of Canadian national team athletes, <a href="https://cces.ca/news/cces-caaws-and-athletescan-very-concerned-cas-ruling-iaafs-eligibility-regulations-female">have condemned the decision</a>. Athletics Canada has said <a href="https://athletics.ca/athletics-canada-statement-on-iaaf-female-eligibility-regulations/">it won’t implement the policy in Canada</a>.</p>
<p>Before the judgment was rendered, independent experts for the UN Human Rights group <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/_layouts/15/WopiFrame.aspx?sourcedoc=/Documents/Issues/Health/Letter_IAAF_Sept2018.pdf&action=default&DefaultItemOpen=1">wrote the IAAF urging it to cancel the policy</a>. But some track and field athletes came out to support the policy, insisting that <a href="https://www.insidethegames.biz/articles/1077368/isinbayeva-backs-iaaf-and-says-female-athletes-with-high-testosterone-have-colossal-advantage">female athletes with high levels of testosterone have a “colossal” advantage</a>.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/272569/original/file-20190503-103063-1nba6ah.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/272569/original/file-20190503-103063-1nba6ah.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/272569/original/file-20190503-103063-1nba6ah.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/272569/original/file-20190503-103063-1nba6ah.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/272569/original/file-20190503-103063-1nba6ah.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=518&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/272569/original/file-20190503-103063-1nba6ah.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=518&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/272569/original/file-20190503-103063-1nba6ah.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=518&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Semenya flexes her muscles after winning the gold medal in the women’s 800-metre at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Frank Gunn</span></span>
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<p>Why has Semenya been so demonized?</p>
<p>As a professor of kinesiology and physical education who competed in athletics at the 1964 Olympics, it’s my view the explanation is to be found in a misunderstanding of natural testosterone, a narrow misreading of the Olympic values, the distrust engendered by almost century of sex testing in international sports and a failure of leadership on the part of the IAAF.</p>
<p>Synthetic testosterone is justly banned from Canadian and international sports (except for approved therapeutic purposes). If taken carefully, at the time of hard training, it can enable significant strength and speed gains and reduce the risk of injury.</p>
<h2>Not a reliable measure</h2>
<p>But natural testosterone is not the same thing. It may aid performance, but it may not. <a href="https://science.sciencemag.org/content/348/6237/858.full">As Yale University researcher Katrina Karkazis has argued</a>, there is no predictable relationship between natural testosterone and improved performance. Even in the same person, testosterone levels can change over time, depending on a range of factors. It’s not a reliable measure, and it will be very difficult, if not impossible, to monitor without frequent, invasive testing. </p>
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<p>Then there’s the ethical question. On what basis do you exclude athletes because of who they are? Natural testosterone is a human condition. When I used to urge athletes against doping, I often said “play with your own chemicals.” Now the IAAF is banning female athletes who play with their own chemicals. The Court of Arbitration for Sport emphasized that Semenya was not cheating, and that she should be admired for her athleticism and courage.</p>
<p>High natural testosterone occurs from a genetic mutation, not unlike the <a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/muscular-dystrophy-patient-olympic-medalist-same-genetic-mutation">hundreds of other genetic mutations that confer advantage in sports</a>, such as exceptional height, reach and ability to draw oxygen into the blood stream. Virtually every top athlete has at least one of these inherent advantages. The Olympic spirit is to rejoice in the diversity of humankind.</p>
<h2>Fairness? Let’s address these issues</h2>
<p>If the concern is really the fairness of condition, those who fear Semenya should address the huge international differences in personal and national income, the most consistent factor determining athletic performance because of the advantages it can buy in better training facilities, nutrition, coaching, medical assistance and so on.</p>
<p>Why is no effort made to balance out these other factors? Would Canadians who support the IAAF against Semenya like it if they were required to train under the same conditions as their competitors from the Global South? Of course not. </p>
<p>Sadly, Semenya has not been the first highly successful female athlete to be accused of masculine qualities and to face banning from sports. In fact, from the very beginning of high-level women’s sport, <a href="https://slate.com/technology/2019/05/caster-semenya-testosterone-gender-appeal-ruling.html">the best athletes have been so vilified.</a></p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Kathrine Switzer, the first woman to compete in the Boston Marathon in 1967, was told women were too delicate to run long distances.</span></figcaption>
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<h2>Sex testing started decades ago</h2>
<p>In the 1930s, the men who controlled sports claimed that such women were “abnormal” and introduced “gender verification” to police them. In the 1960s, when women from the Soviet Union and the newly independent nations of the Global South, many of whom didn’t look like western women, began to win many of the medals, the test was made universal.</p>
<p>Every female athlete I know can recount the stress of “gender verification” and hundreds suffered from the stigma of false positives. <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/sports/gender-testing-at-olympics-abolished-at-last/article25459571/">Worldwide opposition led to the abolition of the universal sex test in 1999</a>, but the very same people who administered it tried again when Semenya raced onto the scene. The legacy of this history continues to pit women against women and poison the sport.</p>
<p>What’s most troubling is the way the IAAF leadership has aggressively campaigned for this test. Instead of standing up for Semenya, admiring her and conducting an educational campaign to clarify the issues, IAAF president Sebastian Coe has made it his personal crusade to chase her from the sport. </p>
<p>But history is on Semenya’s side. As the Court of Arbitration for Sport’s decision acknowledges, there are so many problems with the IAAF policy that no doubt another legal challenge will be mounted before long. </p>
<p>Let’s hope that the next time, gender policing in sports will be abolished once and for all. And let’s hope that more track and field athletes will recognize the justice of Semenya’s cause and support her.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/116495/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Bruce Kidd does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The great South African runner Caster Semenya may have competed in her last 800-metre race. She has been demonized for more than a decade, like many other female athletes before her.Bruce Kidd, Professor of Kinesiology, University of TorontoLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1164172019-05-02T22:22:54Z2019-05-02T22:22:54ZIt’s not clear where human rights fit in the legal ruling on athlete Caster Semenya<p>On May 1 the Court of Arbitration for Sport (<a href="https://www.tas-cas.org/en/index.html">CAS</a>) issued a highly anticipated ruling involving athlete Caster Semenya and Athletics South Africa as claimants, and the International Association of Athletics Federations (<a href="https://www.iaaf.org/home">IAAF</a>). </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.tas-cas.org/en/general-information/news-detail/article/semenya-asa-and-iaaf-executive-summary.html">ruling</a> upheld the IAAF’s eligibility regulation that restricted female athletes, including Semenya, with “differences of sex development” – broadly taken to mean high levels of testosterone – from entering certain international athletic events. </p>
<p>It means Semenya <a href="https://theconversation.com/caster-semenya-how-much-testosterone-is-too-much-for-a-female-athlete-116391">will have to take medication</a> to lower her testosterone levels if she wishes to continue competing internationally in running events.</p>
<p>This decision is within the sports law decision-making framework. But what about Semenya’s human rights? <a href="http://ap.ohchr.org/documents/dpage_e.aspx?si=A/HRC/40/L.10/Rev.1">Recent publications</a> from the United Nations Human Rights Council (<a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/hrbodies/hrc/pages/home.aspx">UNHRC</a>) criticise the “discriminatory regulations” relating to lowering testosterone in female athletes. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/caster-semenya-how-much-testosterone-is-too-much-for-a-female-athlete-116391">Caster Semenya: how much testosterone is too much for a female athlete?</a>
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<p>Semenya’s case shows the challenges in balancing a range of interests in maintaining fair competition. On the one hand, the IAAF’s claim of a “legitimate, necessary and proportionate” method to ensure a level playing field in competitive sport. On the other, the rights of those with hyperandrogenism (a condition where the body produces relatively high levels of testosterone) in competing against females with so-called “normal” testosterone levels.</p>
<h2>Who is Caster Semenya?</h2>
<p>As an athlete competing in IAAF events, 28-year-old Semenya is well known for her athletic prowess in her chosen sport. </p>
<p>The public scrutiny <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2019/may/01/how-caster-semenya-controversy-unfolded-since-2009-timeline">Semenya endured in 2009</a> when subject to gender testing increased public attention on her physical attributes. </p>
<p>After being cleared to run again, Semenya’s domination continued to raise <a href="https://academic.oup.com/jcem/article/97/11/3902/2836438">controversy</a> about perceived unfairness of being included in female classified events. Others described her physical advantage akin to an adult competing against a child in the <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-06-19/caster-semenya-to-challenge-iaaf-female-classification-rule/9884762">same competition</a>.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/testosterone-why-defining-a-normal-level-is-hard-to-do-113587">Testosterone: why defining a 'normal' level is hard to do</a>
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<h2>The IAAF sets the rules</h2>
<p>The IAAF is the legitimate rule-maker in the world of athletics. Athletes agree to be bound by the IAAF rules if they want to compete.</p>
<p>In April 2018 the “Eligibility Regulations for Female Classification (Athletes with Differences of Sex Development)” – known as the <a href="https://www.iaaf.org/news/press-release/eligibility-regulations-for-female-classifica">DSD regulations</a> – were set out. </p>
<p>These established the criteria for women to compete in the female classification of the 400m, 800m and 1500m races and apply to athletes who are <a href="https://academic.oup.com/jcem/article/97/11/3902/2836438">female (or have intersex characteristics)</a> with naturally occurring testosterone levels of above 5 nanomole/L (a measure of concentration) and who experience a “material androgenising effect” (that is, the testosterone has a <a href="https://www.sportsintegrityinitiative.com/caster-semenyas-challenge-to-the-dsd-regulations-its-complicated/">biological effect</a>). </p>
<p>Affected female athletes are required to reduce natural testosterone levels to within the normal female range (i.e. to a level below 5 nanomole/L) by using medication, and maintain that reduced level for at least six months to remain eligible to compete. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-makes-you-a-man-or-a-woman-geneticist-jenny-graves-explains-102983">What makes you a man or a woman? Geneticist Jenny Graves explains</a>
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<h2>The role of CAS</h2>
<p>The CAS determines sports-related disputes and bases its rulings on the evidence presented to it and the submissions presented by the parties. The authority of the CAS operates via a series of interlocking arrangements that cascade down through the global governance of sport, and are binding on athletes. </p>
<p>In June 2018, Semenya and Athletics South Africa filed <a href="https://www.lawinsport.com/sports-law-news/item/semenya-asa-and-iaaf-decision?tmpl=component&print=1">arbitration proceedings</a> challenging the validity of the DSD Regulations as <a href="https://www.tas-cas.org/en/general-information/news-detail/article/semenya-asa-and-iaaf-executive-summary.html">“discriminatory, unnecessary, unreliable and disproportionate”</a>. They claimed that the DSD regulations would cause “grave unjustified and irreparable harm” and questioned the scientific soundness, a concern raised by <a href="https://sportsscientists.com/2018/08/letter-to-bjsm-reinforcing-call-for-retraction-of-iaaf-research-on-testosterone-in-women/">others</a>. </p>
<p>The IAAF disagreed and claimed the DSD regulations were necessary to pursue “the legitimate aim of safeguarding fair competition and protecting the ability of female athletes to <a href="https://www.tas-cas.org/en/general-information/news-detail/article/semenya-asa-and-iaaf-executive-summary.html">compete on a level playing field</a>”. It claimed the DSD regulations were based on the “best available science” and did not discriminate. </p>
<p>On May 1 the CAS Panel upheld the validity of the DSD regulations and considered the DSD Regulations as a “necessary, reasonable and proportionate means of achieving the IAAF’s aim of preserving the <a href="https://www.tas-cas.org/en/general-information/news-detail/article/semenya-asa-and-iaaf-executive-summary.html">integrity of female athletics</a>” </p>
<p>Semenya and Athletics South Africa have thirty days to appeal to the Swiss Federal Tribunal. The IAAF issued a <a href="https://www.iaaf.org/news/press-release/cas-female-eligibility-regulations">media release</a> advising the DSD Regulations effective on 8 May 2019, and calling on affected athletes to consult their medical teams and initiate suppressive treatment.</p>
<h2>It’s also about human rights</h2>
<p>So what are the wider implications of the Semenya case? </p>
<p>In March 2019, the IAAF was criticised by the United Nations Human Rights Council (<a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/hrbodies/hrc/pages/home.aspx">UNHRC</a>) over <a href="http://ap.ohchr.org/documents/dpage_e.aspx?si=A/HRC/40/L.10/Rev.1">concerns that</a> their “discriminatory regulations […] to medically reduce blood testosterone levels contravene international human rights […] including the right to equality and non-discrimination…and full respect for the dignity, bodily integrity and bodily autonomy of the person”.</p>
<p>With specific reference to the IAAF’s DSD Regulations, the UNHRC <a href="http://ap.ohchr.org/documents/dpage_e.aspx?si=A/HRC/40/L.10/Rev.1">called upon states</a> to “ensure that sporting associations […] refrain from developing and enforcing policies […] that force, coerce or otherwise pressure […] athletes into undergoing unnecessary, humiliating and harmful medical procedures”. </p>
<p>The UNHRC also requested the UN High Commissioner to <a href="http://ap.ohchr.org/documents/dpage_e.aspx?si=A/HRC/40/L.10/Rev.1">prepare a report</a> on the intersection of gender discrimination in sports and human rights to present to the Human Rights Council at its forty-fourth session (likely to be <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/HRC/Pages/Sessions.aspx">held June 2020</a>). </p>
<p>Sport is a special domain, but it is not that special to be immune from the law and human rights. Indeed, Sport Australia <a href="https://www.sportaus.gov.au/integrity_in_sport/inclusive_sport">promotes inclusive sport</a> based on the principle that “every Australian […] should be able to participate in sport […] in a welcoming and inclusive way”.</p>
<p>So the questions remain whether states will take heed of the UNHRC call to action, and how to reconcile this with the IAAF’s stand on gender characteristics falling outside the “normal” range.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/116417/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Annette Greenhow does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Sport is a special domain, but it is not immune from the law and human rights. We’re yet to see if the United Nations Human Rights Council will take steps following a new ruling on testosterone.Annette Greenhow, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Law, Bond UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1163912019-05-01T17:56:07Z2019-05-01T17:56:07ZCaster Semenya: how much testosterone is too much for a female athlete?<p>The South African athlete, Caster Semenya, has <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/athletics/48102479">lost her case</a> against the athletic governing body, IAAF, which means that she will have to take medication to lower her testosterone levels if she wishes to continue competing internationally in running events. </p>
<p>Last year, the IAAF introduced <a href="https://www.iaaf.org/news/press-release/eligibility-regulations-for-female-classifica">new regulation</a> for female athletes with “difference of sexual development” (DSD). Athletes with circulating testosterone of five nanomoles per litre of blood (5nmol/L) or above and who are androgen-sensitive, have to meet certain criteria if they wish to compete internationally. One criterion is that DSD athlete must use medication to reduce their blood testosterone level to below 5nmol/L for a continuous period of at least six months. </p>
<p>Semenya felt that the IAAF was targeting her, specifically. She took her case to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), but the court rejected the 28-year-old athlete’s challenge against the IAAF’s new rules. Although CAS found the rules to be discriminatory, it also said that they were “necessary, reasonable and proportionate”.</p>
<h2>Difference of sexual development</h2>
<p>So what exactly is DSD and does a serum testosterone level above 5nmol/L really confer an unfair advantage in running events? DSDs are a group of <a href="https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/disorders-sex-development/">rare conditions</a> that are acquired before birth, where the reproductive organs and genitals don’t develop as expected. While the condition can be inherited, it usually occurs at random. </p>
<p>A person with DSD may have a mix of both male and female sexual characteristics. For example, they may be genetically female, but with reproductive organs that are of the opposite sex (or the other way around), a combination of both male and female, or not clearly either.</p>
<p>As the testes are the primary site of testosterone production, if a female is born with these male reproductive organs, their testosterone level will be high, often reaching <a href="https://theconversation.com/testosterone-why-defining-a-normal-level-is-hard-to-do-113587">male levels</a>. </p>
<p>Testosterone is involved in many factors that may confer athletic benefit including increased muscle size and strength, along with the ability for the blood to deliver oxygen to those working muscles. This is why elite male athletes are generally faster and stronger than females – and also why males don’t compete against females in most sports. Semenya has high levels of testosterone so she will undoubtedly have at least some associated metabolic benefits.</p>
<p>How much benefit testosterone gives female athletes is difficult to define as women cannot convert testosterone into its more potent form and do not possess the same numbers of testosterone receptors (to carry out its actions) as men. The IAAF level of 5nmol/L is still high for female levels, which <a href="https://theconversation.com/testosterone-why-defining-a-normal-level-is-hard-to-do-113587">normally range from 0.1 - 1.8nmol/L</a>. Judging the actual benefit of testosterone and where to draw these lines would require a lot more research and investigation.</p>
<h2>Where does it stop?</h2>
<p>However, Semenya hasn’t artificially altered her testosterone levels and while her condition is rare – and gives her a large advantage as a track athlete, they are naturally occurring – so is it not discrimination to make her change her body to compete? Does this take the phrase “all men are equal” to the extreme and try to make everyone the same, even by artificial measures? And where does this stop? Many genetic physical attributes can contribute to athletic performance such as height, muscle composition and aerobic capacity.</p>
<p>Dutee Chand, the female sprinter who was also barred from competing against women in 2014 because her natural levels of testosterone exceeded guidelines for female athletes, publicly expressed her disbelief as to why she was penalised for her natural body when she competes against women who are taller and from wealthier backgrounds, which certainly put them at an advantage.</p>
<p>Cases like Semenya and Chand will always be contentious and generate more questions than solutions, and there will always be disagreement among athletes and fans over the right way to approach this sensitive issue in elite sport.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/116391/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Daniel Kelly does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The question of whether heightened testosterone confers an advantage for some female athletes remains contentious.Daniel Kelly, Lecturer in Biochemistry, Sheffield Hallam UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1140272019-04-17T08:31:37Z2019-04-17T08:31:37ZCaster Semenya v IAAF: ruling will have big implications for women’s participation in sport<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/267598/original/file-20190404-123400-1dcum2m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Caster Semenya leads the women's 800 metres at the Rio 2016 Olympics.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/rio-de-janeiro-brazil-august-20-729098803">CP DC Press/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When can a woman not compete with other women? This is, in essence, the question at the heart of the hearing currently before the <a href="https://www.tas-cas.org/en/index.html">Court of Arbitration for Sport</a> (CAS), the international body that helps settle disputes related to sport. The ruling in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/18/sports/caster-semenya-iaaf-lawsuit.html">the case</a> of Mokgadi Caster Semenya and Athletics South Africa v International Associations of Athletics Federations (IAAF) is due at the end of April. </p>
