The insidethegames.biz Magazine - Spring Edition

The insidethegames.biz Magazine The world’s leading source of independent news and information about the Olympic Movement.

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Spring Edition

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Contents Published: April 2016 by Dunsar Media Company Limited Editor: Duncan Mackay

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Introduction Duncan Mackay Nick Butler

Managing Director: Sarah Bowron

Coe’s toughest race

Business Development: Natalie Wallace

Duncan Mackay

Design: Elliot Willis Willis Design Associates Pictures: Getty Images Staff headshots: Karen Kodish Print: www.csfprint.com Dunsar Media Company Limited C222 MK:TWO Business Centres 1-9 Barton Road Bletchley Milton Keynes MK2 3HU Great Britain +44 1908 263387 contact@insidethegames.biz www.insidethegames.biz No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in any retrieval system of any nature without prior written permission of the publisher.

Data is published in good faith and is the best information possessed by Dunsar Media Company Limited at the stated date of publication. The publisher cannot accept any liability for errors or omissions, however caused. Errors brought to the attention of the publisher and verified to the satisfaction of the publisher will be corrected in future editions, if any. Š and Database Right 2016 Dunsar Media Company Limited

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SportDisAccord!

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Starting Here Starting Now David Owen

Flying down to Rio has been a bumpy ride Nick Butler

Is the IOC heading for a fall over skateboarding?

Nick Butler

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Sport for good Michael Pavitt

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Cycle of Trust Michael Pavitt

Lausanne gearing up for second century as the Olympic Capital Philip Barker

Lillehammer proved the Olympics is not wasted on the Youth Liam Morgan

Long shadow cast over sport by match-fixing allegations Liam Morgan

Silver linings and all that...

Mike Rowbottom

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All rights reserved.

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The No.1 Olympic news website in the world

DUNCAN MACKAY EDITOR, INSIDETHEGAMES

W

ell, that was quite a year, wasn’t it? Twelve months ago when we gathered in Sochi for the SportAccord Convention no-one would have guessed what lay in store.

The speech of SportAccord President Marius Vizer triggered a tsunami of controversy, leading to his resignation. Vizer’s comments have made him a pariah in the Olympic Movement but a lot of what he said now looks prescient.

Our team of award-winning writers cover an unprecedented year of scandal and controversy in this, The insidethegames.biz Spring Magazine, including an authoritative piece by senior reporter Nick Butler on what the future holds for SportAccord and a look

by David Owen at what new FIFA President Gianni Infantino needs to do to restore trust in football’s world governing body.

Nick also gives us his personal view on the preparations of Rio 2016 for this year’s Olympic and Paralympic Games. He has travelled regularly to Brazil in the past two years and brings a unique perspective to the challenges the city is facing.

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There is also a feature on the International Association of Athletics Federations following the election of Sebastian Coe to replace Lamine Diack. It was Diack, remember, who led the charge of Federations leaving SportAccord following Vizer’s speech…

David and Nick are both among several writers from insidethegames whose outstanding work has been recognised during the last year.

David, our chief columnist, won Best Freelance Writer at the British Online Media Awards for his work on insidethegames.

Mind you, we were guaranteed a winner because the two other shortlisted writers in the category were Mike Rowbottom and Alan Hubbard, our chief features writer and senior blog writer respectively.

At the same awards ceremony, insidethegames received a Commendation in the Best Commercial Innovation category.

Nick, meanwhile, was recognised among the top three in his category at the Sport Pearl Media Awards, organised by the International Sports Journalists Association AIPS, for his blog on Vizer’s amazing speech in Sochi and its ramifications.

The awards did not end there either as Daniel Etchells was voted the Sambo Journalist of the Year by the International Sambo Federation. They described his work as “brilliant”.

It is little wonder then, that with such quality among our team, we have been

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lapping our rivals. Only last month we registered nearly one million visitors to our site, seven times more than our nearest competitor.

We are the most read independent Olympic news website in key markets for the industry, including Switzerland and the United States. There is so much content on insidethegames that the average visitor to the site spends more than 50 minutes a day reading our stories and features.

Unlike some of our rivals, we do not make false claims. These figures are all independently verified by www.alexa.com, a company owned by Amazon which provides commercial web traffic data and analytics.

We expect traffic to our website to continue to grow this year, especially in the build-up to Rio 2016 and as the race to host the 2024 Olympics and Paralympics begins to gather momentum.

Working with insidethegames, either editorially or commercially, therefore, presents an outstanding opportunity to help promote your brand or event.

If you are interested in finding out more why don’t you email either me at duncan.mackay@insidethegames.biz or our managing director, Sarah Bowron, at sarah.bowron@insidethegames.biz.

Duncan Mackay Editor

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SportDisAccord!

Marius Vizer’s explosive speech in Sochi last year led him to being forced to resign as President of SportAccord. Photo: SportAccord

Marius Vizer’s controversial speech last year, attacking IOC President Thomas Bach, left SportAccord in crisis and seeking to retain its identity.

Patrick Nally, the founding father of sports marketing, tells Nick Butler why the International Federations need to regain control of sport from the IOC

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ere’s a good way to tell how the reputation of sport has changed,” laments Patrick Nally, the self-proclaimed founding father of modern sports marketing, towards the end of a meandering yet fascinating lunchtime discussion.

“Dinner Parties. Once upon a time I was always the centre of attention because I was involved in international sport. In this day and age, I stay quiet in the corner alongside bankers and politicians. Telling people how I employed Sepp Blatter is probably not what you want to say to your neighbours anymore…”

The last 12 months have been tumultuous

for the running of sport. From dawn arrests at FIFA in Zurich to the 323-pages of lurid World Anti-Doping Agency Independent Commission allegations which shook the entire bedrock of athletics. Reputations of other, less guilty, bodies are also being affected as a consequence of these actions.

Marius Vizer’s remarkable speech a year ago at the SportAccord Convention in Sochi, publicly criticising International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach and questioning the effectiveness of the 2020 reform process, reverberated less in the wider world. The instability and old-fashioned political manoeuvring that followed was just as significant, however.

How Marius Vizer rocked the Olympic Movement April 20: Marius Vizer fiercely attacks the attending Thomas Bach over alleged interference and a lack of transparency at the SportAccord General Assembly in Sochi. The IAAF, under then President Lamine Diack, is the first to resign.

April 21: ASOIF’s decision to disassociate is supported by every member except Vizer’s own International Judo Federation.

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April 22: Vizer apologises for his methods but not his actions at the ASOIF General Assembly, claiming “everyone in the world of sport must be free to have an opinion”.

April 23: Vizer claims Diack has “sacrificed sport for his family”.

The IAAF, under then President Lamine Diack, led the exodus of Federations from SportAccord. Photo: SportAccord

May 7: Boxing suspends its membership and withdraws from the World Combat Games.

May 11: Taekwondo and wrestling pull out of SportAccord and the World Combat Games.

May 12: Vizer claims Federations are being “put under pressure” to oppose him.

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NICK BUTLER SENIOR REPORTER, INSIDETHEGAMES

Vizer was re-elected unanimously as SportAccord President immediately after his speech in front of Bach but the campaign against him started in the very next coffee break. Senior IOC officials moved discreetly among the leaders of the International Federations and made it clear Vizer had to go.

Vizer, President of the International Judo Federation, resisted the pressure at first but, as Federation after Federation suspended their membership of SportAccord, he resigned 41 days after his speech in Sochi. At one stage, it appeared possible the entire organisation could be brought down with him.

There was support for much of what Vizer said, however, if not for how he delivered it. His verdict on the first man to publicly oppose his words, then International Association of Athletics Federations President Lamine Diack, was, with hindsight, surely the most prescient sporting quote of 2015.

“I dedicate and I sacrifice my family for sport,” Vizer, in his trademark measured growl, said.

“I mean sacrifice in a way of dedication, and in my eyes [Diack is] a person who sacrifices sport for his family.”

Seven months later, Diack was arrested for corruption as part of a French police investigation over

Marketing guru Patrick Nally wants the International Federations to regain control of sport from the IOC. Photo: IFP

allegations he took payments for deferring sanctions against Russian athletes who had failed drugs tests. His son Papa was at the centre of the conspiracy.

Vizer’s 20-point agenda, released only a week before his resignation on May 31, was more innovative than the gradualist gestures which dominated Agenda 2020, formally approved by the IOC in December 2014.

Among Vizer’s proposals were that prize money should be introduced at the Olympic Games. He also wanted a greater distribution of Olympic revenues among the International Federations who take part in the Games. He also planned to give

the non-Olympic sports the opportunity to showcase themselves before and after the Games.

“It would have been very interesting to see, if Marius had been warm to Thomas [Bach] in Sochi, toed the line, and then, six months later made the same comments…” speculates Nally.

“Things could have been so different. As it was, there was a knee-jerk reaction, and he was shut down.”

International Ski Federation President Gian-Franco Kasper reluctantly took over as interim SportAccord President - with FIS secretary general Sarah Lewis and Association of Summer

May 20: Modern pentathlon, rowing and volleyball join the exodus.

May 24: Lima pulls out as host of the 2017 World Combat Games following the withdrawal of key Olympic sports.

May 14: The International Bobsleigh and Skeleton Federation become first winter governing body to suspend their membership.

May 17: Triathlon suspends its membership.

May 19: Hockey and weightlifting also leave as Vizer calls for a meeting with the IOC and ASOIF to have “open and honest discussions for the benefit of sport”.

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May 21: Vizer releases a 20-point agenda, including a proposal for prize money to be awarded at the Olympics. Equestrian, curling, rugby and table tennis resign.

May 22: Cycling and fencing leave, bringing the total number to 20.

May 25: Karate, korfball, orienteering and motor racing all leave as Vizer begins to lose support among his non-Olympic constituents. Badminton become the 22nd Olympic body to disaffiliate.

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Olympic International Federations director general Andrew Ryan doing most of the work - as plans to limit the body’s scope were drawn up.

Merging with and organising the annual SportAccord Convention would be the foremost responsibility, with any other functions ad-hoc and limited.

“Stewardship rather than leadership by the Olympic Movement,” summarises a dismissive Nally.

The Briton, one half of the pioneering West Nally marketing firm, along with the late BBC presenter and commentator Peter West, is in his fifth decade of involvement in a sports

May 27: ASOIF and AIOWF provisionally suspend any further activities with SportAccord.

May 29: Vizer makes public distribution figures of both SportAccord and the International Judo Federation following challenges over his finances from ANOC President Sheikh Ahmad Al-Fahad Al-Sabah.

May 31: Vizer resigns.

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Former SportAccord President Hein Verbruggen was happy to run the organisation in the shadow of the IOC. Photo: Getty Images

industry which has grown and evolved under his watch before floundering today.

Nally believes SportAccord should undertake a greater role to help sport recover. With Vizer now reduced to a clandestine role behind the scenes - although seemingly still significant - could Nally, the 68-year-old former schoolboy chess champion, himself ultimately be the man to lead the organisation onwards and upwards?

“We have to get the spotlight back on sport,” he maintains. “We have to end this ghastly focus on corruption and money which has been allowed to go on. What happened in Sochi has made it worse. It has just made sport look even less able to manage and police itself.

“We need to ask the difficult questions. It’s not that we want to be difficult. But if asking the questions gets us the answers, and if we get a generation of people that are interested, that is important. Solving drug problems, waving flags where corruption exists. For me, that is absolutely essential.”

Nally, President of aspiring SportAccord member, the International Federation of Poker, played an integral role in rebranding the old General Assembly of International Sports Federations to the General “Association” of International Sports Federations in 1976. It was a debating chamber in which like-minded bodies could join together to debate collective issues.

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Similar collaborations between different sports had begun as early as 1921, when a permanent bureau of the International Federations was established to facilitate dialogue with the Olympic Movement.

A primary objective of the revamped GAISF was the sporting calendar and making sure events within different sports did not clash.

Other common issues such as anti-doping, commercial and sponsorship opportunities and development programmes were also discussed. Non-Olympic sports joined together with Olympic ones, although making the step-up from the former to the latter was an objective for many.

It was not long before tensions emerged, however, particularly after the arrival in 1980 of Juan Antonio Samaranch as IOC President.

The Spaniard, far more so than his Irish predecessor, Lord Killanin, was worried about potential rivals drawing power away from the IOC. A feud thus erupted with founding GAISF and International Rowing Federation head Thomas Keller bearing remarkable similarities to what followed 30 years later.

“Cooperation with the International [Sports] Federations is more than ever necessary,” said the Swiss although it could as well have been Vizer. “The Federations are, as always, ready to cooperate, but expect that this cooperation will be in a spirit of genuine partnership…”

It was the wily Samaranch who won the battle, cashing in on lucrative commercial opportunities provided by the likes of Nally as the IOC’s power grew and grew. GAISF carried on, but became less effective, a “collaborative body rather than anything with any real teeth”, as the membership was eventually split-up into different organisations representing the Summer Olympic, Winter Olympic and IOC recognised sports. This division of power was almost as complicated as the jumble of acronyms these bodies became known by: ASOIF, AIOWF and ARISF respectively.

Keller gave way to South Korea’s World Taekwondo Federation boss Un Yong Kim in 1986, a corruption-tainted future IOC Presidential candidate not prepared to sacrifice his Olympic ambitions by pushing for a more powerful GAISF. The same could be said of Dutchman Hein Verbruggen, President of the International Cycling Union, who changed the name to SportAccord five years after succeeding Kim in 2004. He sought to align the organisation closer to both the IOC and the SportAccord Convention, prioritising commercial interests over independent power.

It took the election of Vizer nine years later for the spirit of Keller to be revived. Vizer, representing the Olympic sport of judo but gaining more support from those excluded from the five rings, was chosen over the IOC’s preferred choice of Bernard Lapasset on a mandate of new events and big alternatives.