<p>The case centres on the legality of <a href="https://www.iaaf.org/news/press-release/eligibility-regulations-for-female-classifica">a 2018 IAAF eligibility regulation</a> for women with differences of sex development (intersex women), defined by the IAAF as women who have testosterone levels of over five <a href="https://www.convertunits.com/info/nanomole">nanomoles</a> per litre of blood (nmol/l) and whose bodies can ostensibly use that testosterone better than other women can. Under these rules, women athletes with differences of sex development would have to reduce, and maintain, their testosterone levels to 5nmol/l or less in order to compete. The reasoning behind the regulation is that women with naturally high testosterone levels, and whose bodies are apparently highly sensitive to that testosterone, have a significant performance advantage over their peers in certain events. </p>
<p>However, this assertion has to be called into question. First, because research has been unable to prove a direct, causal relationship between testosterone levels and athletic performance – given that so many other factors play a role. And second, because there is no valid laboratory test to determine a woman’s degree of sensitivity to testosterone. Currently, the IAAF mandates physical, gynaecological, and radiological imaging to determine physical signs (such as an enlarged clitoris) as a proxy for testosterone sensitivity. However, this approach is <a href="https://www.bmj.com/content/348/bmj.g2926.long">not reliable</a>, liable to false interpretation and subjectivity, and widely viewed as inappropriate and an invasion of privacy. </p>
<h2>The case so far</h2>
<p>In 2015, following <a href="https://www.tas-cas.org/fileadmin/user_upload/award_internet.pdf">another case</a> before the CAS, a previous iteration of the regulation was suspended and the IAAF was given a deadline to produce new evidence to uphold regulating women’s participation in this way. The IAAF subsequently developed the now contested 2018 regulation on the basis of <a href="https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/51/17/1309">a new study</a>, which showed a supposed “performance advantage” for specific track events. </p>
<p>However, as my co-author and I argued in a <a href="https://www.bmj.com/content/364/bmj.l1120">BMJ editorial</a>, this study <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40318-019-00143-w">was shown to be flawed</a> and the authors subsequently acknowledged errors in the data used for the research. This is <a href="https://www.sportsintegrityinitiative.com/call-bermon-garnier-2017-retracted/">a red flag</a> of the “science” that underpins the 2018 IAAF regulations. It draws into question the justification for the regulation for these, and indeed any, athletic event. It is against this background that we arrive at the 2019 CAS hearing.</p>
<h2>Testosterone levels</h2>
<p>Sports organisations have been grappling with the question of eligibility for years now. In reality, however, the science of this issue is quite clear. From a scientific and medical standpoint, we know that testosterone is not the only – or even primary – indicator of sports performance. Indeed, there are many other factors at play – including training, funding, and access to resources – in the development of a winning athlete. </p>
<p>Further, in non-athletes, testosterone ranges between <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30136295">0.4-2.0nmol/l</a> in girls and women. In elite women athletes, the testosterone range has been shown to be between <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24593684">0.4-7.7nmol/l</a>, and that women can and do have much higher levels than that, which can also overlap with men’s ranges. So an arbitrary 5nmol/l limit for women could have the effect of capturing and regulating a much larger group of female athletes than intended, including women with polycystic ovarian syndrome (who naturally have high levels of testosterone). </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/267632/original/file-20190404-123434-1jqvcl2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/267632/original/file-20190404-123434-1jqvcl2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/267632/original/file-20190404-123434-1jqvcl2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/267632/original/file-20190404-123434-1jqvcl2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/267632/original/file-20190404-123434-1jqvcl2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/267632/original/file-20190404-123434-1jqvcl2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/267632/original/file-20190404-123434-1jqvcl2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Lab results.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/abnormal-low-testosterone-hormone-test-result-1121149955">Jarun Ontakrai/Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p>In a rebuttal to our BMJ editorial, Stéphane Bermon, a director in the IAAF Health and Science Department, <a href="https://www.bmj.com/content/364/bmj.l1120/rapid-responses">wrote</a> that the IAAF regulation testosterone cut-off point of 5nmol/l is not arbitrary, but rather aims to <em>include</em> women with polycystic ovarian syndrome but to <em>exclude</em> women with differences of sex development. The glaring inconsistency here is that we simply cannot distinguish between these groups based on blood testosterone alone, never mind determining who is sensitive to testosterone and so has a supposed “performance advantage”. </p>
<h2>The ‘sex testing’ of women athletes</h2>
<p>Just because regulations exist does not mean that they are evidence based, ethical, or even effective. The crux here is that this kind of regulation has its legacy in the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/03/magazine/the-humiliating-practice-of-sex-testing-female-athletes.html">long and problematic history of “sex testing” women athletes</a>. It is no accident that the vast majority of athletes affected by these regulations <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/702853/summary">are black women and women of colour from the global south</a> who do not conform to Western ideals of femininity. </p>
<p>We don’t yet know what full evidence, beyond <a href="https://academic.oup.com/edrv/article/39/5/803/5052770">a review</a> from Bermon and colleagues, before the current CAS panel is. But we do know that sex and gender are incredibly complex. Historically we have defined humans as binary “male” or “female”, based on what we knew then about genes and anatomy. This was a clear and useful way of categorising sports participation. But 21st-century medical and social sciences have since progressed, and we now know that both biological sex and sociocultural gender are much more complicated than that. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-are-olympic-athletes-copping-so-much-abuse-it-all-comes-down-to-gender-63858">Why are Olympic athletes copping so much abuse? It all comes down to gender</a>
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<p>In the animal kingdom, there are many species that are hermaphrodite, and in humans we now know there is a spectrum of sex (that includes people who are intersex) and gender (that includes people who are transgender). The complexity of sex in particular as a melange of genes, hormones, anatomy, biology can no longer be classified simply with a binary definition of male or female. It is, therefore, unfair and unethical for the IAAF to make new regulations for women’s sport – to the effect of excluding some women - based on outdated definitions and understandings.</p>
<p>It’s important to also understand the unintentional outcomes of regulations such as the one in question, including the ways in which regulations <a href="https://undocs.org/A/HRC/40/L.10/Rev.1">may potentially breach human rights</a>. The <a href="https://www.uniglobalunion.org/sites/default/files/files/news/official_udpr.pdf">Universal Declaration of Player Rights</a>, which deals with the intersection of sport and human rights, reminds that an athlete’s right to participate in sport cannot be limited by gender (or any other identity-related factor, including sex). So we must understand both this history and unintentional outcomes of policy, including the ways in which regulations may entrench existing power relations. </p>
<p>Given that sport is currently organised according to the binary, and that this is unlikely to change in the near future, then men’s and women’s categories should be predicated on inclusivity. As <a href="https://thesportspectacle.com/2016/08/16/capturing-semenya/">Jennifer Doyle writes</a>: “Women’s sports is not a defensive structure from which men are excluded so that women might flourish. It is, in fact, the opposite of this: it is, potentially, a radically inclusive space which has the capacity to destroy the public’s ideas about gender and gender difference precisely because gender is always in play in women’s sports in ways that it is not in men’s sports.” </p>
<p>The IAAF case matters because it is fundamentally about all women’s rights to participate in sport. If we do begin to regulate the participation of women with differences of sex development, then it will in effect stigmatise women athletes by categorising, labelling, and excluding them without scientific evidence or ethical consideration. Women should be allowed to compete with women, period. Otherwise we’re starting to talk about genetic superiority with no basis in truth, or humanity.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/114027/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sheree Bekker does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Arbitration case between athlete Caster Semenya and the IAAF centres on eligibility to compete based on testosterone – but there are other factors in play.Sheree Bekker, Prize Research Fellow, University of BathLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1122192019-02-22T08:30:22Z2019-02-22T08:30:22ZSex and sport: how to create a level playing field<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/260358/original/file-20190222-195886-680iow.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=234%2C26%2C3317%2C1964&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">South Africa's runner Caster Semenya, the current 800-meter Olympic gold and world champion, arrives with her lawyer Gregory Nott (right) for hearings at the international Court of Arbitration for Sport. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Laurent Gillieron</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Court of Arbitration for Sport is <a href="https://www.bbc.com/sport/athletics/47283833">due to rule on an application</a> by the International Association of Athletics Federations (<a href="https://www.iaaf.org/home">IAAF</a>) that athletes such as South Africa’s Caster Semenya, who have “<a href="https://www.nationwidechildrens.org/specialties/thrive-program/differences-of-sex-development">differences of sexual development</a>”, must medicate to reduce their testosterone levels for six months before competing internationally.</p>
<p>The IAAF claims that the proposed rules will “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2019/feb/13/caster-semenya-iaaf-report">create a level playing field</a> to ensure all female athletes have an equal chance to excel”. Semenya has filed an appeal against the IAAF.</p>
<p>Those who argue that women with differences of sexual development and transgender should not be allowed to compete in women’s sports usually claim that their testosterone levels and different muscle-to-fat ratios give them an unfair advantage over their competitors. But excluding these women from competition is unfair and potentially a human rights violation. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-it-might-be-time-to-eradicate-sex-segregation-in-sports-89305">Why it might be time to eradicate sex segregation in sports</a>
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<h2>A breach of human rights</h2>
<p>Those with differences of sexual development include women who are born with genetic conditions that give them athletic advantages more commonly attributed to males. <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/neuroscience/hyperandrogenism">Hyperandrogenism</a>, for example, causes the individual to produce more testosterone than is typically present in women. </p>
<p>Semenya and India’s <a href="https://www.firstpost.com/sports/the-agony-of-being-dutee-chand-indias-record-breaking-sprinter-lives-on-with-scars-of-sexual-identity-crisis-3534341.html">Dutee Chand</a> are both thought to have this condition and have been subjected to intense public scrutiny as a result.</p>
<p>There is also the issue of transgendered women athletes who want to compete against other women. Transgender New Zealand weightlifter, Laurel Hubbard, competed in the 2018 Commonwealth games, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2018/apr/09/transgender-weightlifter-laurel-hubbards-eligibility-under-scrutiny">amid complaints</a> from the Australian Weightlifting Federation. Another New Zealander, <a href="https://interactives.stuff.co.nz/2018/03/a-level-playing-field/">Kate Weatherly</a>, a transgender downhill mountain bike rider, has faced the same kind of scrutiny and challenges to her right to compete against other women. </p>
<p>There is <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-04-09/transgender/9634496">disagreement among experts</a> about whether transgender women do in fact have a physical advantage. <a href="https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/07/scientist-racing-discover-how-gender-transitions-alter-athletic-performance-including">Some evidence</a> suggests the opposite is true and the therapy required to transition to a woman results in lower levels of testosterone than are found in women generally. </p>
<p>Laurel Hubbard has been <a href="https://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/other-sports/101742220/nzers-slam-aussie-call-for-commonwealth-games-ban-on-transgender-weightlifter">subjected to monthly testosterone tests</a> and her testosterone levels are lower than a “normal” female. Part of the problem here, too, is the assumptions about the characteristics of “normal”. </p>
<h2>The level playing field is a myth</h2>
<p>These issues aside, what precisely is an unfair advantage? Those who believe transgender women and women with different sexual development should be able to compete in women’s categories point to athletes such as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Phelps">Michael Phelps</a> who has extraordinary physical characteristics that give him a huge competitive advantage in swimming, including his long arms and flexible feet. What makes his advantage fair? Is it because these are qualities Phelps was born with? </p>
<p>If so, then Semenya and Dutee and others who are born intersex or with hyperandrogenism should not cause sporting organisations any problems. But what about transgender athletes? Does the fact they have “chosen” to become women mean they have brought about this state of affairs and so they can justifiably be excluded? And if so, what of all the competitive advantages other women bring with them? </p>
<p>The level playing field is a myth. Aside from these genetic or biological advantages, athletes all differ in terms of the resources they have available to buy the best equipment, trainers and coaches and so on. Should these factors be considered as giving athletes an “unfair” advantage?</p>
<h2>Self-identification</h2>
<p>In New Zealand, under <a href="http://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1995/0016/73.0/DLM364150.html">section 28 of the Births, Deaths, Marriages and Relationships Act 1995</a>, a person may apply to the Family Court to have their birth certificate record they are of the opposite sex to that already recorded on the document. There are certain conditions that must be satisfied, and the application must be supported by “expert medical evidence”. </p>
<p>But a new bill proposes to replace the existing process with one based on self-identification, to “<a href="https://www.parliament.nz/en/pb/sc/reports/document/SCR_79010/births-deaths-marriages-and-relationships-registration">allow people to have greater autonomy over their identity</a>”. The Select Committee also recommended including the options of “inter-sex” and “X (unspecified)” to recognise non-binary sexual and gender identities. </p>
<p>A self-identification policy does have the potential <a href="https://gayexpress.co.nz/2018/08/nz-lesbian-group-against-gender-self-identification-bill/">to impinge on women’s rights</a> as well as for abuse by males who do not actually identify as women. Both Semenya and Chand have identified as women from birth. Hubbard and Weatherly are also women, notwithstanding that they were assigned a different biological sex at birth. </p>
<p>They should all be treated as such for all purposes. Regardless of their biological sex – if in fact there is such an incontrovertible thing – they are not men masquerading as women to secure a competitive advantage. A nuanced approach is called for; while a self-identification policy may not be the answer, neither is an approach that requires medical intervention as a pre-requisite for recognition.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/112219/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Brenda Midson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The International Association of Athletics Federations wants athletes who have differences of sexual development to medically reduce their testosterone levels. But this may be in breach of human rights.Brenda Midson, Editor, New Zealand Law Journal; Senior Lecturer in Law, University of WaikatoLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/824512017-08-15T10:10:40Z2017-08-15T10:10:40ZHow sport can move on from a championships marked by the booing of Justin Gatlin<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181949/original/file-20170814-28437-1r8k0bg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=138%2C92%2C4643%2C2730&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/doping-on-treadmill-679080535">Igor Zvencom/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The World Athletics Championships in London have ended after ten days of surprises and disappointments. A late flurry of medals for the home nation <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2017/aug/12/great-britain-relay-usain-bolt-gold-injured">buoyed the British crowd</a>, and the world watched on as sprint icon Usain Bolt’s career ended with more of a whimper than a bang. But the abiding memory is that of Justin Gatlin, the US sprinter who has twice failed drug tests, facing the boos of the crowd as he <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2017/aug/05/justin-gatlin-usain-bolt-100m-london-2017-world-athletics-championships">triumphed in the 100 metres final</a>.</p>
<p>Many believe that Gatlin should not have been allowed on the track. Instead, he should have been serving a <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/athletics/2017/08/06/justin-gatlin-should-have-banned-life-convicted-drugs-cheat/">lifetime ban</a>. Others go further to propose that dopers should be punished not just by sports governing bodies but by the <a href="http://www.bbc.com/sport/athletics/39544930">criminal justice system</a>– doping as fraud by false representation. </p>
<p>Whether or not Gatlin’s punishment should have been more severe, he served his time, and he was there by right. His mistake was in breaking an unwritten rule for returning dopers: “You may be allowed back, but you are not allowed win.” We might add on this occassion: “… and you are definitely not allowed to beat Bolt in his last championship.” </p>
<p>The spectacle of a newly crowned world champion being jeered was embarrassing for athletics, and it served as a reminder of just how deep the problem of doping runs. Along with last year’s <a href="http://www.bbc.com/sport/38261608">Russian doping scandal</a>, this difficult moment might just provide the necessary impetus for real reform. </p>
<h2>Keep it clean</h2>
<p>Current anti-doping strategy revolves around a key article of faith: clean sport can be achieved by incentivising athletes not to dope. The incentives are applied in two ways: testing and punishment. This allows only two responses to any doping scandal: more testing and more severe punishment. The response is always to raise the stakes for dopers so that the gamble of doping becomes foolish. As appealing as this sounds, the approach has not and will not deliver clean sport.</p>
<p>One can imagine how increased penalties for diving in football or <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2017/jan/06/world-rugby-new-tackle-laws-what-are-they">high tackling in rugby</a> might reduce the prevalence of these rule violations, but doping is different. Doping takes place away from the arena of competition behind locked doors and drawn curtains. Authorities have neither the right nor the funding to monitor all athletes to the level required to ensure it is in their self-interest to compete clean. So, the alignment of the incentives strategy necessarily fails. </p>
<p>Moreover, the accusatory nature of this strategy, where athletes are treated as if they were either dopers or would-be dopers, is counter-productive. If a system implicitly accuses athletes of wanting to cheat, it is no surprise that many of them will live up to expectation: distrust begets untrustworthiness. </p>
<p>Meaningful competition rests on the trustworthiness of athletes. Doping is not unique in this: match-fixing and match manipulation are also resistant to effective oversight. All are dependant on athletes doing the right thing for the right reasons, not simply in the service of their narrow self-interest. However, trustworthiness cannot be cultivated within an incentive-based system designed to side-step it. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181966/original/file-20170814-28472-15agela.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181966/original/file-20170814-28472-15agela.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181966/original/file-20170814-28472-15agela.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181966/original/file-20170814-28472-15agela.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181966/original/file-20170814-28472-15agela.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181966/original/file-20170814-28472-15agela.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181966/original/file-20170814-28472-15agela.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181966/original/file-20170814-28472-15agela.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Leap of faith?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/long-jump-track-field-197522558?src=pkdYTMyHk6RzwzJY7Siprw-1-73">Stefan Schurr/Shutterstock</a></span>
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<h2>Moral training</h2>
<p>For the anti-doping movement to make headway, those involved must acknowledge that the testing regime cannot contain the problem. Sport is, and will remain, vulnerable to dopers. Once that is recognised, we can begin to focus on developing among athletes a personal commitment to competing clean. </p>
<p>Sporting authorities should begin by explicitly placing trust in athletes. This involves both abandoning the pretence that dopers are likely to be caught and by emphasising the reliance of sport on the trustworthiness of those within it. Coaches, parents, and volunteers from grassroots level up should cultivate in young athletes a sense of obligation to themselves and to their competitors for how they compete, and an understanding of the values of fairness, participation, and achievement that underpin competition. </p>