This included plans for a quadrennial “United World Championships”, an event at which all Olympic and non-Olympic SportAccord members would participate. This horrified the IOC, particularly after the arrival of Bach, an ambitious leader with far more in common with Samaranch than with Jacques Rogge, the Belgian surgeon who came in between.

Tensions gathered pace behind the scenes.

Vizer was repeatedly snubbed as an IOC member, overlooked for newer International Federation Presidents like Poul-Erik Høyer Larsen, who was made a member of sport’s most exclusive club only a year after becoming head of the Badminton World Federation.

The IOC then announced they would not be holding Executive Board meetings at SportAccord Convention and banned cities bidding for the Olympics to make presentations there. All of Vizer’s frustrations erupted into the open in spectacular fashion on that fateful Monday morning in Sochi.

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NICK BUTLER SENIOR REPORTER, INSIDETHEGAMES Vizer’s legacy has lived on among the non-Olympic Federations. Complaints from these sports, who make up 58 of the 88 full SportAccord members, led to the scrapping of a proposal to change the Statutes so that Olympic sports would hold five out of seven votes on all membership issues.

The planned merger between SportAccord and SportAccord Convention has also been abandoned for the time being, with the required two thirds majority of all members required for any Statute change proving impossible without non-Olympic support.

“It will be interesting to see what happens next,” says Nally.

“How can the IOC be certain that another Marius Vizer is not going to appear and say, ‘Hold on a moment, is the IOC acting in the interests of all sport?’ Why should the [non-Olympic] majority vote for the [Olympic] minority? They don’t get benefits.”

This brings the entire role of the Olympic Movement into question.

“The IOC has huge financial power,” Nally adds. “But the Olympics is an event and the IOC are event organisers and there principally to run the event. The International Federations should be running their own sports, but have become dependent on the Olympic Movement for money.

The Government and United Nations tend to look at the Olympics and IOC as the governing body of sport, which it’s not.

“So the whole system is out of kilter, with no balance. Either the IOC have to recognise this and become what they are perceived to be: the governing body for all sport, or they need to embrace GAISF and allow other bodies to grow independently.”

Many disagree and believe there is no need for SportAccord today, however.

A major criticism is that its role essentially duplicates the work of the other umbrella bodies. It is ASOIF, rather than SportAccord, for instance, which is in the process of finalising good governance criteria for its members to adopt, and many believe the benefits of joining do not merit the expensive membership fees. Four Federations - representing athletics, golf, rowing and shooting - withdrew fully last year along with associate member the International Paralympic Committee. All five have no current plans to return.

The greater significance of the Association of National Olympic Committees under Kuwaiti powerbroker Sheikh Ahmad Al-Fahad Al-Sabah has also made a difference. The World Beach Games are now being organised in San Diego by ANOC, rather

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Lima pulled out of hosting the SportAccord World Combat Games following last year’s controversy.

Photo: SportAccord

than, as Vizer had planned, in Sochi under the SportAccord banner.

There remains a vacuum for some functions. Anti-doping work for some Olympic and nonOlympic disciplines, perhaps, as well as other sporting events: the World Combat Games, World Mind Games and World Urban Games, and a wider debating role.

Because the Poker Federation he oversees are yet to be accepted as a full SportAccord member, Nally remains unable to stand as President for the time being, although this could change by the time of the next election in four years’ time.

“I’d love to have a platform to speak,” he adds. “I would love to take my knowledge and my background to find out how sports can help each other.”

As someone who leads a new and innovative sport while also being well-known and trusted, he believes he represents a perfect balance.

A key difference between Nally and Vizer concerns SportAccord Convention. Vizer was keen to expand its scope above and beyond the immediate sporting family. Nally believes it detracts

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from the true objective of SportAccord.

“The Convention is a side window dressing of no real consequence,” he claims. “My vision is for GAISF rather than SportAccord. What is really important for sport is a meeting for debate and discussion between like-minded Federations. We’ve lost that. It should be about sharing opinions and dialogue and making the world a better place through sport. Not this politics about who controls this and where does the money come from…”

For the time being, SportAccord is indeed likely to be subject to more stewardship than leadership.

The question in the longer-term is will it ultimately become a further irrelevance, following GAISF into the dustbin of obsolete Olympic organisations? Or can it rise from the ashes a stronger body, recovering from a Russian setback like Napoleon when he escaped from Elba and became leader once again?

Can it help repair sport’s reputation until, perhaps, all of us who work in this world are confident enough to reveal our profession in dinner party conversation once again?

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Diack following his of pred ecessor Lamine

election as IAAF Presiden

ets. Photo: Getty Images t - something he now regr

e c a r t s e h g u Coe’s to Sebastian Coe was effu

sive in his praise

New IAAF President Sebastian Coe has inherited a sport facing allegations of corruption and widespread doping abuse. It may take him a while to turn it around but Duncan Mackay believes that if anyone can rescue it then it is the man who delivered the greatest Olympics in history

I

have been covering athletics professionally for more than 25 years now and during that period there have been several occasions on which the sport has faced “its greatest crisis”.

My journalistic career started shortly after Ben Johnson’s positive drugs test following his 100 metres victory at the 1988 Olympics in Seoul. Since then there have been several scandals which have supposedly signalled the end of the sport, including the BALCO affair which I helped uncover.

None of them, however, have felt half as serious as the controversy which has engulfed the sport since Sebastian Coe was elected to succeed Lamine Diack as President of the International Association of Athletics Federations in Beijing last August.

Coe has understandably been left reeling by the allegations against a man he described as the sport’s “spiritual leader” shortly after he beat Ukraine’s former pole vault world record holder Sergey Bubka to a position he had described as his “dream job”.

Most people I know were genuinely shocked when news broke of Diack’s arrest on allegedly accepting more than €1 million in bribes to

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help Russian athletes avoid punishment for failing drugs tests. Up until then, it was widely believed that his biggest crime had been turning a blind eye to his son, Papa Masata Diack, an IAAF “marketing consultant”, benefitting from sponsorship deals.

Diack did, though, receive a censure from the IOC in 2011 after he admitted receiving three cash payments totalling $30,000 and 30,000 French francs from marketing firm ISL after his house in Senegal was burned down in 1993 “for political reasons”. At the time, Diack was a vice-president of the IAAF and was negotiating a marketing contract with ISL. Perhaps everyone, especially the International Olympic Committee, should have been a lot more suspicious at the time. He was allowed to remain as an IOC member, however, only having to step down at the end of 2013 when he reached the mandatory retirement age of 80.

His reputation did not appear to suffer in the eyes of IOC President Thomas Bach. He allowed the highly unusual situation at the IOC Session in Kuala Lumpur last August of letting Diack address the floor, although by then he was only an honorary member. Diack was

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DUNCAN MACKAY EDITOR, INSIDETHEGAMES

responding to allegations from German broadcaster ARD and British newspaper The Sunday Times that medals won in Olympics and World Championships stretching back years had been claimed by athletes who had recorded suspicious tests but had been covered up by the IAAF. Diack described the allegation as a “joke”.

The World Anti-Doping Agency Independent Commission, chaired by senior IOC member Richard Pound, did not agree and in November published evidence of “state-supported” doping in athletics in Russia, leading to the

country’s suspension by the IAAF and putting in jeopardy their participation at Rio 2016.

The situation that Coe has inherited is something he could never have imagined, although his ill-advised eulogy to Diack is one of several instances where he has done himself no favours. His comment responding to media investigations about the extent of the problem of doping in athletics that it was a “declaration of war” on his sport will also haunt him for the rest of his Presidency.

Coe’s refusal for so long to give up his links with sportswear firm Nike has also provided an easy target for critics. There is little doubt he would have been better served announcing he was giving it up as soon as he was elected to replace Diack rather than waiting until after several weeks of negative media coverage. He had been warned on several occasions during the election campaign by the PR company he had employed that it was something that would potentially cause him problems. “I’m your cut man and you are leading with your face,” one close adviser told him.

The same obstinacy that served Coe so well during his outstanding career on the track, when he bounced back from his 800m defeat to Steve Ovett at the 1980 Olympics in Moscow to win the 1500m having been written off and then retain the title four years later in Los Angeles after the British media had run a campaign for him not to be picked, proved to be something of a character failure this time. www.facebook.com/insidethegames

To suggest, though, that Coe did something underhand helping ensure Eugene was picked to host the 2021 IAAF World Championships due to his association with Nike, who are based in the town, is ridiculous. In retrospect, knowing that Gothenburg were planning to bid, it was imprudent by the IAAF Council to choose the American city without a proper bid process. At the time, though, no-one thought it was the wrong decision to award the IAAF’s flagship event to a country which has provided many of the sport’s biggest stars and sponsorship dollars, nor to the only city in the United States where it would be the biggest event in its history.

Even now, I don’t know anyone who thinks it will harm the sport by taking its Championships to the biggest and most lucrative media market in the world. This is not some obscure oil-rich city with no tradition in athletics using the event to build their brand - Eugene is not known as TrackTown USA for nothing.

To avoid conflicts of interests like this one between Coe and Nike, the time has surely come for major governing bodies to pay salaries to their Presidents. If the sportsmen and women want to be represented to the highest standards then they must expect their leaders to be properly compensated and not rely on private incomes to support themselves and their families.

After all, in many cases they are acting as ex-officio chief executives of companies with a turnover of millions of dollars organising major large-scale events all over the world. No-one would seriously expect the head of Apple to

devote their lives to the company for no financial reward and nor should we ask people like Coe too either.

The last Briton to hold the position of IAAF President was Lord Burghley, the 6th Marquess of Exeter, a figure immortalised in the Oscar-winning film Chariots of Fire by having his butler place a glass of champagne on each hurdle when he trained and trying to jump over them without spilling a drop. The scene was probably fictionalised. But Burghley, the Olympic 400m hurdles gold medallist at Los Angeles 1932, came from a family who at the time owned one of the biggest country estates in England, so it is probably fair to assume money was not an issue.

When Burghley was President between 1946 and 1976 the most important word in the IAAF was “amateur” (the organisation changed its name in 2001) and its business was conducted out of a small two-room office on the outskirts of London. Burghley probably popped in a couple of times a month on his way to his gentleman’s club. It would not have required much more of his attention because at that time the governing body organised no events, had no sponsors and the anti-doping programme was only carried out on a few athletes during the Olympics.

Times have changed. The IAAF now organises a year-round worldwide competition programme, earns millions in sponsorship and has an anti-doping programme that tests hundreds of athletes every month, both in and out-of-competition.

There is nothing wrong with a Federation paying its President a salary as long as it is

Usain Bolt remains athletics’ main hope of gaining some much-needed good publicity. Photo: Getty Images

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DUNCAN MACKAY EDITOR, INSIDETHEGAMES

done in a transparent manner, as it is at the International Cycling Union where Coe’s fellow Briton, Brian Cookson, announced shortly after he was elected in 2013 that he is going to receive CHF340,000 per year for his role.

There remains no doubt in my mind that Coe is the right man to sort out the mess athletics finds itself in. He retains almost total support within the sport, despite the turbulent period it has endured.

Besides being pilloried for his links with Nike, Coe has also been criticised for not being aware

Nebiolo and Diack. He is currently in negotiations to arrange for a villa that was the centre of Diack’s empire to be returned to the Principality of Monaco, who had rented it to the IAAF on a peppercorn rent. From now on, everyone at the IAAF will work in the same offices.

Coe has also cancelled the luxury suite at the Fairmont Hotel that the IAAF used to pay €15,000 per month so that Diack could stay in Monte Carlo. Coe is instead looking for a modest one-bedroom flat within walking

Lamine Diack’s predecessor as IAAF President, Italian Primo Nebiolo, was involved in covering up drugs tests and fixing the results of competition. Photo: AFP/Getty Images

of allegations that Diack was involved in a scheme to cover-up positive drugs tests involving Russian athletes and then blackmail them to keep it private. Coe was the vicepresident of the IAAF for much of this time.

It is just a hunch, but I am guessing Diack was not putting “corruption and blackmail” on the agenda of the IAAF Council so it was open for discussion. Coe was also one of three vice-presidents - and never the senior one - during this period and for much of that time he was in charge of London 2012.

Understandably, the IAAF was not top of his list.

Coe has inherited an organisation where corruption and excess was endemic. For 18 years before Diack took over, the IAAF was run

by Primo Nebiolo, an Italian who once compared himself to Hitler and Mussolini and was involved in doping cover-ups and result-fixing.

Coe has already started to address some of the extravagance that marked the reigns of www.facebook.com/insidethegames

distance of the IAAF’s headquarters.

Coe has probably not had any time yet to even think about this year’s Olympics, where he will be desperately hoping Usain Bolt can once again do his bit to try to rescue the sport.

Whatever the Jamaican achieves, though, the athletics at Rio 2016 will not match what London 2012 served up, arguably the finest moment in the sport’s long history.

Capacity crowds for every session, outstanding performances and breath taking moments of drama. Coe, remember, deserves a great deal of credit for that success, something which appears to have been quickly forgotten by too many people.

Perhaps by the time the 2017 IAAF World Championships take place in that same Olympic Stadium on the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park we will be starting to see the effects of Coe’s reforms, which would be appropriate. It is going to be a difficult couple of years but if anyone can turn the sport around then it is Sebastian Coe. @insidethegames

Thomas Bach has 51 billion reasons to want Russia at Rio 2016

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ussia have been given until the next special IAAF Council meeting in May to show they have done enough to have their ban from international athletics lifted.

There is widespread belief that IOC President Thomas Bach, who has a close relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin, wants them at Rio 2016 and is working hard behind the scenes to ensure this happens.