<p>Moral training should become a central plank of youth sport coaching alongside physical, tactical, technical and mental training. This would ensure that, by the time athletes reach the upper echelons of competition, honesty and fairness will form part of their self-understanding as athletes, and they will have deeper resources of character to resist the temptation to dope.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181969/original/file-20170814-28430-nd9zht.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181969/original/file-20170814-28430-nd9zht.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181969/original/file-20170814-28430-nd9zht.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181969/original/file-20170814-28430-nd9zht.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181969/original/file-20170814-28430-nd9zht.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181969/original/file-20170814-28430-nd9zht.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181969/original/file-20170814-28430-nd9zht.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181969/original/file-20170814-28430-nd9zht.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/coachtranier-swimmer-girl-pool-discussing-athlet-533028280?src=gb4KCRe6Ku8IMwkmqFlKJw-1-10">Studio Romantic/Shutterstock</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>Anti-doping education should also provide a real discussion of the rationale for the ban on performance-enhancing drugs. Athletes must be persuaded of the rational defensibility of the ban, so they can endorse the ideal of clean sport “from the inside”, and as worthy of their commitment, not simply as a set of arbitrary rules imposed from above. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.wada-ama.org/sites/default/files/resources/files/wada-2015-world-anti-doping-code.pdf">World Anti-Doping Code</a> is notoriously vague on precisely what justifies the ban. Are drugs banned to promote harm prevention, fairness, the purpose of sport or something else entirely? </p>
<h2>Character-building</h2>
<p>Sport must also embrace the need to support returning dopers. The system should go beyond temporary exile, and take seriously the need to prepare dopers for return to (clean) competition. </p>
<p>This shift away from incentives and towards a trust-based approach might seem naive, a move that would expose sport to betrayal by athletes like Gatlin. The real naiveté, though, is in maintaining the specious hope athletes can be incentivised not to dope when the surveillance required to achieve this is neither financially viable nor morally acceptable. A better balance must be struck: the testing regime should serve as a deterrent but only as part of a wider anti-doping programme. </p>
<p>Many parents introduce their children to sport because it builds character for life. But what about building character for sport? Rather than focus energies on the hopeless task of aligning incentives, sport authorities should acknowledge the limitations of this approach, and prioritise rational persuasion and moral education. The task is to shape athletes’ convictions, not just their incentives, because, in the final analysis, the integrity of sport rests on the integrity of sportspeople.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/82451/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John William Devine does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The US sprinter, twice banned after failed drug tests, felt the force of public opinion as he won the 100 metres final at the World Athletics Championship. But is it time to start trusting athletes?John William Devine, Lecturer in Sports Ethics and Integrity, Swansea UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/749962017-03-26T08:30:03Z2017-03-26T08:30:03ZKenya runs the risk of an Olympic ban, thanks to boardroom power games<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/162348/original/image-20170324-12129-x0c0xl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Kenya's Vivian Cheruiyot (left) and Hellen Obiri who won gold and silver at the 2016 Rio Olympics.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Gonzalo Fuentes </span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Kenya topped the Africa medals table at the Rio Olympics last year. But this outstanding performance was overshadowed by the incompetence and corruption of its team management. The problems are so deep-rooted that the International Olympic Committee recently threatened to suspend the country after national affiliate officials voted against reform. Wycliffe W. Njororai Simiyu, explains the background</em></p>
<p><strong>What ails the Kenya national Olympic committee?</strong></p>
<p>The National Olympic Committee of Kenya’s inherent problems are <a href="http://www.nation.co.ke/news/How-Kenya-lost-the-London-Olympics-plot/1056-1477232-a42pl9/index.html">not new</a>. What’s new is the alarming decline, which burst into view during the Rio Olympics last year. Numerous <a href="http://olympics.nbcsports.com/2017/03/09/ioc-suspend-kenya-olympics/">instances</a> of gross mismanagement came to the surface during the games involving accreditation, accommodation, travel and allowances. Corruption was also evident in the disappearance of official team kit and theft of cash.</p>
<p>What we are seeing today is a long-drawn fallout from Rio which set in with the arrest of several senior Olympic team officials soon after the games. These officials now <a href="http://www.capitalfm.co.ke/sports/2017/01/03/nock-officials-drop-stain-kenyas-brilliant-2016-athletics/">face charges</a> of using their positions to procure fraudulently Team Kenya kit provided under contract and stealing cash and uniforms meant for athletes.</p>
<p>Not even Kenyan athletes’<a href="http://www.iol.co.za/olympics-rio-2016/kenya-tops-african-medal-table-2059816">sterling</a> performances on the track were enough to mask the hurdles they had to overcome. The athletes had to endure haphazard travel arrangements, inadequate training gear and questionable allocation of places in the Olympic Village. </p>
<p>On top of this, a Kenyan official was <a href="http://www.nation.co.ke/sports/athletics/Michael-Rotich-recalled-from-Rio-after-doping-bribe-report/1100-3334866-format-xhtml-3obonq/index.html">ejected</a> from the games on doping-related bribery allegations. And a senior athletics coach, who arrived in Rio <a href="http://www.nation.co.ke/news/The-scandal-of-Kenya-s-Rio-Olympics/1056-3343980-kvao27z/">unaccredited</a>, was expelled from the games for using an athlete’s pass.</p>
<p><strong>What is at the root of the current crisis?</strong></p>
<p>The crisis in Kenya’s Olympic committee’s stems from the questionable integrity of its long-serving office holders. The officials seem to have perfected the art of misusing the resources to the detriment of sport and the athletes.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, change will not come easily. The current constitution gives incumbent officials disproportionate power in any general assembly vote - which they often deploy as a <a href="http://olympics.nbcsports.com/2017/03/09/ioc-suspend-kenya-olympics/">bloc</a> to retain their positions. </p>
<p>But it’s clear that IOC wants to see change in the governance structure of the Kenyan committee. It would like to see a new constitution adopted that would bar incumbent officials from casting their vote at the general assemblies. This would change the current arrangement where the incumbents are virtually guaranteed retaining their seats during elections. </p>
<p><strong>There have been reports that Kenya could be suspended from the Olympic movement. What’s the background.</strong></p>
<p>The national outrage that greeted the Rio 2016 scandal led the sports minister to dissolve the national Olympic committee. He also set up a team to investigate the Rio affair. The IOC, which frowns on any official interference, threatened to suspend Kenya. </p>
<p>This dissolution was popular at the time. A cabinet secretary <a href="http://www.nation.co.ke/news/I-am-also-a-victim-of-Rio-Olympics-cartel-says-minister/1056-3352298-95os78/">accused</a> Olympic officials of “living large in Brazil” and being “a law unto themselves”. But a judge quickly <a href="http://www.nation.co.ke/news/nock-still-intact-after-Rio-Games-scam/1056-3802404-em7ehlz/">overturned</a> the government’s action after the national Olympic committee head Kipchoge Keino took the matter to court. </p>
<p>As a compromise, a <a href="http://www.aipsmedia.com/2016/09/03/19454/ioc-kenya-government-kipchoge">tripartite</a> group was convened, bringing together the national committee, the sports minister and the IOC. Its aim was to improve governance through a new constitution that would allow for change in the membership of the national committee. As things stand, the incumbent officials outnumber the rest of the delegates. </p>
<p>But because the old constitution was used to convene the special general meeting called to ratify the new regulations, current officials used their superior numbers to <a href="https://citizentv.co.ke/sports/kenya-risks-ioc-ban-after-nock-bosses-shoot-down-constitution-159921/">defeat</a> it. </p>
<p>One of the key consequences of not passing the new constitution has been the swift withholding of <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-kenya-olympics-idUSKBN16P0C4">funds</a> by the IOC. More sanctions could follow if a new constitution is not put in place. </p>
<p><strong>What would the impact of such a suspension be on Kenyan sport?</strong></p>
<p>A suspension would put Kenya in the company of oil-rich <a href="https://www.olympic.org/news/suspension-of-the-kuwait-olympic-committee">Kuwait</a>, which was sidelined for passing a law that ran counter to the <a href="https://www.olympic.org/ioc-governance-national-olympic-committees">mission</a> of the Olympic movement. </p>
<p>A suspended nation loses money to develop sports programmes and infrastructure. It also loses representation in IOC sanctioned events at the international level. But athletes can participate in events as individuals under the Olympic banner, similar to political refugees. </p>
<p><strong>Is the IOC’s interest in Kenya warranted? Are there other countries on its radar?</strong></p>
<p>I think the push for improved governance in sport is a worldwide phenomenon and not just a Kenyan issue. At the global level, there was worldwide attention when FIFA officials were in the <a href="http://nypost.com/2015/05/27/top-fifa-officials-arrested-in-corruption-case/">spotlight</a> in 2015. The then powerful FIFA president Sepp Blatter was forced out of office following allegations of bribery, corruption and general mismanagement. </p>
<p>These high profile scandals elicited international outrage and unprecedented action. US law enforcement led the way in <a href="http://miami.cbslocal.com/2015/12/03/two-top-fifa-officialls-arrested-in-pre-dawn-raid-in-zurich/">arresting</a> FIFA officials that were suspected of engaging in questionable deals. </p>
<p>The Rio fiasco presented the IOC with a good opportunity to intervene and demand action for long-term reform. This was better than responding with a suspension for political interference. The IOC’s collaboration with the government and the national committee to create a more responsive, transparent and responsible organisation is commendable. </p>
<p>And if the stalemate continues, the IOC may suspend Kenya due to a lack of goodwill and desire for change in governance by its own affiliate.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/74996/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Wycliffe W. Njororai Simiyu is affiliated with Department of Health and Kinesiology, University of Texas at Tyler, Texas, USA </span></em></p>The International Olympic Committee could suspend Kenya, putting it in the company of Kuwait.Wycliffe W. Njororai Simiyu, Professor, Health and Kinesiology, University of Texas at TylerLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/615872016-07-01T12:12:38Z2016-07-01T12:12:38ZSeven steps to reboot the fight against doping in sport<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/128974/original/image-20160701-18328-126ovrh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C2048%2C1364&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Using our heads. New ways to battle doping in Olympic year.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/thelastminute/7711916854/in/photolist-cKtAcG-cTQ6C9-cPfvXL-kgkCJV-7DqVnQ-7Coa1V-81ogs4-7Hkbks-cKF8SL-cGLmM3-bNCRuV-3SkZ1x-ez5EXV-7q6M3g-duoQXQ-onExzV-pef47-cGLgm5-81ofxt-cF5fVQ-7qwnnU-cH8RPj-cJKpUm-qHTJvh-cBeP9j-dFR75x-cJKpqC-ekm54b-3TPbzG-7q6MiZ-cx2tnG-cRvAYu-cmpWvu-8sPs4d-dAuFFu-6dATYw-cFjMhu-cL7YAu-cPiGS3-cf9Z5W-qz6PuH-bPTCEK-39XWRW-k9YhoU-cUzdKd-ddATwx-7LitJV-baJnbM-cb5wS1-4vMh8G">Duncan Rawlinson/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/17/sports/olympics/russia-olympic-ban-iaaf-track-and-field.html?_r=0">disqualification of Russia</a> from the Rio Olympics appears to be a triumph for anti-doping. The World Anti-Doping Agency’s independent commission produced enough evidence to justify support for a ban from the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the International Association of Athletics Federations. We might yet see other sports organisations imposing sanctions on athletes.</p>
<p>However, there is another side to anti-doping’s apparent success. It is unlikely that we are close to catching the real number of dopers, and there remain calls for <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/general/athletics/dick-pound-we-will-never-end-doping-despite-our-small-victories-a6747296.html">more investigations</a>. So amid all the grandstanding, its effectiveness has been <a href="http://espn.go.com/olympics/trackandfield/story/_/id/14571339/doping-scandal-wada-latest-commission-report-again-lacks-enough-punch-solve-bigger-problem">called into question</a>, alongside its politics. After all, the IOC was a close partner in WADA’s formation and provides half its funding. WADA’s first president and current president have held prominent positions in the IOC, and there is a <a href="http://www.heraldscotland.com/sport/opinion/14580348.Sir_Craig_and_Coe_are_symptomatic_of_a_more_dangerous_problem__the_old_boys____club/">close-knit culture across leading organisations</a>. </p>
<p>At the same time, decisions made about <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09523367.2013.826652">relatively minor cases</a> have prompted controversy due to both unnecessarily harsh outcomes and <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.3109/09687637.2015.1029872">inconsistent sanctions</a>. It feels like a crucial moment, and a good one to propose some practical steps which can improve the current approach.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/128980/original/image-20160701-18331-k2xdlp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/128980/original/image-20160701-18331-k2xdlp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/128980/original/image-20160701-18331-k2xdlp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/128980/original/image-20160701-18331-k2xdlp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/128980/original/image-20160701-18331-k2xdlp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/128980/original/image-20160701-18331-k2xdlp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/128980/original/image-20160701-18331-k2xdlp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/128980/original/image-20160701-18331-k2xdlp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Should the architecture of anti-doping be rethought?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/gordonr/2809571698/in/photolist-bCjx4A-acyZAY-7jfqm2-jHUZb-5hgMMm-6v4P68-oo5xeE-5hcrsK-nCk13Q-eVpkrD-fSmJne-kQ7DAH-qajsHr-bWNhY9-bWNx49-cXCApq-dZ9dNh-68qcHY-68kZiZ-fUQCmF-a9KbCo">Gordon Ross/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>1. More effective use of resources</h2>
<p>Current policy involves regular testing of all elite athletes for a wide range of drugs. Were this approach to be rationalised, resources could be freed up to tackle the more significant problem of organised systematic doping in some countries. </p>
<p>One idea would be to give up testing for recreational, non-performance enhancing drugs. Another might be to define the drugs that are most likely to be used in each sport and test only for those. It might also be the case that some sports and countries simply run fewer tests if it can be established that the levels of doping risk are low.</p>
<p>Current policy assumes blanket testing to be the best deterrent. That might be so, but in order to catch the bigger fish, we might just have to let a few smaller ones go.</p>
<h2>2. Engage with new people</h2>
<p>Controlling drugs in sport needs international cooperation. Inspiration could come from progress on something like vaccination policies that have led to significant changes in immunisation <a href="http://www.who.int/immunization/programmes_systems/en/">on a global scale</a>. We might invite advice from non-sports experts and researchers from business, health research or policy areas that have shown successful cooperation. </p>
<p>There are models that move away from an absolutist “war on drugs” approach, but which are still effective. Take the idea of “complex systems” which <a href="http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/for-those-who-seek-to-strengthen-alcohol-regulation-the-experience-of-tobacco-control-shows-that-comprehensive-policy-change-is-neither-quick-nor-inevitable/">encourages a more flexible understanding</a> of rules and targets by people directly involved and who can better understand and adapt to rapidly-changing circumstances at local level.</p>
<h2>3. Support for whistleblowers</h2>
<p>Those who come forward with inside information need to know they will be taken seriously and protected. This requires an independent body that protects their identity and makes sure evidence is taken seriously. There needs to be financial support to encourage whistleblowing, which can help inform more efficient and effective investigations. Recent failures to follow up on information, engage with people who try to help, and reduce personal risk, has <a href="http://espn.go.com/espn/otl/story/_/id/16209580/doping-whistleblowers-such-stepanovs-kara-goucher-often-left-dangling-taking-sports-bodies-governing-bodies">shown this to be a major issue</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/128984/original/image-20160701-18328-14ha8au.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/128984/original/image-20160701-18328-14ha8au.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/128984/original/image-20160701-18328-14ha8au.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/128984/original/image-20160701-18328-14ha8au.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/128984/original/image-20160701-18328-14ha8au.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/128984/original/image-20160701-18328-14ha8au.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/128984/original/image-20160701-18328-14ha8au.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/128984/original/image-20160701-18328-14ha8au.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Protection for the brave.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/stevendepolo/3830805160/in/photolist-6QvSUQ-rCDhaM-AYF6f-aALM6K-b8ANZ6-fJYykX-j3PrXp-hA58Wf-jLXD1D-p9VZaF-7zCYFN-j6jQbq-na37Xb-gU4SpU-83VpGi-8VSGu1-j6eyEf-79Azik-dBzWTd-fMbrRY-djGCj6-4uNaMt-czx2aQ-5CCyTe-rg6oo3-e1eLng-bYry9m-cvr1gf-aqdvZr-cjTSP9-8H5tLu-cjTMfJ-quPoqA-4SLSBk-jp8uwr-jKSyjo-qNe58M-qeLwTU-qopQpM-9FKCXh-5qBpV2-pZZf3D-nGqW7x-ouMEvY-mW6Wzx-n7tKm6-pRctCG-CL1jUA-owKBJ6-owe2XD">Steven Depolo/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>4. Evaluation of WADA</h2>
<p>The paradox of setting up WADA as an independent agency is a lack of certainty regarding accountability and performance measures. There should be criteria by which success and failure are judged, transparency of decision-making, and regular review of policy implementation processes. Since governments provide <a href="https://www.wada-ama.org/en/funding">half of WADA’s funding</a>, they are well positioned to request auditing information as part of the contract, and can influence policy methods. Currently, the organisation doesn’t appear to have a transparent reporting system to any external body.</p>
<h2>5. Easier and cheaper appeals</h2>
<p>Much of the criticism and <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/19406940.2016.1170716?journalCode=risp20">concerns expressed by athletes</a> of the current system have emerged because some athletes who are completely innocent or who have made a genuine mistake are treated in the same way as deliberate doping cheats. The routes of appeal are limited. You can either go to a national anti-doping agency tribunal or take your case to the <a href="http://www.ukad.org.uk/what-we-do/results-management">Court of Arbitration for Sport</a>. One solution might be that each country has a corpus of trained volunteers who could be invited to decide upon ad hoc appeals. Decisions could be made quickly so that the athlete can return to their sport.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/128985/original/image-20160701-18317-6uf2ia.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/128985/original/image-20160701-18317-6uf2ia.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/128985/original/image-20160701-18317-6uf2ia.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=275&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/128985/original/image-20160701-18317-6uf2ia.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=275&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/128985/original/image-20160701-18317-6uf2ia.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=275&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/128985/original/image-20160701-18317-6uf2ia.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=345&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/128985/original/image-20160701-18317-6uf2ia.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=345&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/128985/original/image-20160701-18317-6uf2ia.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=345&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">To the point.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/ad-vantage/456313094/in/photolist-GjHZ9-4m7ZyL-8mkoo3-9ygytn-LxzJe-gLGgp-93SgZZ-8mh8Mi-9ueWY6-ceFg2s-5Xd9Dd-oTLF7A-91J5-f2aq21-93SZ1B-9ygzd6-9ueWYX-ifM5NH-3K6Zu5-9yjxzW-8b7aZY-a7dZZ-KV1Vm-arpkGF-6YMxaQ-73qTx7-4BmV8e-5cUXKk-4m3WSB-5nPiDj-6wuZoV-8ZpZLJ-aeqNep-8mhe6F-6dm98k-cMuBgJ-61nWwh-6EZAr6-4VV4F9-9pW8cb-4VV4FJ-4VV4G3-4VV4Fo-523zAL-4VQZ24-2E9pk-4VQZ28-4VQZ2c-4VV4Fs-oZcRBq">agressti vanessa/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>6. Have critical friends</h2>
<p>Anti-doping agencies and other sports organisations should invite guidance from other fields of expertise. If critics were treated with respect and invited to share ideas and propose solutions, then some fresh thinking might lead to real improvements. I was <a href="http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/academic-is-sacked-over-doping-views-0k7b6hk7b">invited to leave</a> the US Cycling Anti-Doping Committee simply for expressing ideas that <a href="http://www.sportsintegrityinitiative.com/opinion-issues-faced-by-critical-academics-in-anti-doping/">challenged existing policy ideas and practice</a>. </p>