Putin can claim 51 billion reasons why Bach should help him get this IAAF ban lifted. It was widely reported that it cost Russia $51 billion to host the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, a figure the IOC have always disputed.

They claim it was a fraction of that and the majority was spent on infrastructural projects, including things like roads, railroads and power plants not directly connected with staging the Olympics. The IOC, though, have never been able to convince the public this was the case and the $51 billion figure has entered into public folklore.

It will be a millstone around the Olympic Movement’s neck for years to come.

It is also now likely to be a powerful bargaining chip for Putin in any negotiations with Bach about Rio 2016.

Throughout the crisis, Bach has been a strong supporter of Russia. In February he even appointed Alexander Zhukov, President of the Russian Olympic Committee, to head the IOC’s Coordination Commission overseeing preparations for the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing.

When I quizzed Bach at the end of the IOC Executive Board in Lausanne last month and asked him whether he believed this was the strong message that needed to be sent out at this time he was particularly terse.

“Neither the ROC nor President Zhukov is under any kind of suspicion or investigation,” he told me.

That was to ignore the fact that the ROC are the umbrella organisation for sport in Russia and, therefore, have ultimate responsibility for athletics in the country.

Duncan Mackay

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Gianni Infantino was the surprise choice to replace Sepp Blatter as President of FIFA. Photo: Getty Images

STARTING HERE G OWMM STAMRMTMMIMNMMGMMN MMMMM

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FIFA’s new President Gianni Infantino finally offers the chance for football’s world governing body to make a fresh start. But, as David Owen explains, there are still plenty of important issues in the new leader’s in-tray for him to deal with 14

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ianni Infantino had been FIFA President for all of one hour when he received his first public request to foretell the future. “Close your eyes now and think about FIFA in 2020,” ordered a reporter endowed plainly with a keen sense of amateur dramatics.

The 46-year-old Swiss lawyer, as tired as he was emotional after an arduous, globe-straddling campaign, offered a predictable, development-focused vision, ranging through a Caribbean league, grass-roots academies in Africa, football in schools in Oceania and kids who smile with their eyes “because they have a ball they can play with”.

All very safe; all very laudable. I have a feeling though, after the year they have just had, that many within FIFA would settle simply for a sustained spell of relative normality.

For all his emphasis on spend, spend, spend during the campaign, there is no doubt that Infantino’s first priority, having moved across Switzerland from European football body UEFA’s base in Nyon to Zurich, must be to repair the damage inflicted on FIFA’s business model by the recent crisis.

One of the problems of being partly reliant on commercial sponsors is that when your brand becomes associated with allegations of corrupt behaviour to the degree that FIFA’s has, the money faucet gets turned off.

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By the time you read this, the world body may have confirmed a deficit for 2015 of more than $100 million. Markus Kattner, acting general secretary, told the Extraordinary Congress at which Infantino was elected that it was “facing challenges” in meeting its $5 billion revenue projection for 2015-18 and was currently some $500 million behind its goals.

No wonder Infantino had among his 10 priorities for his first 90 days as FIFA President, “Consult with key commercial partners to bring trust back to the market”.

The damage to date is nothing that a couple of juicy new sponsorship deals would not go a long way to rectifying, however. Infantino has made a good start by confirming Wanda Group as FIFA’s first Chinese sponsor shortly ater he was elected.

For all the problems Infantino and his new general secretary will find in their in-trays, FIFA still generates considerably more income from TV than from marketing - $2.48 billion over the four-year cycle up to and including the Brazil 2014 World Cup. And while the world body may be staggering through the biggest crisis in its history, there has been no sign of waning interest in its flagship competition, one of world sport’s few truly global properties. How much worse would its current predicament be if there had!

Even if a Chinese corporation does soon ride to FIFA’s rescue, restoring sponsorship income permanently to acceptable levels will require a big and lasting improvement in FIFA’s battered image.

New leadership should go some way to delivering this, while it is widely hoped that implementation of reforms thumpingly approved a few hours before Infantino’s victory will prove another key step.

The 179-vote to 22 margin pleased François Carrard, the former International Olympic Committee director general who chaired the 2016 FIFA Reform Committee. Carrard told me afterwards that a wide majority was “essential” for a reform process. Equally, he thought it positive that blanket unanimity was not secured.

“Eighty-nine per cent is good, but I am also happy it wasn’t 100 per cent,” he said.

The package of changes includes some welcome measures: 12-year term limits, ensuring no future FIFA President will stay as long at the helm as the 33-year stint, until 1954, served by Jules Rimet, father of the World Cup; a pronounced increase in the number of women members in the key Executive Committee, which is - more worryingly, but all too typically - to be enlarged and renamed the FIFA Council; www.facebook.com/insidethegames

François Carrard, who had led the review into FIFA’s governance, congratulates Gianni Infantino following his election. Photo: Getty Images

the attempted separation of operations/ commerce and politics.

But the reforms look set, if anything, to tighten the grip of football’s six regional Confederations over FIFA’s affairs, since Council members will continue to be elected by Member Associations within their respective regional groupings, rather than by the FIFA Congress.

This is a scarcely surprising outcome, since 12 of the 15 members of Carrard’s Reform Committee - who included Infantino himself - were appointed by one or other of the Confederations.

This might all sound rather tedious compared to the soap opera of the past nine months. But to me it seems fundamental if the world body is ever to be capable of consistently sound decision-making.

One need only think of UEFA’s immensely lucrative stake in the week-in, week-out European club game to realise that, with the best will in the world, FIFA’s interests and those of the Confederations are bound to diverge from time to time.

While it would still be almost impossible to prevent regional bloc-voting, election by FIFA Congress would at least underline that Council members need to have a loyalty and accountability first and foremost to FIFA and @insidethegames

not their regions.

In one way, the new statutes will even represent a step backwards, as the “female member” of the soon-to-be-scrapped Executive Committee was elected, like the FIFA President, by the FIFA Congress.

The women members of the new Council will, by contrast, though more numerous, be elected, like their male counterparts, by the Confederations. It will be interesting to observe whether this, in any way, impairs their ability to band together to further the women’s game.

One point that I think will be very much in their favour is that the penny seems to be starting to drop that the Women’s World Cup is the tournament that may finally lessen FIFA’s worrisome dependence on a single - albeit fabulously successful - quadrennial cash cow, the FIFA World Cup itself.

After the success of last year’s women’s competition in Canada, won by the United States, it will be fascinating to see what sort of viewership and revenue figures the next edition in France in 2019 will produce.

As for the men’s version, Infantino seems keen to press on with the process for awarding the 2026 World Cup, even though we are more than a decade away from kick-off. By comparison, the International Olympic

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The FIFA World Cup retains its popularity among the public and sponsors but the next two editions could present challenges for Gianni Infantino. Photo: Getty Images

Committee determines the host of a Summer or Winter Games seven years in advance.

Launching this process was another item on his ‘To do’ list for his first 90 days as FIFA President.