<p>There are many people willing to help if the opportunity was presented to them. The first step could be as simple as an online forum for comments, criticisms and suggestions that are coordinated independently and presented to WADA. The present situation appears to be that if you are critical, you are not invited to join the discussion. Even media investigations have been attacked; witness <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/athletics/33784236">the response from Sebastian Coe</a> after blood doping revelations.</p>
<h2>7. Start again</h2>
<p>Everything above will have more chance of success if it is part of a completely fresh start to anti-doping that prioritises fairness and health in a more balanced way. Involving athletes at the heart of strategy and planning would help create values and processes that other athletes could buy into. Building trust by reducing systematic doping through targeted efforts would build confidence and a better sense of purpose. A more realistic and accepting attitude to accidental doping cases can avoid unethical and unfair impacts on athletes’ lives.</p>
<p>Anti-doping is facing a crisis, the resolution of which may just require a re-orientation of objectives and methods based on key principles, values and innovative strategies. At the very least it would help to bring different perspectives together for a conversation on what has gone wrong, what needs to change and how best to move forward towards a different future.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/61587/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Paul Dimeo does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The ban on Russian athletes at the Rio Olympics feels like a victory, but it masks an insular system which is spread too thin.Paul Dimeo, Senior Lecturer in Sport, University of StirlingLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/611992016-06-18T05:03:41Z2016-06-18T05:03:41ZOn track for the Rio Olympics? IAAF ban means Russian athletes may not compete<p>The International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) has upheld its ban on the Russian Athletic Federation (RUSAF) from competing in the Rio 2016 Olympics. But the head of the IAAF, Sebastian Coe, <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-06-18/russian-athletics-ban-upheld-ahead-of-rio/7522392?WT.mc_id=newsmail">said</a> “athletes who are not tested under the Russian system but in systems that have effective anti-doping programs will have their individual cases assessed”.</p>
<p>In November 2015, the IAAF <a href="http://www.sportsintegrityinitiative.com/iaaf-votes-to-provisionally-suspend-russia/">suspended</a> RUSAF from competing in the wake of claims that Russian anti-doping officials, athletes and support personnel were engaged in conduct prejudicial to the interests of fairness in sport.</p>
<p>The ban stemmed from <a href="http://www.sportsintegrityinitiative.com/a-timeline-allegations-against-the-russian-athletics-federation/">revelations</a> by Russian whistleblowers and the work of investigative journalists in Germany. Their allegations pointed to systemic – even state-sanctioned – doping. </p>
<p>After the ban, RUSAF was provided with a substantial list of “<a href="http://www.sportsintegrityinitiative.com/araf-reinstatement-conditions-and-verification-criteria/">conditions</a>” it needed to meet for reinstatement, but the IAAF is now in unanimous agreement that these have <a href="http://www.iaaf.org/news/press-release/iaaf-council-meeting-vienna">not been met</a>. </p>
<p>Now the body has extended the <a href="http://www.aipsmedia.com/2016/06/17/18951/iaaf-russia-ban-rio-2016">suspension of RUSAF</a>; its intended effect is that Russian track athletes and support personnel will not be eligible to take part in the 2016 Rio Olympics. </p>
<p>The IAAF move has been described by Richard Ings, former head of the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority, as a “<a href="https://twitter.com/ringsau/status/743959511572975617">watershed moment in anti doping</a>”. It’s the first time a sport federation has suffered consequences for non-compliance to anti-doping. But will it mean Russian track-and-field athletes have no chance of competing at Rio?</p>
<h2>Starting blocks</h2>
<p>The ban on RUSAF imposes punishment on an organisation and, by extension, all of the athletes it represents. </p>
<p>The IAAF, anticipating that individuals may argue that it is unfair for them to be made responsible for the failings of a peak body, has already signalled that if athletes can “demonstrably prove” they are clean, then <a href="http://www.iaaf.org/news/press-release/iaaf-council-meeting-vienna">appeals</a> can be made.</p>
<p>Any individual athlete who can clearly and convincingly show they are not tainted by the Russian system because they have been outside the country, and subject to other, effective anti-doping systems (including effective drug-testing), should be able to apply for permission to compete in international competitions, not for Russia but as a neutral athlete.</p>
<p>The proposition alters the normal burden of proof: for an athlete to be found guilty of doping, an adverse finding is needed by an anti-doping authority. In the IAAF’s case, this is not being claimed. Rather, athletes are suspended on suspicion of being complicit in doping, with the accused needing to demonstrate their innocence (or at least distance) from such influence. </p>
<p>This unprecedented situation is set to be a <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-sport-doping-russia-reaction-idUSKCN0Z32C3">legal and political</a> minefield.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) is considering its response. It will meet in Lausanne on June 21, to <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/pa/article-3647027/Russias-athletics-ban-remains-following-unanimous-vote-IAAF-council.html">discuss the RUSAF saga</a>. </p>
<p>Intriguingly, the IOC has the power to either accept or reject the IAAF ruling: the Olympic Games are its event by invitation. The most likely scenario, according to <a href="http://www.bbc.com/sport/olympics/36422629">Dan Roan of the BBC</a>, is that the IOC – with the co-operation of the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) – will accelerate the appeal process for Russian athletes, while remaining true to the position that RUSAF is banned. </p>
<p>Indeed, CAS secretary-general <a href="http://isportconnect.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=35249&catid=44&Itemid=50">Matthieu Reeb</a> said “the organisation was prepared to hear urgent cases right up to the opening ceremony in Rio”.</p>
<h2>Breaking the tape</h2>
<p>The RUSAF case is confounded by some extraordinary failures by the <a href="https://www.wada-ama.org/">World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA)</a> and the IAAF, all of which call into question the capacity – and indeed the independence – of organisations that are charged with the ethical management of anti-doping. </p>
<p>On April 30, 2015, WADA president Sir Craig Reedie sent an email to Russia’s most senior anti-doping official with a message of “comfort” that his organisation had no intention of instigating a “<a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/article-3207651/WADA-president-Sir-Craig-Reedie-s-comfort-email-Russia-s-senior-drug-buster-reveals-toothless-clampdown-doping.html">clampdown on Russian doping</a>”. Incredibly, this correspondence took place after a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIkiC3iT0GA">German documentary</a> alleging systematic doping in Russia, and featuring athletes who admitted to being part of that regime, was aired.</p>
<p>The IAAF was no better. In January 2016, it expelled <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/jan/07/iaaf-bans-four-officials-doping-papa-massata-diack">four senior officials</a> after it was revealed they conspired to extort money from an athlete who tested positive in return for hiding the adverse findings. The biggest scalp was Lamine Diack, who had been president of the IAAF from 1999 to 2011.</p>
<p>An <a href="https://www.wada-ama.org/en/resources/world-anti-doping-program/independent-commission-report-2">independent commission</a> established by WADA, headed by the renowned anti-doping advocate Dick Pound, concluded that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Lamine Diack was responsible for organizing and enabling the conspiracy and corruption that took place in the IAAF. He sanctioned and appears to have had personal knowledge of the fraud and the extortion of athletes carried out by the actions of the informal illegitimate governance structure he put in place.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>These examples indicate that, while a focus of concern with RUSAF has been critical, it is also crucial to re-examine the efficacy and trustworthiness of sport officials charged with the management of anti-doping. Russia has serious doping issues, but it would be naïve to make it the scapegoat for global problems of competition integrity.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/61199/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Daryl Adair does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The International Association of Athletics Federations has upheld its ban on the Russian Athletic Federation from competing in the Rio 2016 Olympics.Daryl Adair, Associate Professor of Sport Management, University of Technology SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/593462016-05-13T12:36:18Z2016-05-13T12:36:18ZTokyo 2020 facing allegations – but is clean world sport an impossible dream?<p>Say it ain’t so, Tokyo. Those were my thoughts when I saw <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/may/11/tokyo-olympics-payment-diack-2020-games">the Guardian’s allegations</a> over the Japanese capital’s winning bid for the 2020 Olympic Games: French police are reportedly investigating an alleged €1.3 million (£1m) payment to an account linked to the son of a disgraced former world athletics supremo who was a member of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) during the bidding process. The IOC <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/olympics/36270719">has declined</a> to comment, though Japan <a href="http://www.sportstarlive.com/other-sports/tokyo-says-2020-bid-clean-after-payment-report/article8589871.ece">has insisted</a> its bid was clean. </p>
<p>It is of course the latest in a very long line of stories questioning the ways in which cities and nations bid for prestigious events, even if the IOC has been relatively trouble free in recent years. After the Salt Lake City Olympics <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/sport/1999/mar/17/ioc-expels-members-bribes-scandal">bribery scandal</a> of the late 1990s, it <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-soccer-fifa-ioc-idUSTRE7505J020110601">made some</a> significant changes to stop the worst abuses in a system that certainly needed fixing. Plenty of other international sporting organisations have been keeping journalists much more busy since then, not least <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/2016/03/22/fifa-a-timeline-of-corruption---in-90-seconds/">FIFA</a> and the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/athletics/35348906">International Association of Athletics Federations</a> (IAAF). </p>
<p>The Guardian is not particularly gunning for the IOC over the story. As its journalist Sean Ingle <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/may/11/tokyo-olympic-games-2020-ioc-international-olympic-committee-corruption-bid-scandal">wrote</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>It would be churlish to not acknowledge the IOC’s attempts to improve its voting procedures in recent years. They have tried. What the Guardian’s story shows, however, is that it is hard to completely protect such a lucrative and prized event as Olympics from corruption.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Yet it is hardly a revelation that elite sport often revolves entirely around money. Fictional sports agent <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116695/">Jerry Maguire</a> knew this, I know it, and you know it. Once the rewards become bigger, the kudos shinier and the accreditation badges even larger, corruption is always likely to kick in. We’ve been seeing the results for a long, long time. Sociologists John Sugden and Alan Tomlinson <a href="http://www.polity.co.uk/book.asp?ref=9780745616605">wrote about</a> bribery and corruption in FIFA some two decades ago. Their work showed how the power structures and hubris surrounding key figures in football reshaped the world game. Around the same time, author and investigative journalist Andrew Jennings <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/489102.The_New_Lords_of_the_Rings">made similar observations</a> with his important work on the Olympic Games. </p>
<h2>Why Tokyo matters</h2>
<p>If this is often the reality, it matters all the more to sports fans that Tokyo not be tainted by allegations of foul play. It is less than a year since Japan became <a href="https://theconversation.com/fairy-tale-expert-leicester-city-win-really-was-magical-58887">the Leicester City</a> of international rugby <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-union/34269878">when it defeated</a> South Africa on a truly memorable afternoon in Brighton during the Rugby Word Cup. It remains arguably the very best rugby story of all time, and the perfect prelude to the nation moving to the centre of the international sporting world. A year before the Olympics, it is to become the first nation <a href="http://www.worldrugby.org/rwc2019">to host</a> rugby’s premier event outside of the foundation unions. </p>
<p>It is also another major negative very close to the <a href="https://www.rio2016.com/en">Rio Olympics</a> – as if Brazil did not have <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/05/12/brazil-political-crisis-majority-indicate-vote-for-rousseff-impe/">enough problems</a> of its own right now. </p>
<p>It is important to stress that we are only talking about allegations at this stage and that nobody has been charged with any wrongdoing. The alleged payment was to an account linked to Papa Massata Diack, whose father Lamine was the former president of the IAAF. Diack Sr is under investigation over <a href="https://www.wada-ama.org/en/resources/world-anti-doping-program/independent-commission-report-2">bribery allegations</a> in <a href="http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/sport/athletics/article4666117.ece">relation to</a> the Russian doping scandal, while Diack Jr is facing other <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/may/11/papa-massata-diack-allegations-tokyo-olympics">allegations</a> relating to voting for the 2020 games that do not involve Tokyo. </p>
<p>Whatever the outcome, there is clearly still much work to be done in the ongoing quest to clean up sport. I would argue that those fighting the good fight can only ever achieve so much anyway. Why should sport be any different to other areas of big business or politics where similar tales emerge regularly? </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/football/gallery/2016/may/02/leicester-city-players-party-at-jamie-vardys-house-as-the-foxes-win-the-premier-league-in-pictures">images of</a> Jamie Vardy and friends having a party as Leicester City picked up the English Premier League trophy should also remind us that sport can be a wonderful thing. Nowhere is this more apparent at the moment than in the sunny surrounds of the ESPN Wide World of Sports and Walt Disney Resort in Florida in the form of the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04hgs2m">Invictus Games</a>, Prince Harry’s Paralympics-style multiple sports event for armed services personnel and veterans. </p>
<p>As fans we need such images and stories. Far too much that is written about sport these days focuses on the bad things. It would be more of a story to find that a large event did not have a whiff of the smelly stuff surrounding it. That’s not meant to excuse everything that has been going on, but just a reminder about the wonderful action on the track, the courts and the fields of play. </p>
<p>Or if that’s too glib for you, it is also important to remember that there are still over four years to go until Tokyo 2020. There is the small matter of Rio 2016, the <a href="http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/statements/2016/zika-olympics/en/">Zika virus</a>, water quality <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/International/brazil-faces-slew-problems-ahead-olympics-opening-ceremony/story?id=39072617">at the sailing venue</a>, the jaw-dropping political backdrop and various other challenges for the IOC to navigate first.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/59346/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Harris does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>There are days when you just want to think about buttercups and Jamie Vardy.John Harris, Reader in Business Management, Glasgow Caledonian UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/535432016-02-18T15:02:16Z2016-02-18T15:02:16ZAmateur doping shaping up to be sport’s latest test as cycling bans rack up<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/111984/original/image-20160218-1276-wdnyn2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Speed demon.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-290276831/stock-photo-cyclist-in-maximum-effort-in-a-road-outdoors.html?src=olXO1pIOkZ7YyfhMmLcVWg-3-30">Cyclist by Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The past few months have been <a href="https://theconversation.com/sebastian-coe-faces-a-monumental-task-in-cleaning-up-athletics-50480">traumatic for the world of athletics</a> as it struggles to fight free of a suffocating doping and corruption scandal. On the flip side, it has been quite a turnaround for cycling, which has started to emerge from the dark days of the Lance Armstrong era and is now cited widely as <a href="https://theconversation.com/cycling-might-hold-the-key-for-athletics-to-move-past-its-annus-horribilis-50437">a benchmark for the bosses of track and field</a>. Cycling, however, has a dirty secret.</p>
<p>Well, <a href="https://theconversation.com/cycling-should-take-a-lead-from-f1-as-hidden-motor-scandal-emerges-54011">maybe two</a>, but let’s put aside the spectre of mechanical doping for now and focus on a spate of news stories which have highlighted the murky world of amateur doping in a sport which is slogging away to clean up the professional game.</p>
<h2>Fighting for an edge</h2>
<p>The cases have come thick and fast. Britain’s junior national time trial champion <a href="http://www.cyclingweekly.co.uk/news/latest-news/junior-time-trial-champion-gabriel-evans-admits-epo-use-203450">Gabriel Evans</a>, an 18-year-old from London, was recently caught using the <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/front_page/4657010.stm">banned blood booster EPO</a> (Erythropoietin). He admitted taking the drug, and <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/othersports/cycling/12044175/Teenage-cyclist-Gabriel-Evans-admits-to-doping-because-culture-had-been-normalised-and-justified.html">claimed it had become “normalised and justified”</a> in his mind because he’d read about others regularly being caught. </p>
<p>British Masters road race champion Andrew Hastings was <a href="http://www.cyclingweekly.co.uk/news/latest-news/british-masters-champion-andy-hastings-given-four-year-doping-ban-203379">handed a four-year ban</a> after testing positive for two anabolic steroids. <a href="http://www.cyclingweekly.co.uk/news/latest-news/banned-cyclist-hastings-cites-borrowed-used-syringe-as-reason-for-failed-steroids-test-203455">He claimed</a> that the failed test came after he borrowed a used syringe to take a vitamin supplement.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/111946/original/image-20160218-1252-1ff9jx1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/111946/original/image-20160218-1252-1ff9jx1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/111946/original/image-20160218-1252-1ff9jx1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111946/original/image-20160218-1252-1ff9jx1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111946/original/image-20160218-1252-1ff9jx1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111946/original/image-20160218-1252-1ff9jx1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111946/original/image-20160218-1252-1ff9jx1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111946/original/image-20160218-1252-1ff9jx1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Spiked?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/marosh/103066377/in/photolist-a7f3v-7291b-8ync5Y-7Akczu-7wLbTF-7hbyKu-9ygzd6-8ZpZLJ-8mkjmb-9h4SCu-8mh8Mi-9naNh5-BwXwnK-9ueWY6-LCArq-93SZ1B-9wrxch-93Vk8b-2dopwH-4VV4G3-as2Bgz-bpMV8P-8mhggX-ifM5NH-9Ynxim-3K6Zu5-bpMWbx-4jvTQe-esJThu-baLfET-7uCsMJ-4vzisU-63ciQ6-7YwcA5-CM3Lf-4LqMao-q1DSaH-7YsXAr-76rAVy-ef4aq2-aFxrX4-fWjnGv-LxzJe-BpLPn-f9MrH-99XfiM-7Z3hWo-abVMYs-bpLeKM-76L5wv">marosh</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>English masters rider, Jason White <a href="http://www.cyclingweekly.co.uk/news/latest-news/jason-white-handed-two-year-ban-skipping-drugs-test-150819">was banned for two years</a> after refusing to provide a urine sample to drug control officers. Dan Stevens <a href="http://www.cyclingweekly.co.uk/news/latest-news/british-cyclist-dan-stevens-banned-for-failing-to-provide-anti-doping-sample-192254">also failed to provide a sample</a> but his two-year sanction was reduced after he assisted <a href="http://www.sportsintegrityinitiative.com/ukad-reduces-dan-stevens-sanction-for-assisting-circ/">an inquiry into doping</a>.</p>
<p>These are far from isolated examples in the wider world of cycling. Oscar Tovar, the 32-year-old winner of the 2015 New York Gran Fondo, a competitive but amateur race with little prize money, <a href="http://velonews.competitor.com/2015/10/news/gran-fondo-new-york-winner-stripped-of-title-for-doping_388383">was stripped of his title</a> after testing positive for synthetic testosterone and accepted a two-year ban. In January, 59-year-old Italian jazz guitarist Gigi Cifarelli <a href="http://europe.newsweek.com/italian-jazz-playing-cyclist-banned-doping-gigi-cifarelli-417219">was banned for four years</a> for doping after a positive test at the Grand Prix Dell’Uva Fragola-Suno amateur event. He too accepted the sanction.</p>
<h2>Testing the limits</h2>