This sense of urgency may be related to his campaign pledge, which is set to be opposed by the powerful European clubs, to expand the World Cup from 32 to 40 teams.

There are only a certain number of countries which could comfortably accommodate a tournament on this scale. One of them is the United States, already viewed widely as the red-hot favourite to emerge as 2026 host.

Another is China, whose relatively new-found interest in the game has moved to a new level since the football-loving Xi Jinping assumed the Presidency in 2013. China too is seen as a near-certainty to host a World Cup within a generation.

Getting a new World Cup race going might also help to revive sponsorship interest in FIFA. When it comes to the wealthy and powerful US corporate sector, however, the football body faces competition from the Olympic Movement, with Los Angeles mounting a hugely competitive bid for the right to stage the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games. With the IOC scheduled to make up its mind on the 2024 host in September 2017, this too might be a factor in www.facebook.com/insidethegames

the new FIFA President’s keenness to get the 2026 process started.

Whether the football world ends up in Boston or Beijing in 10 years’ time, or somewhere else altogether, there are two World Cups that will need to be played out before then. Both look set to require their fair share of Infantino’s attention.

With regard to the 2018 competition, FIFA finds itself in the same boat to some extent as the IOC, in that the event has been awarded to a BRIC nation, in this case Russia, whose economy is in a far less healthy state than when the competition was assigned to it.

The Russian Government, hit by low oil prices, has been pruning its overall costs for the tournament, with the latest reduction emerging almost as Infantino was triumphing in Zurich.

With the state of political relations between Russia and the West also rather tense and unpredictable at present, there is plenty that could go wrong before the first ball is kicked in Moscow’s Luzhniki Stadium.

Infantino will at least have been reassured by an early message from Russian President Vladimir Putin, who told him, “Your active and fruitful work at international sport organisations and a significant personal contribution to the development of the football movement have @insidethegames

helped you to gain prominence and authority,” in a statement released by the Kremlin.

The award of the 2022 World Cup to the tiny Gulf state of Qatar, which is also struggling to cope with the fall-out from low energy prices, remains hugely controversial for a variety of reasons from the desert heat, which ultimately forced the competition’s timing to be switched to the northern-hemisphere winter, to corruption allegations.

While the more time that passes lessens the chances of the tournament being moved, it would be no surprise if pressure to do so did not continue for a while yet, and with well over six years to go before the scheduled November 2022 kick-off, this does not yet appear a logistical impossibility.

Infantino was reported to have said within days of taking office that the 2018 and 2022 competitions would take place in Russia and Qatar as planned. And indeed I would not bet against the Swiss administrator, who would then be in his second term as FIFA President, taking his place in the VVIP seats for the opening match in Doha in six-and-a -half years’ time. But I think by that stage the next World Cup but one may well have consumed more management time than he perhaps hopes or anticipates.

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bu has been a

The build-up to the Olympic and Paralympic Games in Rio de Janeiro has been far from smooth, with concerns ranging from water pollution and the Zika virus to budget cuts and low ticket sales.

Nick Butler considers how worried should we really be…

S

itting in a café in Barra de Tijuca last August enjoying a fish lunch before attending celebrations marking one-year-to-go until the Olympic Games, a Rio 2016 employee had clearly had enough of my remonstrations about water quality.

“Look,” he spluttered between mouthfuls.

“We are delighted everyone is focusing on Guanabara Bay pollution. It shows how well we are doing that this is the only problem.”

Eight months on, those halcyon days of a singular challenge must seem like a distant dream.

After a generally successful 2015, the opening months of Olympic year have been difficult, to say the least. Many problems are of the organisers own making. Some of the construction delays and unrealistic promises, for instance.

Others are out of their control, like the arrival of Zika virus and the ever-plummeting value of

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the currency as the host country approaches its worst recession since 1901.

And yet, in many ways, this is just a case of Olympic history repeating itself.

Rising fears two years ahead of a Games following the completion of the previous edition and the realisation that you are next in line. Then, once the proverbial kick up the backside has been delivered, a year of steady progress before concerns rise in the final stages of preparations.

Sydney 2000, Athens 2004, Beijing 2008 and London 2012 all experienced this, and on each occasion, fears eventually evaporated.

There were numerous worries ahead of Sochi 2014; the forced rehousing of locals and environmental damage, to name two, plus Russian intervention in Ukraine and a controversial new anti-gay legislation introduced into the Duma, the Russian Parliament. Save for a few stray dogs and broken media showers, however, all of this was largely forgotten once the sport began.

Experienced Olympic observers, therefore, continue to remain cautiously optimistic about Rio 2016. Most believe that, for all the challenges, the Games will still be a success.

“Rio’s carnival atmosphere will take over,” Ireland’s IOC Coordination Commission member Patrick Hickey told insidethegames.

“It will be a great Games,” cried another

Brazilian troops have been going from house to house in Rio de Janeiro to try to combat the Zika virus. Photo: Getty Images

official over the beating drums of samba music at a Rio-themed promotional event during the United States Olympic Committee Media Summit in Los Angeles in March, gesticulating with his bottle of Brahma beer in the direction of various scantily clad Brazilian dancers. “This is all you need.”

One difference is that with Australia, China, Britain and Russia, you could pretty much rely on the country to pull through when it mattered. With Brazil today, like Greece in 2004, it is harder to predict.

“What will save the Games is the beauty of the city and friendliness of the people,” added a commenter on one of the many stories we have published on insidethegames. “Unfortunately, the legacy of these Games will not be what was first expected for the city and inhabitants. This

Pollution in Guanabara Bay remains a serious concern for Rio 2016 officials Photo: Getty Images

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umpy ride

NICK BUTLER SENIOR REPORTER, INSIDETHEGAMES

Nawal El Moutawakel, chair of the IOC Coordination Commission for Rio 2016, has promised to jump into Guanabara Bay to prove it is clean. Photo: Getty Images

is the curse of Brazil.”

Many of the promises associated with Rio 2016 will almost certainly go unfulfilled.

In 2009, the country was a thriving member of the BRIC group of rising powers and the Olympics presented a stitch to heal any remaining wounds. Five years on, the wounds have become deeper and the stitch now resembles a sticking plaster, and not a very big one at that. Certain Games-related projects are being realised, such as - at least some of - the new transport links. Housing developments are not benefiting those that most need them and water pollution remains a serious concern.

Most of the international focus recently has shone on the Zika virus, the mosquito-borne disease linked with microcephaly, a condition in which a baby is born with a small brain.

Pregnant women are understandably being put off from attending either as spectators or workers.

It was fascinating, though, to hear the almost complete lack of fear from athletes speaking at the USOC Media Summit. It contrasted so strongly with the fervent intensity of hysteria in the press. With the Games taking place in the Brazilian winter, the risk should be relatively low so long as adequate precautions are taken.

In many ways, the same could be said about water pollution, with athletes working to improve their resistance. Most are not prepared to sacrifice their Olympic dreams for an undefined health risk.