<p>The fear must be that this is only the start of something bigger in cycling and other amateur sports. Unsurprisingly perhaps it looks like it may be an emerging crisis in Ironman triathlon competitions – a sport where you must swim 2.4 miles, cycle 112 miles, and then run a marathon. Danish competitor Thomas Lawaetz, <a href="http://www.sportsintegrityinitiative.com/danish-ironman-issued-with-four-year-ban-after-epo-positive/">was banned for four years</a> after he admitted EPO use. And a survey of 3,000 Ironman triathletes showed that around <a href="http://www.irishtriathlon.com/index.php/2014/01/ironman-triathlon-doping-epo-steroids/">20% admitted doping</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/111919/original/image-20160218-1243-8z06ui.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/111919/original/image-20160218-1243-8z06ui.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/111919/original/image-20160218-1243-8z06ui.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111919/original/image-20160218-1243-8z06ui.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111919/original/image-20160218-1243-8z06ui.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111919/original/image-20160218-1243-8z06ui.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111919/original/image-20160218-1243-8z06ui.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111919/original/image-20160218-1243-8z06ui.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sport in transition.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/marc_buehler/9719342937/in/photolist-fNSb3e-fP9GkQ-fP9GRj-eHhwsZ-6Q9Rhb-hpLAHg-7gMES5-6HBxVP-fNS9rp-fzbJs-6Jw3zu-7ZTnGu-6HBLX2-9V3B9V-85PmWh-85PmZ1-85LcTp-6HFFZN-8f92hU-846f3r-6HBGtR-agPNZ2-6HBHTH-6d4s5e-6HFPhf-6HBFK4-6HBHcM-3A3iS-6JsncW-6JHhyE-amen6X-d1p78C-6HFJzy-8vyV4U-agSBws-6HBvQ8-agSBqE-agPPgP-fNSxta-fP9E2y-fNS8eK-fNS8Cr-dJKWhj-fNSsyz-8v4v9A-rStz6-7ZQrQD-NHaHn-9tvqDj-nUpg4">Marc Buehler/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The proposed solution is <a href="http://www.slowtwitch.com/News/More_IRONMAN_AG_doping_testing_5575.html">more testing</a> of amateurs, an approach also taken by <a href="http://velonews.competitor.com/2015/11/news/anti-doping-is-coming-to-masters-and-amateur-racing_389517">USA Cycling</a> due to their increasing concerns that doping has spread through the lower ranks.</p>
<p>However, testing is very limited: it is very expensive and most of the focus is quite rightly placed on elite, professional athletes. It is nigh on impossible to undertake a systematic strategy of out-of-competition testing of amateurs, and many with some knowledge of the substances could ensure they are “washed out” their system before the competition. The implication of this, of course, is that those few individuals who have tested positive are only the tip of the iceberg.</p>
<h2>Force of the law</h2>
<p>While <a href="http://velonews.competitor.com/2008/04/news/road/france-toughens-anti-doping-laws_75622">the French</a> and Danish governments have laws against doping in lower-level sport, it is not an approach widely supported by other countries. And so responsibility and costs fall on cash-strapped sports agencies who have other funding priorities. A <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.3109/09687637.2015.1029872">recent study</a> of US cycling highlighted the challenges involved in addressing this problem.</p>
<p>The rising popularity of competitive amateurs, especially in endurance sports, means that doping is more than simply challenge to ideas of sporting purity and the ideal of noble <a href="http://www.independent.ie/regionals/kerryman/sport/other-sports/olympics-far-removed-from-corinthian-ideal-27422425.html">Corinthian endeavour</a>. It also poses serious dangers to the health of athletes tempted to dabble.</p>
<p>Weekend competitors are unlikely to find expert “doping doctors” like those who helped Armstrong and his team-mates to manage their doping regime. Risks of over-use, sharing needles and contaminated products are significant. EPO has been tentatively <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2015/aug/02/blood-doping-what-is-it-and-has-anyone-died-as-a-result-of-it">linked to several deaths</a>, although without any conclusive proof. It works by releasing more oxygen-carrying red blood cells which “thicken the blood” and force the heart to work harder. Anecdotes <a href="http://inrng.com/2012/11/epo-the-wonder-drug/">from cycling’s darkest days</a> tell of riders setting alarm clocks through the night so they could wake up periodically to train, and to make sure their own congealed blood didn’t kill them while they slept.</p>
<p>More and more, amateur competitors are prepared to spend thousands of pounds on equipment, invest 10-15 hours a week training, spend their holidays on training camps, and pay for personal coaches. It’s no great leap to seeing doping as just another opportunity for improvement. They may not be doing it for money – it seems pride and social status, and perhaps even just curiosity – are motivating principles. The paradoxical twist here is that if testing does get ramped up, then the open secret will disappear into the shadows, increasing the health risks as it goes.</p>
<p>UK Anti-Doping chief Nicole Sapstead <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/othersports/drugsinsport/12160508/Doping-culture-that-is-threatening-to-ruin-British-amateur-sport-could-be-worse-than-anyone-realises.html">admitted to the Daily Telegraph</a> that she can only guess at the scale of the problem, and has little money available to tackle it. UKAD relies instead on tip-offs and close monitoring of social media to spot potential dopers.</p>
<p>It looks like a humble operation amid the scandals of corrupt sports leaders, cover-ups and organised doping in Russia, which symbolise crisis at the highest level of world sport. The attention afforded these situations arguably detracts from a much wider potential public health issue, as yet unacknowledged and without obvious solutions. By defining doping as a part of elite sport, amateur doping falls between the cracks of responsibility, allowing unregulated doping cultures to grow where medical oversight and advice is least able to intervene.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/53543/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Paul Dimeo receives funding from various bodies including the World Anti-Doping Agency. None are specifically related to the subject of amateur athletes and anti-doping.</span></em></p>Health risks loom as weekend athletes aiming to beat their mates become a new frontline for anti-doping.Paul Dimeo, Senior Lecturer in Sport, University of StirlingLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/536892016-01-26T14:46:51Z2016-01-26T14:46:51ZHow damaging is an Adidas decision to pull its athletics sponsorship?<p>Adidas has reportedly decided to terminate its sponsorship deal with the IAAF, the governing body of world athletics, amid negative publicity around allegations of doping and corruption. The 11-year deal was set to end in 2019, and according to the BBC, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/athletics/35385415">Adidas paid US$33m</a> for the right to be associated with sports ranging from the marathon to the long-jump – a deal worth as much as US$8m a year in terms of cash and products. </p>
<p>Neither Adidas nor the IAAF have directly confirmed or denied the reports. The German sportswear giant said it had a clear anti-doping policy was therefore “in close contact with IAAF to learn more about the reform process”. The IAAF, meanwhile, has said it is in close contact with all of its sponsors.</p>
<p>The apparent withdrawal comes at a time when the IAAF is on its knees after the World Anti-Doping Agency <a href="https://theconversation.com/new-athletics-doping-report-piles-more-pressure-on-iaaf-but-there-mustnt-be-an-over-reaction-52991">reported</a> that corruption was endemic within world atheltics’ governing body. Sebastian Coe, IAAF’s president since 2015, has robustly defended athletics and the organisation amid a <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2014/dec/11/iaaf-lamine-diack-presidency-athletics">swirling tide of claims, allegations and rumours</a>. Adidas pulling out would be a major blow both to him and to the sport over which he presides.</p>
<p>However, Adidas’ reported decision is something of a surprise. The sports brand remained loyal to FIFA during an <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-32897066">ongoing corruption probe</a> into football’s governing body. The longstanding nature of Adidas’ relationship with FIFA may be one reason for such loyalty, unlike its relatively recent links with the IAAF, which may explain why it is said to be jumping ship. </p>
<p>At the same time, the IAAF’s problems run much deeper than those of FIFA, with incidents on the track and off it having <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/sport/live/2016/jan/14/athletics-doping-scandal-wada-releases-part-two-of-report-live">become increasingly apparent</a>. Many sponsors have previously shown a reluctance to terminate deals in light of athletics’ problems, so one possible scenario is that Adidas is keen to shield itself from any further damaging revelations.</p>
<p>Nor should one forget the “Coe factor” in all of this. Coe brought a 38-year relationship with Nike to his role as IAAF president, an association that attracted widespread criticism. Some felt that his role as a brand ambassador (for which he was paid £100,000 a year) would compromise his presidency, and create <a href="http://www.thedrum.com/news/2015/11/26/iaaf-president-seb-coe-severs-controversial-nike-sponsorship">a potential conflict of interest</a>. He ultimately terminated the deal, stating that he had only ended his association with Nike because of a perceived conflict of interest rather than a proven one.</p>
<p>While this debate unfolded, Nike’s name sat centre-stage of the controversy. Adidas bosses surely can’t have been pleased about this, especially as their sponsorship was already becoming embroiled in the emerging doping scandal. </p>
<p>Even so, early termination of a sponsorship deal is a massive strategic call for any business, especially at this level of sport. This suggests that company chiefs are clear in their minds that there is a business case for withdrawal: probably to mitigate some of the reputational damage the company has already suffered, almost certainly to stop consumers associating the Adidas name with <a href="https://theconversation.com/athletics-doping-report-should-spark-radical-rethink-on-drugs-in-sport-50376">doping</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/new-athletics-doping-report-piles-more-pressure-on-iaaf-but-there-mustnt-be-an-over-reaction-52991">corruption allegations</a>.</p>
<p>A decision by Adidas to terminate its deal would be no apocalypse for the IAAF. Former president Lamine Diack previously sold the control of the IAAF’s sponsorship rights to a Japanese company, Dentsu. It is Dentsu that sold the rights to Adidas and it will take any financial hit that an Adidas sponsorship termination brings. That said, athletics is damaged goods and early termination will tilt the balance of power in sponsorship negotiations away from the sport and towards prospective sponsors. </p>
<h2>Era defining</h2>
<p>Don’t bet on there being a mass outbreak of morality though. With a high-profile sponsorship property such as world athletics now up for grabs, it is likely that several of the world’s leading sports apparel brands will be taking a close look at filling the gap. </p>
<p>As the case of Puma and the South African Football Association proved a couple of years ago, just because one company takes the moral high ground doesn’t mean its rivals will too. Puma ended its sponsorship <a href="https://theconversation.com/puma-leaps-out-of-south-africa-amid-rising-market-morality-19999">over fixing claims</a> only for Nike to replace it. Similarly, it is inevitable that the likes of Nike will be <a href="http://sport.bt.com/more-sport-hub/more-sport/nike-expected-to-be-given-chance-to-replace-adidas-as-iaaf-sponsor-S11364035896530">monitoring the current situation</a> very carefully.</p>
<p>Whoever the new sponsors ultimately may prove to be, the revelations could well be era defining. For years, many critics have been calling on sponsors <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-sponsors-may-be-the-only-ones-who-can-reform-fifa-42507">to take direct action</a> against sports and any governing bodies deemed to have been corrupt, immoral or even just badly run. Viewed in these terms, Adidas’ decision may be a tipping-point, where the morals of the marketplace begin to dominate corporate decision making. After all, why would any company hang around a sport so tarnished that it might, in the eyes of consumers, become tarnished in the same way?</p>
<p>Adidas may become the first of many sponsors to reflect the wishes of their customers by terminating unpalatable sponsorship deals. And, with the Olympic Games a matter of months away, the pressure is on for them to be a clean games – and for the IAAF to get its affairs in order.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/53689/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
Why Adidas pulled its sponsorship of the IAAF, the governing body of world athletics.Simon Chadwick, ‘Class of 92’ Professor of Sports Enterprise, University of SalfordLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/529912016-01-14T19:02:37Z2016-01-14T19:02:37ZNew athletics doping report piles more pressure on IAAF – but there mustn’t be an over-reaction<p>The release of a <a href="https://www.wada-ama.org/en/resources/world-anti-doping-program/independent-commission-report-2">second World Anti Doping Authority (WADA) report</a> into doping in athletics has proved to be as astounding as the outcomes of the first report in November 2015. It offers allegations of <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/othersports/athletics/12099794/Lord-Coe-under-intense-pressure-after-damning-WADA-doping-report.html">extortion</a> at what were the highest levels of the sport. But the report appears to leave the way clear for reform efforts to be led by the current president of the sport’s governing body, Sebastian Coe.</p>
<p>This story first broke in the summer of 2015 when the Sunday Times and German broadcaster ADR released documents showing that hundreds of athletes had abnormal blood profiles which suggested systematic doping. WADA’s investigation, led by its former president Dick Pound, claimed that there had been “corruption and bribery practices <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2015/nov/09/wada-iaaf-russia-dick-pound-banned">at the highest levels</a>” of the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) to cover up doping cases. Russia received an indefinite <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2015/nov/26/russia-full-indefinite-ban-world-athletics-doping-scandal">ban from competition</a>.</p>
<p>Since then, major figures have been identified and face punishment, including former <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/athletics/34782521">IAAF President Lamine Diack</a>, former head of anti-doping for the IAAF, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2015/nov/05/gabriel-dolle-iaaf-criminal-investigation">Gabriel Dolle</a>, and Diack’s son <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/jan/11/papa-massata-diack-arranged-parcels-for-senior-ioc-members">Papa Massata Diack</a>. Russian scientists and anti-doping leaders have been sanctioned. We have also learned from an IAAF Ethics Committee report that athletes from other countries might be involved, including <a href="http://bigstory.ap.org/article/8dd8108125ba42789461109e3d055b73/iaaf-investigating-allegations-kenya-doping-cover">Kenya</a> and <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/jan/08/wada-iaaf-extortion-report-turkish-athlete">Turkey</a>, and that people who had been in IAAF leadership roles apparently <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/sports/olympics/summer/trackandfield/iaaf-explored-ways-to-cover-up-russian-doping-1.3400476">knew about doping allegations</a> several years ago. </p>
<h2>IAAF accused</h2>
<p>This second report was delayed pending police investigations and was released on January 14 at a press conference in Munich. It makes claims of IAAF staff involved in extortion and the covering-up of positive tests. The focus remained on Russia and examined why the athletics governing body was so slow to respond to evidence of widespread doping. </p>
<p>Sebastian Coe’s position was endorsed by Pound – indeed he said he could not think of anyone better to lead the IAAF at what is a key moment for it. But the report says the IAAF Council, which included Coe at the time “could not have been unaware of the extent of doping in athletics”. Coe had been vice-president of the IAAF under Diack. Pound appeared to focus his criticism of the council on a failure to address alleged nepotism.</p>
<p>Most frustrating is that the remit of this report was limited to Russia. Suggestions that those cases were just the <a href="http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/sport/athletics/article4665469.ece">tip of iceberg</a> of doping and extortion leaves open the possibility that the situation is a whole lot worse. </p>
<p>Pound accused the IAAF of “<a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/athletics/35309759">continued denial</a>” and requiring an overhaul of governance processes to address previous failures. But it is hard to see how such high-level interventions might change behaviour among athletes, coaches and doctors in the short-term.</p>
<h2>Armstrong legacy</h2>
<p>Athletics seems to be in a similar position to cycling three years ago. Long-standing rumours of doping cultures within elite teams were not finally confronted by that sport’s governing body the UCI until the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) published <a href="http://cyclinginvestigation.usada.org/">a detailed report</a> in 2012 that looked into the US Postal team based upon detailed interviews. Their objective was to sanction Lance Armstrong and to break through the “omerta” to work towards clean sport.</p>
<p>The step-by-step process of USADA’s investigation also exposed weaknesses in the system and influence of anti-doping agencies. Many of the confessions were only obtained when federal prosecutors threatened them with prison sentences for perjury or withholding evidence, and even then with the promise of a reduced sanction (Armstrong’s team-mates received six-month bans while he <a href="http://www.latimes.com/sports/sportsnow/la-sp-sn-lance-armstrong-lifetime-ban-20150318-story.html">received a lifetime ban</a>).</p>
<p>The Russia case is in some ways similar. It was only because two whistle-blowers worked with media organisations that the suspicions began to be confirmed. The courageous husband and wife <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-athletics-corruption-whistleblower-idUSKCN0T91PL20151120">are now in hiding</a>. Even after the revelations were published in the Sunday Times, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/athletics/33784236">Coe responded</a> with an attack on the reporters.</p>
<p>All of which suggests that the current approach of testing athletes is not enough to prevent many from doping, either through their own volition or with the support of coaches, doctors and scientists. It would seem that the threat of a four-year ban is not a sufficient deterrent. A governance model that requires organisations within each country and sport to act in accordance with the World Anti-Doping Code is also flawed, if those organisations help support doping. There are simply too many vested interests at play here.</p>
<h2>Biting the bullet</h2>
<p>The future for athletics <a href="http://www.stir.ac.uk/news/2016/01/study-aims-to-shape-global-anti-doping-programmes/">looks very challenging</a>. Much like cycling, their leaders need to be prepared to sanction the very best competitors even if that risks more scandal and high-profile withdrawals from major events. The level of corruption among administrators will be harder to tackle, not least because finding evidence and processing legal cases takes time and effort. However, a change of culture means confronting the problem, not pretending it is historical or limited to a handful of countries.</p>
<p>In light of these scandals, some have called for new and tougher tactics such as criminalising doping or <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/athletics/35277793">deleting all historical event records</a> and starting again. There is a risk of over-reacting when such situations seem so extreme that the force of law seems like the only solution. </p>
<p>Since WADA was formed in 1999, many academics <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09523367.2013.826652">have warned</a> about the potential abuse of power in the anti-doping environment. Certainly when there are cases of accidental doping that lead to bans of two or four years many question the validity of the outcomes. The recent controversy over the case of Australian rules football team Essendon, where <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/35288575">34 past and present players were banned for 2 years</a> for using a supplement provided by the team in 2012 shows the dilemmas and legal challenges faced in some cases. The rights of the individual athlete should always be at the forefront, and some common sense applied when there is no intention to cheat or genuine misunderstandings occurred. </p>
<p>The reality of the situation now is that many “real dopers” are still getting away with it, while many relatively innocuous cases are being harshly treated. The reaction to this new report ought to be tinged with caution. An over-reaction and toughening up of policy might undermine the very principles of fairness and protecting the health and well-being of athletes that the anti-doping campaigners are so keen to protect.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/52991/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Paul Dimeo has received funding from various external organisations for projects relating to aspects of anti-doping, including British Academy, Fulbright Commission, Carnegie Trust, Wellcome Trust and the World Anti-Doping Agency. </span></em></p>Fresh details about the findings of the World Anti Doping Authority raise questions about athletics chiefs.Paul Dimeo, Senior Lecturer in Sport, University of StirlingLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/522892016-01-11T12:24:33Z2016-01-11T12:24:33ZFive reasons why your city won’t want to host the Olympic Games<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/107728/original/image-20160111-6977-181humt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">from www.shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The prospect of hosting any mega-event – especially the Olympic Games – is cause for serious consideration. At local, national, and international levels, the discussion takes shape around two key questions: is it worth it? And if so, for whom? </p>
<p>The question of worth is not limited to cost – although that certainly remains a crucial feature. Rather, there exists a series of interrelated concerns about how mega-events can disrupt cities, and distract from long-term planning agendas. Bids to host the 2024 Olympics from both <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2015/jul/27/boston-mayor-2024-olympic-bid-doubt">Boston</a> and <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/12025211/Hamburg-withdraws-bid-to-host-2024-Olympics.html">Hamburg</a> were withdrawn for such reasons. Meanwhile, Rio de Janeiro is demonstrating just how <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2014/apr/29/rio-2016-olympic-preparations-worst-ever-ioc">challenging</a> preparations for the Olympic Games can be.</p>
<p>Here, we take a closer look at five key reasons why a city might be reluctant to host the Olympic Games.</p>
<h2>1. Sheer cost</h2>
<p>Let’s get the obvious out of the way. Here are the estimated costs of the last four Olympics, and the projected cost of the upcoming games in Rio. </p>
<ul>
<li>Sydney 2000: <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/24/news/24iht-t1_2.html?pagewanted=all">US$4.7 billion</a></li>
<li>Athens 2004: <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2012-08-02/how-the-2004-olympics-triggered-greeces-decline">€9 billion</a></li>
<li>Beijing 2008: <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB121614671139755287">US$42 billion</a></li>
<li>London 2012: <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/sport/datablog/2012/jul/26/london-2012-olympics-money">US$11 billion</a></li>
<li>Rio 2016: <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2014/apr/23/world-cup-olympics-rio-de-janeiro-brazil-sensation-disaster">US$15 billion</a> or more (over two decades following the event)</li>
</ul>
<p>While the exact cost of any Olympics is difficult to pin down, and is often a point of contention, the last three games witnessed unparalleled public and private investment. Beijing, London and Rio have built longer term “legacy” planning into their budgets, to try to ensure that investment in hosting the games continues to pay off for years after the event. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/107727/original/image-20160111-7002-1umylcf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/107727/original/image-20160111-7002-1umylcf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/107727/original/image-20160111-7002-1umylcf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/107727/original/image-20160111-7002-1umylcf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/107727/original/image-20160111-7002-1umylcf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/107727/original/image-20160111-7002-1umylcf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/107727/original/image-20160111-7002-1umylcf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Olympic legacies are hard to come by.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/dany13/10410362514/sizes/l">Dany13/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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<p>Such legacy promises often promote infrastructure redevelopment, improved transportation systems, economic growth and job creation, projects of urban renewal and regeneration, improved physical activity participation and environmental sustainability. In Rio, planned infrastructure developments are set to continue through <a href="http://www.building.co.uk/aecom-and-wilkinson-eyre%E2%80%99s-winning-rio-2016-designs-unveiled/5023410.article">to 2030</a>. </p>
<p>The financial undertaking for such bids – and the subsequent planning and implementation – is nothing short of enormous. Undoubtedly, the most significant cost relates to the (re)development of urban infrastructure. This leads us to our second deterrent.</p>
<h2>2. Infrastructure challenges</h2>
<p>Hosting a mega-event always involves urban renewal and regeneration. Yet developing the sporting stadia, accommodation and transportation networks to cope with increased numbers of tourists and athletes is anything but straightforward. Before refashioning the urban landscape, planners must know which sites are to be redeveloped, for whom, and to what end. </p>
<p>Clearly, catering to the demands of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) is one priority. But arguably, it is the least significant. Rather, planners seek to capitalise on urban space by re-imagining the city as a <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10261133.1989.10559088">recreational environment</a> – a resource for tourism and consumerism. Retail, festival, sporting, leisure, hotel and heritage spaces are at the core of this vision. </p>
<p>While improvements to transportation may provide benefits to the populace, these redevelopments only offer hope for increased tourist dollars and a small number of low-paying jobs. One example is the <a href="http://www.fifa.com/worldcup/destination/stadiums/stadium=214/index.html">Estádio Mario Filho</a> (better known as the Maracanã) stadium in Rio, which underwent more than <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-legacy-of-the-iconic-maracana-will-likely-be-tied-to-its-high-cost-and-to-what-could-have-been-1405116704">US$500m in renovations</a> ahead of the 2014 World Cup. Once cast in the populist light of the 1950s to communicate ideas of democracy, it <a href="http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/lag/summary/v009/9.1.gaffney.html">now aims to attract</a> a different kind of person: the consumption-oriented international tourist. </p>
<p>One of the central challenges of hosting any mega-event is what to do with the new infrastructure after the athletes and tourists have gone. Some host cities – such as <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/how-the-olympic-games-changed-barcelona-forever-2012-7?IR=T">Barcelona</a> – have made good use of their stadia, but others are replete with white elephants. Montreal, Sydney, Athens, Beijing and Vancouver have all had their share of <a href="http://www.canada.com/olympics/looking-back/some-of-the-biggest-white-elephants-in-the-history-of-the-olympic-games">post-olympics venue failures</a>. </p>
<p>The 2010 World Cup in South Africa offers a particularly stark warning: the stadia continue to <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/25/opinion/molefe-south-africas-world-cup-illusions.html?_r=0">rot from disuse</a>. And Brazil appears destined to repeat the same mistakes, as the country <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/brazil-world-cup-stadium-white-elephants-2015-1">struggles to find a purpose</a> for its 2014 World Cup facilities. White elephants are highly-visible reminders that mega-events may not be worth the cost. But there’s an even more insidious side-effect which is often overlooked. </p>
<h2>3. Human rights violations</h2>
<p>Building new infrastructure in a city means destroying established urban areas. When that happens, local populations and communities are often dispersed and displaced. To make way for Beijing’s 2008 Olympic infrastructure, an estimated <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-olympics-beijing-housing-idUSPEK12263220070605#PuyXezlpP4wPyU3o.97">1.5m people</a> were forcibly evicted from their homes with minimal compensation. The neighbourhoods <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/02/razing-history-the-tragic-story-of-a-beijing-neighborhoods-destruction/252760/">were destroyed</a> and residents removed to the outskirts of the city far from friends, family and places of work. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/107729/original/image-20160111-6981-lpbmvb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/107729/original/image-20160111-6981-lpbmvb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/107729/original/image-20160111-6981-lpbmvb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/107729/original/image-20160111-6981-lpbmvb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/107729/original/image-20160111-6981-lpbmvb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/107729/original/image-20160111-6981-lpbmvb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/107729/original/image-20160111-6981-lpbmvb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Olympic protests.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/kk/4354407229/">Krus Krug/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
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<p>In Rio, the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/03/forced-evictions-vila-autodromo-rio-olympics-protests">forced eviction process</a> has taken on a militarised ethos, as Police Pacification Units (Unidade de Polícia Pacificadora) <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2015/dec/14/rio-olympic-games-2016-favelas-hopes-of-pacification-are-shattered">try to control</a> a number of the city’s favelas. Demolition, displacement and the razing of <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/13/opinion/in-the-name-of-the-future-rio-is-destroying-its-past.html">Unesco world heritage sites</a> all feature in preparations for the games. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2008/08/06/china-olympics-harm-key-human-rights">Repressive measures</a> within China and Tibet at the 2008 games, <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26043872">LGBT rights issues</a> surrounding the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi and <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/23/qatar-nepal-workers-world-cup-2022-death-toll-doha">casualties on construction sites</a> for the Qatar 2022 World Cup all point toward the persistent human rights issues which all too often accompany mega-events. Rather than representing unity and diversity, it seems as though the Olympic Games have started to signify oppression and exclusion. </p>
<h2>4. Fear and security</h2>
<p>In many host cities, publicly-funded yet privately-owned urban renewal projects have been leveraged to impose enhanced surveillance measures. For instance, London 2012 saw the rise of <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/jun/11/public-spaces-undemocratic-land-ownership">“defensible” architecture</a>, which restricts the access and activities of those deemed “undesirable” – particularly skateboarders, protesters and the homeless – in newly-developed areas. </p>
<p>London’s Strand East Community – developed by Vastint Holding B.V., IKEA’s holding company for residential development, ahead of the 2012 Olympics – is <a href="http://library.queensu.ca/ojs/index.php/surveillance-and-society/article/viewFile/london/liquid_london">characteristic of</a> the city’s propensity towards “enclave living”. This means a high security presence, which accepts those with the capital to invest, and rejects those who are deemed a threat to the safety and security of its residents. Such projects have caused urban spaces to be splintered. Those who lack the desire or means to engage with the consumer economy are stigmatised as “unwanted”.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/107730/original/image-20160111-6972-1ghwvz7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/107730/original/image-20160111-6972-1ghwvz7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/107730/original/image-20160111-6972-1ghwvz7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/107730/original/image-20160111-6972-1ghwvz7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/107730/original/image-20160111-6972-1ghwvz7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/107730/original/image-20160111-6972-1ghwvz7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/107730/original/image-20160111-6972-1ghwvz7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">You shall not pass.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/dgeezer/7481287298/sizes/l">diamond geezer/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
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<p>This process of securitisation has been fuelled by fear of attacks on popular sporting events, such as the bombing of the <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2015/06/24/us/tsarnaev-boston-marathon-bombing-death-sentencing/">2013 Boston Marathon</a> and the targeting of Paris’ <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-34896521">Stade de France</a> in November 2015. Planning committees have been burdened with the impossible task of preventing such attacks, by building security into the infrastructure, planning, organisation and practices associated with mega-events. </p>
<h2>5. International prestige</h2>
<p>Hosting a mega-event can create buzz, offer the chance for a positive re-brand or garner international prestige. But it can also draw unwanted attention and bad press. Host nations often obscure human rights violations, but will find it more difficult to manage the high-profile political and economic problems associated with international organisations like the IOC. For example, political scandals have recently tarnished the reputations of sporting bodies <a href="https://theconversation.com/lessons-for-fifa-from-the-salt-lake-city-olympic-scandal-42493">such as FIFA</a> and <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-11-08/athletics-faces-long-road-to-redemption-says-iaaf-chief-coe/6922746">the IAAF</a>. </p>
<p>By being more aware of the potential pitfalls of hosting mega-events, residents are in a better position to engage with the bidding process – or to resist it, like those involved in the <a href="http://www.nobostonolympics.org">“No Boston Olympics” campaign</a>. Instead of grasping at opportunities to host the Olympics, city authorities are getting better at considering how the games actually fit with their priorities – or if they do at all. This can only be a good thing. </p>
<p><em>This article is part of a series on the outlook for <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/rio-2016">Rio 2016</a>. You can also find out how hosting the Paralympics <a href="https://theconversation.com/lessons-from-london-how-hosting-the-paralympics-can-make-cities-more-accessible-53044">can change a city</a> for the better, and discover the story of <a href="https://theconversation.com/vila-autodromo-the-favela-fighting-back-against-rios-olympic-development-52393">the favela fighting back</a> against Olympic developments.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/52289/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Hosting a mega-event isn’t all it’s cracked up to be - and now some cities are starting to say ‘no’.Bryan C. Clift, Lecturer, Department for Health, Humanities and Social Sciences, University of BathAndrew Manley, Lecturer, Department for Health, University of BathLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/514132015-11-30T12:25:56Z2015-11-30T12:25:56ZCricket has the opportunity to be a truly transparent world sport – it should seize it<p>Revelations of corruption in the administration of global sport have provided one of the ongoing dramas of 2015. The reasons for the plethora of scandals – notably at <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2015/05/28/how-fifa-ignored-all-the-essential-steps-to-weed-out-corruption/">football’s governing body FIFA</a> and the <a href="https://theconversation.com/sebastian-coe-faces-a-monumental-task-in-cleaning-up-athletics-50480">International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF)</a> – are easy enough to pinpoint. </p>
<p>International sport has traditionally been run by those who have a love for the game but often precious little administrative experience. Up until very recently there was little money in the likes of cricket, athletics or cycling. Many of those who rose to the top did so as they had learnt to make sense of their sport’s often arcane governance procedures. They weren’t doing it for the riches and many weren’t getting paid at all. It was all about the glory. </p>
<p>Throughout 2015, as FIFA and the IAAF have been rocked by ongoing <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2015/nov/04/lamine-diack-investigation-iaaf-corruption-doping">investigations</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/2015-fifa-arrests">arrests</a> and <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/athletics/34938953">allegations of conflicts of interest</a>, cricket has escaped relatively scot-free. Admittedly, there has been a permanent buzz of <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-33517583">scandal</a> related to the Indian Premier League (IPL). But there are wider issues the sport must face up to. </p>
<p>The removal in mid-November of <a href="http://indianexpress.com/article/sports/cricket/once-the-czar-of-world-cricket-srinivasan-reduced-to-a-non-entity/">Narayanaswami Srinivasan</a>, the controversial former chairman of the International Cricket Council (ICC), nonetheless offers cricket the opportunity to make significant changes to how it operates globally. </p>
<h2>New man in charge of the ICC</h2>
<p>Shashank Manohar, Srnivasan’s successor, <a href="http://www.firstpost.com/sports/the-anti-srinivasan-shashank-manohar-says-bcci-ecb-ca-triumvirate-should-not-bully-icc-2522658.html">has made encouraging statements</a> concerning both transparency in world cricket’s governance structures and also the “<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2015/nov/26/shashank-manohar-icc-big-three-england-india-australia">bullying</a>” behaviour of cricket’s big three – the national associations of Australia, England and India. </p>
<p>Manohar also leads the Board of Cricketing Control of India (BCCI), the biggest and most powerful national board. During his short time in charge <a href="http://www.firstpost.com/sports/bcci-agm-shashank-manohar-aims-to-enact-sweeping-reforms-srinivasans-icc-future-in-doubt-2499638.html">he has also made positive steps</a> towards tackling the myriad of conflicting interests and opaque processes that have traditionally underpinned the BCCI’s work. </p>
<p>Manohar and his supporters may well be genuine in their wish to clean things up, but they still face a number of significant challenges – and the cases of FIFA and the IAAF are instructive in pinpointing where these challenges lie. Successful reform has a lot to do with the organisation having the willingness to take tough decisions and stick with them. </p>
<p>But how will we know if this willingness is genuinely there? The cases of both FIFA and the IAAF illustrate that there are five key indicators to look out for.</p>
<p>First comes leadership: is the ICC’s leadership asking the right questions? It took both FIFA and the IAAF far too long to recognise that there were problems inherent in their business model. </p>
<p>Until now, the recommendations of the <a href="http://www.espncricinfo.com/ci-icc/content/story/551836.html">2012 Woolf report</a> into governance in cricket and reports by well-respected organisations such as <a href="http://www.transparency.org/news/pressrelease/transparency_international_calls_on_international_cricket_council_to_addres">Transparency International </a> have been largely ignored. Manohar needs to acknowledge this and work out a strategy for doing justice to their aims.</p>
<p>Second comes coherence: do the new ideas and plans fit with best practice elsewhere? The organisation of world cricket is at best complex and at worst downright opaque. Manohar needs to either revisit the Woolf report or empower a powerful group of external advisers to build on its conclusions. </p>
<p>They can then come up with empirically robust suggestions for change. Trying to do this internally – as FIFA in particular did – is not an option. Manohar needs to accept that implementing their suggestions will require no small amount of political skill. But it’s the only way that effective change will happen.</p>
<h2>Oversight, money and sustainability</h2>
<p>Third, is the question of whether the ICC is prepared to allow external oversight of its work. Ultimately, when FIFA suppressed the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/football/2015/jun/17/michael-garcia-report-russia-qatar-world-cups">Garcia report</a> into the awarding of World Cups to Qatar and Russia and ignored the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/football/2014/apr/23/fifa-advised-implement-report-advice-reform">Pieth recommendations</a> on reform, it illustrated that it wasn’t prepared to allow external oversight of what it does. </p>
<p>The IAAF may have dealt with this better, but it still took a long time to get where it needed to go. The ICC must realise that it cannot regulate itself. Manohar needs to ensure that regulatory institutions are in place to ensure that when the ICC makes mistakes – and it will, just as any organisation does – there are ways to spot them and put them right. </p>
<p>Fourth concerns the money to make the change happen. Cricket is a game with a very skewed financial infrastructure. After <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cricket/26096782">a deal pushed through</a> in 2014, three countries – Australia, England and India – provide the bulk of the revenues through their TV rights’ deals, and they have recently worked together to <a href="http://www.espncricinfo.com/ci-icc/content/story/717377.html">change the constitution</a> of the ICC to ensure that they have an effective veto over much of the ICC’s work.</p>
<p>This can’t be good for the game. India, Australia and England undoubtedly <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cricket/26029472">need to have their interests represented</a>, but they can’t be allowed to hold an effective veto. </p>
<p>Finally, the ICC must address questions of sustainability. Unscrupulous people can quickly make even the most well-thought through system look like the proverbial ass. There will undoubtedly be those who will seek to undermine the ICC’s work and those who prefer the opacity of the “old” system. But that’s not the way 21st century sport can or indeed should be run. </p>
<h2>An ongoing process</h2>
<p>Whatever reform path the ICC chooses, it cannot stand still as those who stand to lose out do their level best to get the most – in financial and power terms – that they can. Getting governance right is most definitely a process and not an event. It’s something you do, and monitor, continuously. </p>
<p>Cricket has often prided itself on the existence of a unique “<a href="https://www.lords.org/mcc/mcc-spirit-of-cricket/">spirit</a>” around which the game is played. If ever such a spirit existed – and there are plenty of reasons to believe that it has always been nothing short of a nice, pretty <a href="http://www.espncricinfo.com/blogs/content/story/621912.html">fiction</a> – then the <a href="https://theconversation.com/crickets-indian-premier-league-is-in-trouble-but-popularity-will-see-it-through-44739">corruption scandals</a> that have plagued the game in recent times should have woken everyone up. </p>
<p>The fact that through 2015 both the IAAF and FIFA have responded so clumsily to the challenges that they faced should also ring alarm bells. For once, however, the ICC and Manohar do have a chance to get ahead of the game.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/51413/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Daniel Hough does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>What can the International Cricket Council learn from FIFA and the IAAF? Plenty.Daniel Hough, Professor of Politics, University of SussexLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/504372015-11-13T11:01:28Z2015-11-13T11:01:28ZCycling might hold the key for athletics to move past its annus horribilis<p>When a German TV documentary made some astonishing claims about systemic doping in Russian athletics last December, who knew it would end up like this? Athletics is now searching for answers after the release of a report which confirms the content of that broadcast. And some of those answers might lie in a sport that has already been forced to face its demons.</p>
<p>Based principally on evidence provided by a former Russian anti-doping official, the German documentary alleged that leading Russian athletics officials supplied banned substances in exchange for 5% of an athlete’s earnings. There were also allegations both of doping control officers colluding with athletes to falsify tests and attempting to blackmail athletes who had tested positive. </p>