The main problem is that Brazilian officials have spectacularly broken a bid-time promise to use the Games to improve levels of pollution by 80 per cent. The Rio State Government have www.facebook.com/insidethegames

dithered and dallied over sewage works and clearing Guanabara Bay of obstacles and debris.

These have included a human arm and dead animal carcasses.

Levels have officially improved by 50 per cent, a figure many observers dispute. They believe the problem has actually got worse.

Officials have hardly helped themselves by patronising journalists who have uncovered real concerns about the pollution in Guanabara Bay following rigorous scientific investigations into pollution levels. “We will all jump into the Bay to prove it is clean,” said IOC Coordination Commission chair Nawal El Moutawakel last summer when faced with a particularly detailed question on the problem. So far, no IOC member has taken El Moutawakel up on her offer…

This is bound to be an issue where concerns continue up to and during the Games, although the whole success or failure of the Olympics will not be judged on water pollution.

A bigger challenge relates to the state of the Brazilian economy, raising serious questions over whether Olympic-spending can be justified. Budgets have been slashed but Rio 2016 have hardly helped themselves by the way they presented it. Much as we may get fed-up with the spin that has been used to sell the Olympic Movement in the last few years, you feel some external help from a PR company was required here.

National Olympic Committees were told they had to pay for air conditioning in the Athletes’ Village, before a U-turn was performed once this emerged publicly. Budgets were initially slashed by 20 per cent, then this @insidethegames

was denied and a less precise figure was adopted. The party line now is that none of these cuts will involve the “athletes or field of play”. The VIP canapés, however, may still be of the poorest quality since the 1948 Olympics when the Games were held in a London still affected by wartime rationing.

IOC President Thomas Bach has repeated the word “solidarity” over and over again to emphasise how all stakeholders remain supportive of the cuts. Privately, though, many International Federations are fed-up with the broken promises of Rio 2016.

These include the International Rowing Federation, left outraged when the increasingly gaffe-prone Mayor of Rio de Janeiro, Eduardo Paes, urged spectators not to buy tickets to their sport but instead “pull up a beach chair” and watch on the bank instead. The comment was aimed at encouraging poorer people to attend the Olympics but was delivered sloppily, particularly as organisers had already scrapped plans to build a floating grandstand on the Lagoa Rodrigo de Freitas venue.

Rowing is certainly not the only International Federation to feel some simmering resentment about how they have been treated by Rio 2016.

Problems remain at other venues, including the velodrome, swimming pool and athletics track, and it will be interesting to see whether concerns come to the fore at SportAccord Convention like they did during the 2014 edition in Belek.

Ticket prices are another issue to have split opinion. At the time of writing, less than half of Olympic tickets have been sold and only 15 per cent for the Paralympic Games. Bach and his

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Rio de Janeiro’s iconic landmarks will provide a stunning backdrop for the Olympic and Paralympic Games. Photo: Getty Images

International Paralympic Committee counterpart Sir Philip Craven both claim to be unbothered, insisting it is not the Brazilian way to buy that far in advance.

This appears true to an extent, although the Paralympic figure is worrying, particularly as there is less of a heritage in these events in the host country.

Many tickets are cheap, with more than half of Olympic ones priced BRL70 - that is under $20 or less - and the cheapest Paralympic ones setting you back just BRL10, which is only $2.50. The total cost of attending the Games will be far greater than this, however, with transport and accommodation for those travelling from outside Rio de Janeiro particularly expensive and beyond the reach of most average Brazilians.

If Rio 2016 proves anything like London 2012, interest will pick up once the Torch Relay arrives in the country on May 30 to begin a nationwide tour. It is key, however, that the Games remain to be viewed as separate from the political problems currently ravaging the country.

There is an increasingly significant divide in Brazil between the ordinary public and the elite - a group to which sporting administrators belong, as well as businessmen and politicians.

This is unsurprising when you consider the dazzling scale of the unravelling corruption scandal surrounding state oil giants Petrobras.

Those implicated include Luíz Inácio Lula da Silva, the former President who addressed the www.facebook.com/insidethegames

IOC so memorably at the 2009 Session in Copenhagen where the Games were awarded to Rio de Janeiro ahead of rivals Chicago, Madrid and Tokyo. Millions of protestors spanning all backgrounds have since taken to the streets to call for the impeachment of Lula’s handpicked successor Dilma Rousseff.

“The expectation of the Olympic Games here is still somewhat shrouded by so many allegations of corruption linked to the Federal Government,” said one respondent when we canvassed Brazilians for their views of the Games. “Many think it is a joke to hold a mega-event like this when so many basic public services are routinely overlooked. Others think it is important to foster the local economy.”

“Having the Olympics in Brazil is something great,” said a 28-year-old from Recife, 2,300 kilometres away to the north-east. “But because I’m not wealthy I have no way of paying for the journey, accommodation and tickets.”

If there is one area on which the success of the Games hinges, it is the extension to Metro Linha-4, due to link the city centre with the main Barra venue hub. The line is not due to open until July, just a few days before the Opening Ceremony on August 5. Mayor Paes had warned in February in a leaked, “highly confidential” email that it would not be ready in time.

These words may have been designed to ensure the Government in Brasília released a final trench of construction money for the @insidethegames

project but they certainly deepened concerns at the IOC. Officials have since been queuing-up to predict how the line will be ready and that alternative solutions are unnecessary. Only time will tell.

With 300,000 people a day set to travel on the line, it really is vital, especially because people will be approaching venues from all over the city. The 15-minute metro journey is capable of taking two hours by car in rush-hour on twisty, mountainous roads, including a particularly difficult section through a tunnel.

An Olympic-lane is already going to be introduced for accredited personnel, but this could add to the congestion and will not be accessible for spectators. It will also require some fairly aggressive policing to stop members of the public driving on it regardless.

“Rio will be a fantastic TV Games,” predicted another longstanding expert. “It will not be as easy for those of us trying to work there.”

Aside from transport, another risk is security, with muggers and pickpockets - already a major concern for all visitors to the city - set to try to set their own personal best during the Olympics.

With barely three months to go until the Olympics are due to be declared open by Thomas Bach, Brazil must put its foot to the floor to ensure preparations are ready in time.

Like with the gridlocked tunnel, however, it may not always be possible to go flat out and, like on Guanabara Bay, there will be many more obstacles to negotiate.

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Is the IOC

heading for a fall over skateboarding?

Skateboarding is seen as a key way for the Olympic Games to appeal to young people. But adding the sport onto the Tokyo 2020 programme has proved far more problematic than first envisaged. Nick Butler reports

I

nternational Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach’s eyes lit up on a visit to Kosovo last year as he spotted a perfect photo opportunity waiting on the other side of Pristina’s main square. Within seconds he had shot off with the speed of the former fencer he is to meet and greet young children skateboarding, charming and joking with them and even kneeling down as another youngster vaulted over him.

Skateboarding has long been seen as a way to make the Olympics seem relevant and modern.