<p>A subsequent investigation by the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/athletics/33824471">Sunday Times</a>, based on an analysis of 12,000 blood tests taken from 5,000 athletes over the past decade, reinforced the view that Russia is the “epicentre” of blood doping in sport. And earlier this month, French prosecutors <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2015/nov/08/russia-expulsion-doping-report-iaaf">announced</a> that the former President of the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) – the sport’s world governing body – is being investigated over allegations he took payments for deferring sanctions against Russian drugs cheats.</p>
<p>The commission established by the World Anti-Doping Authority (WADA), which had supplied the information which prompted the French probe, essentially concluded that the German investigation was accurate. Now, the eyes of the sporting world are on current IAAF president, Sebastian Coe, who has to decide <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2015/nov/12/russia-iaaf-ban-doping-sebastian-coe-vladimir-putin-olympics">whether to boot out Russia</a> as he attempts to restore the credibility of the sport, less than 10 months before the start of the <a href="https://uk.news.yahoo.com/iaaf-russia-await-report-blackmail-doping-104340908--spt.html#vsXAHcf">2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympic Games</a>. </p>
<h2>Learning cycle</h2>
<p>The best advice to give Coe is that he should phone fellow Briton, Brian Cookson, president of cycling’s world governing body, the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI). He has had to introduce sweeping reforms in light of a similar deluge of doping allegations in that sport.</p>
<p>Two of the UCI’s proposed reforms are of interest. First, the establishment of an independent anti-doping tribunal specific to the sport and consisting of judges specialised in anti-doping claims. The UCI’s idea is that such a tribunal would remove the current operational burden of doping trials from national federations and ensure consistency in doping case decisions, reducing the number that go to the <a href="http://www.cyclingweekly.co.uk/news/latest-news/cycling-teams-can-now-suspended-doping-cases-151337">Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS)</a> on appeal.</p>
<p>The UCI also has proposed that before a team can be registered to compete in the sport it must show evidence of a minimum level of compliance with anti-doping regulations. If not, that team license to compete can be withheld. Moreover, where there is proof of systemic doping, the UCI reforms suggest that the team ought to be suspended for an escalating period of months. </p>
<p>This licencing/team-suspension model could be adapted by the IAAF to athletics. On proof of systemic doping at a national level, the governing national federation could be held vicariously liable for the action of its athletes. And if the national federations in question did not satisfy an anti-doping licencing regime, then their athletes could be banned from competing internationally.</p>
<h2>This Sporting Life</h2>
<p>The WADA report also has wider repercussions. The allegations in the German TV documentary were not confined to athletics. They referred to doping conspiracies in a host of endurance events, including collusion at a troika of Russian government-funded agencies – the national anti-doping agency, the national athletics federation and the nation’s <a href="https://www.wada-ama.org/en/resources/world-anti-doping-program/independent-commission-report-1">WADA-accredited anti-doping laboratory in Moscow</a>.</p>
<p>Russia’s problem becomes the world’s problem as doubt is cast on medals won by its athletes not just at the London Olympics of 2012, but also at the 2013 World Athletics Championships (held in Moscow), the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi and this year’s World Swimming Championship, held in Kazan. Moreover, it is likely that football’s world governing body, FIFA, will have to look again at who manages its onsite anti-doping programme for the World Cup in 2018 in Russia. </p>
<p>Another worry for WADA will relate to its own operations. In 2013, a record <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/33686397">283,304 samples</a> were analysed by WADA-accredited laboratories. Russia was second only to China in the number of tests carried out. Adverse findings were returned for only 1.36% of tests, but how credible now is this finding that 98.64% were negative? </p>
<p>But perhaps the most crucial lesson to draw from the WADA report is that it once again reveals a core weakness in the political governance of world sport – the lack of a separation of powers. In global sporting terms, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) is sport’s public House of Representatives. WADA has been delegated executive powers to deal with doping; CAS acts as sport’s judiciary. </p>
<p>While questions about the individual effects of each branch remain – and in particular the lack of athlete representation – of equal importance is the close-knit relationship between all three, and the lack of transparency. There is, for example, unnecessary crossover in the membership of the executives of the IOC, CAS and WADA. </p>
<p>In short, 2015 may go down as sport’s annus horribilis with a combination of doping and corruption allegations still pending against the UCI, FIFA and the IAAF. The wider picture is that sport is condemned to repeat its mistakes until it fixes a loose, self-regulatory governance structure with origins in the <a href="http://www.bl.uk/sportandsociety/exploresocsci/sportsoc/history/articles/histsportrev1.pdf">19th century</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/50437/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jack Anderson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A massive doping problem in the Lance Armstrong era has inspired some useful reform ideas, but governance issues must be solved as well.Jack Anderson, Professor of Sports Law, Queen's University BelfastLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/503762015-11-09T16:01:35Z2015-11-09T16:01:35ZAthletics doping report should spark radical rethink on drugs in sport<p>It’s hard to overplay the importance of the damning <a href="https://wada-main-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/resources/files/wada_independent_commission_report_1_en.pdf">report from the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA)</a> that has presented evidence of widespread and systematic doping – particularly in Russia, which it recommends should be suspended from competition. The investigation has provided world sport with a long-overdue and historically significant moment of truth. The global response to this scandal could indelibly shape the nature of sport.</p>
<p>In a press conference to launch the report, Dick Pound, the former WADA president who has spent nearly a year investigating allegations of widespread doping, said investigators had found evidence of “cover-ups, destruction of samples, payment of money to conceal doping tests”.</p>
<p>The investigation followed a documentary aired on German television in December 2014: Top Secret Doping: How Russia makes its Winners, which alleged the existence of a “sophisticated and well-established system of state-sponsored doping” within the governing body for the sport of athletics in Russia. </p>
<p>In addition to <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2015/nov/08/russia-expulsion-doping-report-iaaf">Russia</a>, <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/11/06/us-athletics-kenya-doping-idUSKCN0SV1OV20151106">Kenya</a>, where several top athletes have failed doping cases, has also been seen as a serious problem. Yet, at present, WADA has little power of influence where groups within a country – especially state agencies – collaborate to protect doping or turn a blind eye. </p>
<p>It is easy for athletes to be warned of the testers coming to visit, or <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/athletics-russia-risk-severe-damage-wada-inquiry-report-060838252.html">as WADA alleges may have happened in Russia</a>, laboratories and officials colluding to resist anti-doping measures. One can imagine that the desire to protect your best athletes – and to win medals – might supersede thoughts of good ethical behaviour when nobody benefits from a doping bust.</p>
<h2>Coming clean</h2>
<p>What can be done in such circumstances? The current approach is to measure the anti-doping system against criteria relating to the <a href="https://www.wada-ama.org/en/what-we-do/the-code">World Anti-Doping Code</a>. But that is a bureaucratic exercise, not the sort of micro-management that would be necessary to ensure standards are upheld. WADA does not have the scope of power or resources to ensure that all countries and all sports are “clean”.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/101270/original/image-20151109-29321-114zcp8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/101270/original/image-20151109-29321-114zcp8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/101270/original/image-20151109-29321-114zcp8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/101270/original/image-20151109-29321-114zcp8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/101270/original/image-20151109-29321-114zcp8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/101270/original/image-20151109-29321-114zcp8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/101270/original/image-20151109-29321-114zcp8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/101270/original/image-20151109-29321-114zcp8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Signature move: even doping control can get star struck.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/fotofreund/211874764/in/photolist-jHUZb-5hgMMm-5hcrsK-9NH9LR-9NJAiA-9NEYMC-9LPBnH-8KgHv8-9NvF6h-8KjLdY-9Nvxqd-9NDgMs-i3VsPJ-9NJfwE-nMScWf-9NJdLE-87DbTP-oo5xeE-acyZAY-6v4P68-bCjx4A-kQ7DAH-nCk13Q-7jfqm2-4TLNLP-9NJhg3-abTQAd-PJSDX-66w5A6-6Y95SP-8KjLfJ-dZ9dNh-qajsHr-aPrPuM-bWNx49-aPrRZz-aPrQuF-aPrsGT-aPrm6t-aPrNyF-eVpkrD-a9KbCo-aPrnKB-aPrziX-aPrjxn-aPrAm8-aPrgTc-aPrJ8z-bWNhY9-aPr7pM">fotofreund</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>However, what makes this scandal distinctive is that the sport’s governing body – The International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) – is also under scrutiny. The <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/athletics/33749208">leaked blood data information</a> in August this year showed potential doping cases that were not investigated thoroughly enough. A recent revelation <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/othersports/athletics/11974834/Former-IAAF-chief-Lamine-Diack-quizzed-by-French-police-over-alleged-corruption-and-cover-up-of-Russian-dopers.html">of alleged extortion and cover-ups</a> has also drawn in Lord Coe’s predecessor as head of the IAAF, Senegalese former long-jumper, Lamine Diack. The investigations centre around allegations that the some of the leaders of world athletics, much like some of <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/othersports/article-2985647/UCI-guilty-doping-cover-Cycling-chiefs-colluded-Lance-Armstrong-claims-independent-report.html">cycling’s former leaders</a>, are seen as either passively accepting a doping culture or actively benefiting from it.</p>
<p>WADA places a great deal of trust in what it calls the <a href="https://www.wada-ama.org/en/who-we-are/anti-doping-community">anti-doping community stakeholders</a>. Yet, much like a country which wants to see its athletes succeed, an international governing body does not want its reputation rocked by doping cases. It is a system which means it is potentially not in the interest of the sport’s governing body to expose the cheats, at least not in the short term.</p>
<p>The question is whether the current path is the right one – simply requesting more resources – or if the whole situation needs to be rethought.</p>
<h2>New strategies</h2>
<p>If we simply wanted to boost the resources devoted to combating doping, then the first step should involve increasing WADA’s authority and reach in order to ensure that athletes are tested more often and any dopers are more likely to be caught. But this can’t just be a strategy for one or two countries, it would have to be rolled out globally. New technologies such as the <a href="http://www.uci.ch/clean-sport/the-athlete-biological-passport-abp/">biological passport</a> or <a href="http://bit.ly/1MGNk5X">testing DNA samples</a> could potentially be implemented. </p>
<p>Politically, WADA would need all governments to offer support and finance, which for many countries is a real challenge. It would need sports organisations to be genuine cheerleaders for the ethics of anti-doping, even if it tarnishes their image and some of their top performers get sanctioned. </p>
<p>This amounts to an omnipresence of doping control – and omnipotence of WADA, which is, frankly, an unlikely scenario. But if were to go for a wholesale rethink, which elements should be considered?</p>
<h2>Health and efficiency</h2>
<p>The ambitions of anti-doping are usually stated as clean sport or drug-free sport. This is an anachronism in a world of technology and supplements, a far cry from the first IAAF <a href="http://www.iaaf.org/news/news/a-piece-of-anti-doping-history-iaaf-handbook">ruling against artificial methods issued in 1928</a>. The idea of a natural athlete is inconceivable, so a new definition of “clean” might be developed that emphasises health rather than trying to limit performance enhancement. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.wada-ama.org/en/media/news/2015-09/wada-publishes-2016-prohibited-list">three criteria underpinning the rules</a> – protecting the health of the athlete, protecting the level playing field, and promoting the spirit of sport – could be rewritten to reflect the experiences of today’s athletes, not some imaginary idealisation of a sporting utopia.</p>
<p>A new regulatory agency might be another step forward. At the moment, WADA is the rule-maker and police officer; it publishes the bible of anti-doping (the World Anti-Doping Code) which gets reviewed every few years. An external auditor could assess gaps in the system where risks are highest and provide short-term solutions. This might also facilitate the sanctioning of sports leaders more readily than is allowed for under the current rules.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/101273/original/image-20151109-29300-bbe5fl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/101273/original/image-20151109-29300-bbe5fl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/101273/original/image-20151109-29300-bbe5fl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/101273/original/image-20151109-29300-bbe5fl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/101273/original/image-20151109-29300-bbe5fl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/101273/original/image-20151109-29300-bbe5fl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/101273/original/image-20151109-29300-bbe5fl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/101273/original/image-20151109-29300-bbe5fl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">On your marks. Picking a lane for the road ahead.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/53370644@N06/4976494944/in/photolist-8zKQyY-x2Cip3-9DjTsh-qnihAY-8f32MM-6WgEi6-iQDrmr-6dHPvD-e6ozVU-8xUAqw-9QWsQi-7m4CyS-annACZ-a5mR5V-jp8hBW-6yTinj-7Jgqyq-7kJT4N-uUE4Q2-ubQcix-e87NTN-dUr22j-eaqdHq-doY2FP-9wBejZ-9Dqajr-6sRkHa-fmgSsL-dCe7VK-6oG1BQ-ueU9af-gor3t8-gmhPi1-pjw1hq-59A2cq-9ma5mg-uiW9y-91U9kP-4pXiAp-DDepx-9W9SJH-cPh7uh-9kY6mK-9peJUX-6oELdm-dnU75u-aCYAdY-jWC3i1-4QF4ch-aaJMFN">tableatny</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>Athletes could be seen a part of the solution, not just treated as potential dopers. Stories of doping in Olympic track and field have been circulating for years and many in the sport <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/athletics/30922172">are not surprised</a> by recent events. There should be methods in place, not simply for whistleblowing, but for the systematic engagement of all athletes in the process of building sustainable anti-doping cultures.</p>
<p>Lastly, academic critics should be listened to. A recent conference of the International Network of Doping Research highlighted the <a href="http://www.sportsintegrityinitiative.com/inhdr-conference-is-anti-doping-fit-for-purpose/">wide range of unintended consequences</a> such as the sanctioning of innocent athletes, exaggerated health fears, regulation of recreational drugs, false positives and excessive surveillance. These are genuine concerns, but anti-doping leaders seem averse to discussions which shine unfavourable light on their strategies and actions. </p>
<p>This debate has become about good versus evil, clean as opposed to dirty, moral versus immoral. It is a world where any loosening of restrictions is seen as opening the doors to doping. We need to move to a more balanced approach to this problem, in which listening to informed criticism might actually strengthen policy – or at least make it more achievable, rational and humanistic. And if at the 2020 Olympics the crowds are cheering a gold medallist who has openly and safely used performance-enhancing treatments under regulation from a new global body, it might just not be the end of the world. That would, of course, take a radical shift in public expectations of athletes and in our sense of what is acceptable in sport.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/50376/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Paul Dimeo does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Where can sport go when performance-related doping always seems one step ahead? The WADA report should open the door to a more rational future.Paul Dimeo, Senior Lecturer in Sport, University of StirlingLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/465142015-08-28T13:16:14Z2015-08-28T13:16:14ZWhy it’s time to legalise doping in athletics<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/92940/original/image-20150825-15873-dvfo5r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Level playing field?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">From www.shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Despite the glitz and glory of <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/athletics/34032366">Usain Bolt’s comeback victories</a> and Jessica Ennis-Hill’s <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/athletics/34032016">heptathlon triumph</a> at the World Championships, 2015 is shaping up as quite the <em>annus horribilis</em> for athletics.</p>
<p>Recent revelations about doping in past athletics competitions have cast a long shadow over the competition. Doping experts Michael Ashenden and Robin Parisotto have <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/athletics/33749208">evaluated</a> leaked IAAF blood value data, and declared that around of third of medals were won by athletes with suspicious values world championships and Olympics between 2001 and 2012. A confidential <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/othersports/article-3200222/GB-Sprinter-Richard-Kilty-heartbroken-drug-cheats-says-World-Championships-Beijing-won-t-level-playing-field.html">survey of athletes</a>, which the IAAF, athletics’ governing body, reportedly tried to silence (an allegation which the IAAF has publicly denied) found that athletes self-reported at around the same level. New tests on 2005 and 2007 samples found positive tests for <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/general/athletics/iaaf-suspends-28-athletes-over-historical-doping-10450516.html">28 athletes</a> who had previously passed controls.</p>
<p>This comes on top of allegations around Mo Farah’s <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2015/jun/30/mo-farah-alberto-salazar-doping">training coach</a> being involved in doping, though Farah himself is <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2015/jun/08/mo-farah-ed-warner-uk-athletics-alberto-salazar">not accused of any wrongdoing</a> and has said that he would definitely leave his coach if these allegations are ever proved. Doping is tipped to be the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2015/aug/19/sebastian-coe-doping-loopholes-iaaf-president">key issue</a> for newly elected Sebastian Coe’s term as <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-sebastian-coe-must-form-a-truth-commission-on-doping-in-athletics-46365">president of the IAAF</a>.</p>
<h2>Zero sum game</h2>
<p>It is clear that zero-tolerance towards drugs <a href="https://theconversation.com/athletics-doping-crisis-what-does-it-mean-for-the-future-of-the-sport-45630">isn’t working</a>. It is not stopping people from cheating. It is not providing assurances to the public that good performances are clean. Even the data we have now is likely to underestimate the problem. “Non suspicious” blood data does not prove that no doping technique has been used, only that it did not exceed a certain range, or vary beyond a certain degree.</p>
<p>The career and livelihood of an athlete depends on winning. There are enormous rewards for winners and not much out there for anyone else. And set against that pressure in favour of doping, there is very little chance of getting caught (<a href="https://theconversation.com/in-sports-drug-testing-arms-race-the-cheats-are-usually-a-step-ahead-42978">one estimate is 2% of tested athletes</a>). Psychologists have shown that the lower the risk of being caught, the <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00224545.1989.9713784#.VdVam7Kqqko">greater the number of cheats</a>. The greater the number of perceived cheats, the <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00224545.1989.9713784#.VdVam7Kqqko">more likely people are to join them</a>.</p>
<p>Unless the likelihood of getting caught is radically increased, or the benefit in cheating is radically reduced, there seems to be little chance of a serious reduction in doping.</p>
<p>We could increase the testing to a level where the odds of getting caught are higher. It would help, but would not catch everyone. For example, homogenous blood transfusions and <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/sport/debate/types_1.shtml">other common methods</a> of doping are undetectable at present. Blood passports have been thought to both limit the extent of doping, and to make it easier to dope – by providing a <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-science-of-doping-and-how-cheating-athletes-pass-drug-tests-45602">set of limits</a> to work to. Mark Daly, an investigative journalist, describes how he “<a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-3298393">passed</a>” the biological passport system while using <a href="https://theconversation.com/lance-armstrong-charged-with-blood-doping-and-epo-use-so-how-do-they-work-7666">EPO</a>. </p>
<p>Alternatively, we could reduce the rewards, perhaps returning to a genuine amateur model. But that would reduce the spectacle. It’s also wishful thinking.</p>
<p>In the absence of either of these measures, the system is unfair, and risks ruining the spectacle of sport. Knowing that athletes may be doping, but being unable to identify whom, an excellent performance has now become grounds for suspicion, to the extent of that cyclist Chris Froome and his team suffered <a href="http://www.cyclingweekly.co.uk/racing/tour-de-france/fan-throws-urine-on-chris-froome-and-calls-him-doper-at-tour-de-france-183208">physical violence</a> at the Tour de France, purely on the basis of their success.</p>
<p>Those athletes who are clean face a significantly doped field, and a climate of denial. They face a perverse dilemma: they must choose to either live with the disadvantage and accept the probable financial losses as a result, or to join the cheaters. If they do that, they face the risk of complete ruin as a scapegoat if they are caught. US runner Justin Gatlin, for example, has complained that previous doping bans have led to <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2015/aug/24/justin-gatlin-boycott-bbc-uk-media-biased-reports">biased and unfair coverage of his performances</a>. </p>
<p>It is not as though sport is somehow bereft of human struggle or magnificence. The only thing that is bad about sport today is that some athletes are getting a small advantage that others aren’t, and people are regularly getting tossed out or brought under a cloud by rules that are unfit for purpose.</p>
<h2>Safe doping</h2>
<p>Unless and until our ability to test for drugs is radically enhanced, we should allow what I call <a href="http://aeon.co/magazine/health/why-most-forms-of-doping-in-sport-should-be-legalised/">physiological doping</a>. That is, setting safe limits for physiological values such as testosterone levels, and <a href="https://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/003646.htm">hematocrit</a> – a measure of the number of red blood cells in a person’s blood. Testing then focuses not on how those levels were achieved, but on whether they are safe. Absent harm, artificially raising hematocrit through an <a href="http://inrng.com/2012/06/the-altitude-tent/">altitude tent</a> is not morally better than the same effect with EPO.</p>
<p>We might decide certain drugs or methods are too unsafe to use, or in themselves damage the spirit of the sport, that is, that they significantly reduce the human contribution to outcome or performance. In that case, we would need to test for those drugs as we do now – for their presence, rather than their effect. But we would be able to focus our resources more narrowly and I believe more effectively. Foreign drugs or “natural” doping methods taken to extremes are apparently easier to detect than variations within the normal range of, for example, growth hormone, <a href="http://www.healthline.com/health/low-testosterone/testosterone-levels-by-age#Overview1">testosterone</a> and <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK259/">haematocrit</a>.</p>
<p>This focuses on reducing harm: increasing athlete safety, providing an enforceable set of rules and therefore a more level playing field.</p>
<p>It would be safer for athletes, since doping could be openly monitored by accredited doctors instead of self-administered, and the safe parameters would be measured.</p>
<p>It should be more enforceable because we have good measures for hematocrit levels, testosterone levels and other key parameters.</p>
<p>It would also be fairer. This is counter-intuitive to many. A common objection is that if doping is allowed, the teams with the most money will have the greatest advantage. But that disadvantage already exists. A hypoxic air tent, used to legally increase hematocrit levels, <a href="http://www.cyclingweekly.co.uk/reviews/performance-products-and-services/altitude-tent-everest-summit-hypoxic-generator">costs thousands of dollars</a>. Other athletes train at altitude: another expensive method of increasing <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3824146/">hematocrit levels</a>. Increasing hematocrit to the same level via EPO is likely to be cheaper and more accessible to many athletes than these methods - and it would have the same effect if kept to the same physiological limit.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/93041/original/image-20150826-7663-byp674.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/93041/original/image-20150826-7663-byp674.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/93041/original/image-20150826-7663-byp674.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/93041/original/image-20150826-7663-byp674.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/93041/original/image-20150826-7663-byp674.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/93041/original/image-20150826-7663-byp674.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/93041/original/image-20150826-7663-byp674.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Mäntyranta was born to win.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://is11.snstatic.fi/img/468/1288637378457.jpg">Mland.Finn</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Others argue that this system would be unfair to the naturally gifted athlete: the athlete who, for example is an outlier in his hematocrit, such as Finnish cross country skier <a href="http://sportsscientists.com/2013/12/eero-mantyranta-finlands-champion-1937-2013-obituary/">Eero Mäntyranta</a>, who competed in four Winter Olympics (1960–1972) winning seven medals at three of them. He had a <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/09/09/man-and-superman">genetic mutation</a> causing him to have over 50% more red blood cells than his competitors. Sport for many is a test as much of an athlete’s natural talent as it is of their training and dedication. </p>
<p>Yet there is no fairness in the distribution of genetic advantage - why should these inequalities be preserved? Even if you do want to preserve this, interactions with the environment already render it difficult to sustain. Why is one method of manipulating one’s natural profile fairer than another? </p>
<p>Sport is perhaps inevitably built around a set of fairly arbitrary rules. But when those rules are harming people and facilitating injustice, they should be changed.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/46514/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Julian Savulescu does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The current anti-doping regulation clearly isn’t working. Perhaps it is time to change our approach.Julian Savulescu, Uehiro Professor of Practical Ethics at the University of Oxford and Louis Matheson Distinguished Visiting Professor, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/463652015-08-19T16:36:43Z2015-08-19T16:36:43ZWhy Sebastian Coe must form a truth commission on doping in athletics<p>Sebastian Coe, the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/athletics/33983432">newly elected president</a> of the world governing body for athletics, will have little time to reflect on his victory. Although much media comment has focused on the <a href="https://theconversation.com/athletics-doping-crisis-what-does-it-mean-for-the-future-of-the-sport-45630">prevalence of doping in the sport</a>, the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) is also in relatively poor financial health.</p>
<p>This year’s annual review of IAAF finances shows <a href="http://news.sky.com/story/1537755/coes-many-challenges-as-new-boss-of-athletics">revenues of just US$60m</a>. Contrast that to FIFA which in the four years leading up to the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil <a href="http://www.fifa.com/mm/document/affederation/administration/02/56/80/39/fr2014weben_neutral.pdf">brought in total revenues of US$5,718m</a> Athletics’ major annual event, the largely European-based Diamond League, <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/general/athletics/sebastian-coe-five-things-for-lord-coe-to-address-after-iaaf-election-10461634.html">does not have a headline sponsor</a>.</p>
<p>Coe will also face the problem that the sport’s principal asset, which is the global marketing and licensing rights for its World Championship events, have already been <a href="http://www.iaaf.org/news/press-release/iaaf-and-dentsu-extend-and-enhance-partnershi1">signed away in 2014</a> to a Japanese company Dentsu for a <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/09/09/athletics-dentsu-idUSL5N0RA1JN20140909">relatively modest sum</a> of £11m pounds a year until 2019 and £14m pounds annually over the following decade. The longevity and exclusivity of that deal, entered into by Coe’s predecessor <a href="http://www.iaaf.org/about-iaaf/structure/president">Lamine Diack</a> can, at best, be described as naïve.</p>
<h2>Doping shadow</h2>
<p>The IAAF’s annual financial report for 2014/2015 <a href="http://isportconnect.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=32812:live-iaaf-congress-and-presidential-election&catid=58:top-news&Itemid=167">was presented</a> just prior to the announcement of Coe’s presidential victory. On stage was <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/global/2015/aug/19/sebastian-coe-elected-iaaf-president-after-beating-sergey-bubka-in-vote">Valentin Balakhnichev</a>, the former Russian athletics federation chief, who was <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/general/athletics/valentin-balakhnichev-quits-russian-athletics-chief-fires-parting-shot-over-doping-scandals-10052629.html">supposed to have stepped down in February</a> in the wake of claims of systemic doping by Russia athletes.</p>
<p>Russia was also at the centre of some <a href="http://features.thesundaytimes.co.uk/web/2015/the-doping-scandal/index.html#/">astonishing doping-related claims</a> in recent weeks by the Sunday Times and German broadcaster ARD/WDR after they had obtained access to the results of 12,000 blood tests from 5,000 athletes between 2001 and 2012.</p>
<p>The review of the tests suggested that Russia remains “<a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/athletics/33749208">the blood testing epicentre of the world</a>”. The Sunday Times claims “<a href="http://features.thesundaytimes.co.uk/web/2015/the-doping-scandal/index.html#/">80% of the country’s medals won by suspicious athletes</a>”, while Kenya had 18 medals won by athletes “judged to have had suspicious blood test results”. The tests also appeared to reveal that a third of medals (146, including 55 golds) in endurance events at the Olympics and World Championships between 2001 and 2012 were won by athletes who have recorded “abnormal”.</p>
<p>More recently still, the Sunday Times suggested that the IAAF had <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/athletics/33948924">sought to suppress a study</a> suggesting that one-third of athletes surveyed at the 2011 World Champions had engaged in doping practices within the previous 12 months.</p>
<p>The IAAF has countered that the Sunday Times’ claims are <a href="http://www.iaaf.org/news/press-release/statement-response-ard-sunday-times-anti-dopi">sensationalist</a> and the the <a href="http://www.iaaf.org/news/press-release/doping-prevalence-study-daegu-2011">methodology</a> used in the 2011 survey was questionable. The federation has been forced to admit that 28 athletes who competed at the 2005 and 2007 World Championships have returned “<a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/athletics/33867962">adverse findings</a>” from retested samples.</p>
<h2>Generational change</h2>
<p>The corrosive nature of these doping claims present huge difficulties for Coe. Similar to the difficulties posed for <a href="https://theconversation.com/tour-de-frances-doping-history-clouds-a-cleaner-sport-28070">professional cycling</a>, the sport has to prove a negative – that its participants are not doping nor are the many guilty by association to the few.</p>
<p>Coe’s <a href="http://sebcoe2015.org/#manifesto">manifesto</a> presented a typically “governance”-related solution: promoting the establishment of an independent anti-doping unit within the IAAF; greater cooperation with the World Anti-Doping Agency; more targeted out-of-competition testing of athletes and greater emphasis on the education of younger athletes.</p>
<p>But it is these younger athletes who Coe will struggle to convince. Recent events seem to suggest that doping can no longer be dismissed summarily as being a deviant behaviour. This has a demoralising impact on those who might be attracted to the sport as elite participants and also as elite sponsors.</p>
<h2>Time for truth</h2>
<p>Coe was a two-time Olympic Champion, winning the 1,500 meters at the 1980 and 1984 Olympics. In 1980 he had been the warm favourite for the 800 meters but, having run what he subsequently described as the worst tactical race of his life, he finished second. In the days that followed, Coe took severe criticism from the British media and more personally still from his coach, who happened to be his father. Coe reflected on his mistakes, learned from them and <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2012/apr/18/50-olympic-moments-coe-ovett-moscow-1980">ran brilliantly four days later</a> to win the 1,500 meters gold.</p>
<p>In some way he must now do the same. Coe might think of establishing a truth commission on the doping ethos in athletics. Such a commission might have to be underpinned by amnesties – where unpalatable truths about athletics would be told by unpalatable people for what many would perceive as unpalatable forgiveness. Nevertheless, a greater sporting good would be served by a truth commission. </p>
<p>There is no doubt that doping is corroding the sporting credibility and financial viability of world athletics. As George Orwell said, in a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. Will Seb Coe be revolutionary?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/46365/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jack Anderson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Coe must put an end to a dark era of athletics.Jack Anderson, Professor of Sports Law, Queen's University BelfastLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/456302015-08-03T21:05:03Z2015-08-03T21:05:03ZAthletics doping crisis: what does it mean for the future of the sport?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/90633/original/image-20150803-6008-18icc5s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Athletics' reputation could be about to plumb the same depths as cycling.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/cat.mhtml?lang=en&language=en&ref_site=photo&search_source=search_form&version=llv1&anyorall=all&safesearch=1&use_local_boost=1&autocomplete_id=&search_tracking_id=zSnvLuMT72X0ffCZy3cbag&searchterm=olympic%20track&show_color_wheel=1&orient=&commercial_ok=&media_type=images&search_cat=&searchtermx=&photographer_name=&people_gender=&people_age=&people_ethnicity=&people_number=&color=&page=1&inline=202526719">msgrafixx</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The <a href="http://www.skysports.com/athletics/news/12040/9932370/athletics-engulfed-in-fresh-doping-claims-after-sunday-times-report">revelations</a> of doping in world athletics by the Sunday Times in the UK and German broadcaster ARD/WDR portray a dark world similar to the troubles <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-cyclings-dark-history-continues-to-haunt-the-tour-de-france-44312">faced by</a> professional cycling in recent years. Secret files kept by the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) were passed to the media organisations by a whistleblower. The reports point to the conclusion that many leading athletes doped during the period 2001-12, that not enough was done to prevent this cheating, and that it may still be rife today. </p>
<p>The most striking claim was that a third of medals (146 in total) for endurance events at Olympic Games and world championships, including 55 golds, were awarded to athletes who were possibly doping. Ten of the medals won at the 2012 London Olympics were by athletes now under suspicion. Jessica Ennis-Hill, Denise Lewis, Kelly Sotherton, Jennifer Meadows, Andrew Baddeley and many others will feel cheated of medals, having all been beaten by athletes with reportedly suspicious blood results. Russia and Kenya are singled out by the reports as countries with particularly high numbers of suspects, while seven British athletes are reported to have had suspicious test results.</p>
<p>The claims were derived from blood samples collected as part of normal anti-doping measures. The science of blood testing has developed remarkably since 2000, prior to which anti-doping was primarily done by testing urine samples. Change was deemed necessary for several different reasons. Designer drugs emerged on the market that were produced to deliberately circumvent the tests. They would often mimic natural substances, making them very difficult to detect in urine. </p>
<p>Doping techniques were also getting more sophisticated as doctors understood how long it would take for a substance to be clear of an athlete’s system, and could judge when to use the drugs before the next possible test. They began using long continuous cycles of micro-dosing to keep analytical levels below the legal threshold. There was also increased use of blood transfusions – known in the trade as blood doping. </p>
<h2>Passport control</h2>
<p>From the turn of the century, the authorities felt confident enough in the science to introduce new systems that collected blood and urine. These provided snapshots that would highlight variations over time, both in terms of the athlete’s history and what would be considered normal. By the latter years of the first decade of the 21st century this approach had matured into what came to be called the athlete biological passport, a state-of-the-art system that monitored a number of biomarkers purely from blood samples. When it was introduced into cycling in 2008, it led to 23 cyclists <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2008/may/03/cycling">being identified</a> as under suspicion. It has been behind every doping scandal to have hit the headlines since. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/90636/original/image-20150803-5978-gqtc4o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/90636/original/image-20150803-5978-gqtc4o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/90636/original/image-20150803-5978-gqtc4o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/90636/original/image-20150803-5978-gqtc4o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/90636/original/image-20150803-5978-gqtc4o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/90636/original/image-20150803-5978-gqtc4o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/90636/original/image-20150803-5978-gqtc4o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/90636/original/image-20150803-5978-gqtc4o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Biological passports: the 2010s’ answer to doping.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/cat.mhtml?lang=en&language=en&ref_site=photo&search_source=search_form&version=llv1&anyorall=all&safesearch=1&use_local_boost=1&autocomplete_id=&search_tracking_id=eyfZ9VV-EGA1tiDd8GtF_g&searchterm=blood%20test&show_color_wheel=1&orient=&commercial_ok=&media_type=images&search_cat=&searchtermx=&photographer_name=&people_gender=&people_age=&people_ethnicity=&people_number=&color=&page=1&inline=151519022">science photo</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>The IAAF, which looks likely to elect Lord Coe as its president in coming weeks, <a href="http://www.iaaf.org/about-iaaf/medical-anti-doping">conducts</a> approximately 3,500 blood tests every year both in and out of competitions. The Sunday Times exposé is based on the analysis of 12,000 blood tests from 5,000 athletes by two leading scientists in the field: Robin Parisotto and Michael Ashenden. From what is in the public domain, it is hard to dispute Parisotto’s <a href="http://www.couriermail.com.au/sport/more-sports/athletics-faces-fresh-doping-scandal-after-thousands-of-leaked-results-from-major-events-indicate-cheating/story-fnii0hmo-1227466594820?nk=bc192558ce5668b1845d15268bb01570-1438615307">statement that</a>: “so many athletes appear to have been doping with impunity, and it is damning that the IAAF appears to have idly sat by and let this happen”.</p>
<p>The IAAF counters that prior to the introduction of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA)‘s <a href="https://wada-main-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/resources/files/wada_abp_operating_guidelines_2014_v5.0_en.pdf">operating guidelines</a> in 2009, it did not have the authority to sanction athletes just on the basis of blood values. Its procedure was to investigate certain cases further through targeted urine testing. The association also rightly claims to <a href="http://www.insidethegames.biz/articles/1013324/iaaf-investigating-17-athletes-for-doping-offences-through-biological-passport-system">have pursued</a> numerous charges against athletes since 2009 using the biological passport system. </p>
<p>Though the IAAF has <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/athletics/33755431">strongly rejected</a> any suggestions that it was negligent, it remains unclear why it did not pursue those athletes that have now been identified as suspicious. It is possible that the association either dropped the cases or has yet to reach a decision on them due to either procedural difficulties or because of counter-explanations for the biomarker variations. The WADA guidelines allow for an expert panel to take into account any potential reasons that the athletes offers for a given variation – such as a particular medical conditions or exposure to altitude training. As things stand, the picture is not sufficiently clear.</p>
<h2>Public glare</h2>
<p>So where does this leave us? These kinds of newspaper headlines obviously serve the useful function of highlighting areas of potential doping behaviour and failings on the part of responsible authorities. Yet they are unlikely to lead to medals being revoked or any other historical sanction, something which has been fairly rare in sport across the board. It would take WADA’s intervention on a substantial scale or a major change in position from the IAAF – assuming wrongdoing is established. As things stand, WADA has announced an independent investigation into the claims, while the International Olympic Committee <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/athletics/33755431">has said</a> it will act with “zero tolerance” if the doping allegations are proven to be true. </p>
<p>In some ways, a media scandal might even prove counter-productive. Sports fans will be left with the feeling that recent major sports events were a fraud, and disappointed at the lack of immediate response from the international sports community. Fans might take heart from the idea that the athlete biological passport could prove a good deterrent to doping as potential users fear getting caught by a stringent system. </p>
<p>But unfortunately, history suggests the doping innovators are just as imaginative as the anti-doping scientists and will soon come up with some new form of undetectable cheating. It takes me back to an argument that I <a href="https://theconversation.com/world-cycling-is-broken-its-time-to-lift-the-ban-on-doping-38609">have made here before</a>: it might be time to reconsider our approach to doping altogether.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/45630/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Paul doesn't have any current funding related to this subject matter, but has previously received funding from the World Anti-Doping Agency, the Fulbright Commission and British Academy for projects focused on other aspects of drug use in sport.
</span></em></p>The world of sport has been rocked by the explosive allegations that surfaced over the weekend.Paul Dimeo, Senior Lecturer in Sport, University of StirlingLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.