A few months earlier, the sport was one of four to feature at the Sports Lab during the Nanjing 2014 Summer Youth Olympic Games, wowing the watching Chinese, as well as an enthusiastic Bach.

It thus seemed an obvious addition to the

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Olympic programme when the process of adding new sports began in 2014.

More than a year later and the IOC must be wondering if this was such a good idea.

Skateboarding was among five new disciplines proposed by Tokyo 2020 organisers last year ahead of final approval at the IOC Session in Rio de Janeiro this August. It has proved by far the most troublesome. Three governing bodies remain divided over who would organise the event and much of skateboarding’s wider grassroots community remain opposed to Olympic inclusion altogether.

“Have you got all evening?” quipped an exasperated IOC official when we asked him for an update in February.

“There’s a set of discussions going on in the skateboarding community between the

three Federations following our meeting in Lausanne last year,” said IOC sports director Kit McConnell later that same month. “We’re working towards a solution. All the bodies in skateboarding are looking for clarity in terms of the roles and responsibilities within the sport.”

As often, however, the detail was in what was not said and, reading between the lines, it was pretty clear that gridlock remained.

The proposal to Tokyo 2020 for street and park skateboarding was included in the International Roller Sports Federation’s application, alongside inline speed skating.

Just the skateboarding events were successful, however, meaning the FIRS would be effectively responsible for organising only an event outside its own sport.

Is this what FIRS wanted? Surely not, as

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they appeared to have been short-changed, and presumably see skateboarding primarily as a means to pave the way for a future roller skating competition.

Questions have also been raised as to who was behind the decision. Yes, the recommendation was announced by Tokyo 2020, but, while baseball and softball and karate were seen as definite Japanese-driven suggestions, it is generally believed that the IOC were heavily involved in the choices of skateboarding, sport climbing and surfing.

Skateboarding, particularly, was seen as a done deal, with speculation that new BMX freestyle events could take place in the same venue.

FIRS do appear capable of organising an Olympic competition. They have a Skateboarding Committee headed by Titus Dittmann, a 67-year-old considered the father of the sport in Germany with more than 30 years of experience in running major events.

The challenges are political rather than technical. A roller skating takeover, critics claim, would be a repeat of snowboarding’s amalgamation into the International Ski Federation in the 1990s. FIS were chosen by the IOC to run the Olympic event rather than the International Snowboarding Federation and, it is said, sacrificed tradition and culture for commercial profit.

Norway’s Terje Håkonsen, a three-time world champion who dominated halfpipe snowboarding in the 1990s, even boycotted the sport’s Olympic debut at Nagano 1998 in protest. “There’s just no respect for the history and culture of snowboarding at all,” he said.

Two alternative governing bodies have emerged to challenge FIRS. The International Skateboarding Federation, organisers of the Sports Lab at Nanjing 2014, led by American businessman and skate camp entrepreneur Gary Ream, and the World Skateboarding Federation. They are headed by another American in Tim McFerran, an event organiser who orchestrates the Skateboarding World Championships in Kimberley in South Africa.

Neither are members of SportAccord or are IOC-recognised, unlike FIRS. This meant neither was eligible to apply for Olympic inclusion last year.

There is no love lost between these two, with Mike Jacki, a former President of USA Ski and Snowboard, having left his position as ISF secretary general to join the WSF. Much of the wider skateboarding community seems lukewarm to both as well. There is a view, particularly in relation to Ream, that they are opportunists trying to use the Olympic www.facebook.com/insidethegames

Games as a means to make money who represent the sport no better than roller skating does.

“Skateboarding is not a ‘sport’ and we do not want skateboarding exploited and transformed to fit into the Olympic programme,” claimed the organisers of a petition, entitled “No Skateboarding in the Olympics”, which has gained less than 7,000 signatures.

“The typical skateboarder does not have anything in common with an Olympic athlete.

Athletes train endlessly, have trainers, coaches, hard schedules to keep, many competitions and a true dedication to their goal of winning a gold medal. Skateboarding is an individual creative activity and skaters enjoy lesser known, nontelevised, informal competitions among their peers with no corporate sponsors for the mere purpose of having fun.”

Another difference may be in their attitude to drugs, particularly recreational ones, with usage of products like cannabis thought to be particularly high. Drug testing is improving, but remains rudimentary or non-existent at many events, including at February’s X-Games Europe in Oslo.

It is hard to see which way the IOC are leaning, but they do appear keen to involve skateboarding bodies. “There are a number of Federations that conduct skateboarding events internationally, and we are in discussion with them,” said IOC vice-president John Coates, one of Bach’s closest allies on the Executive Board and who heads the Coordination Commission for Tokyo 2020, in October. “I would expect that one of the Federations will

be identified in the near future that we will work with and recognise.”

FIRS reacted furiously, with the body’s President Sabatino Aracu claiming Coates was “not fully aware” of the situation. “His words... sound like a threat to the process Tokyo 2020 presented during the last months,” he claimed.

As the Association of Summer Olympic International Federations establish criteria for measuring good governance across sporting bodies, it will be a challenge for a body like the ISF to tick many of these boxes. There are 28 National Federation members listed on the ISF website, with many others “pending” or “enquiring”, but very little information about what constitutes being a full national member.

No ISF statutes or finances are published online and there is little evidence of a functioning Council or Executive Board.

“If the IOC choose one of the nonIOC recognised bodies to run an Olympic competition, it would set an awful precedent for the future and would make a mockery of its own rules,” the President of another aspiring Olympic sport told insidethegames.

Having all three potential bodies working together would be an obvious solution. But compromise, unsurprisingly, has not proved easy and the IOC are losing patience. The three were each hauled in to Lausanne last month for a series of ad-hoc and bilateral meetings. “Work together or we give up on skateboarding,” they were all apparently told.

Time will tell if a breakthrough can be made.

Quite possibly, however, the sport will prove more trouble than it is worth.

The snowboarding community was left divided by the introduction of their sport onto the Olympic programme at Nagano in 1998.

Photo: Getty Images

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Karate Karate was unable to gain a place at London 2012 or Rio 2016 and was originally turned down for Tokyo 2020 before the introduction of Agenda 2020.

Having originated in Japan, the World Karate Federation feel the Olympics in Tokyo represent the perfect fit for the sport to make its long-awaited Olympic debut, and confidence remains high within the governing body that they will be given the nod.

If the WKF are successful, karate at Tokyo 2020 will include a total of 80 athletes across eight weights in the two disciplines - kata and kumite. Gold medals will be won in the men’s and women’s individual kata, while three categories for each gender will be held in kumite.

Interest appears to be growing in the sport worldwide, boosted by the success of last year’s inaugural Premier12 tournament in Japan and Taiwan, which was viewed in 250 million households across the globe. Both remain hugely popular in America, as well as in South Korea and Japan, handing a boost to the WBSC’s case.

As it stands, just six men’s baseball and softball teams would participate, meaning a total of 234 athletes across the two, providing a problem which the WBSC are keen to rectify.

One compromise would be cutting rosters from 24 to 22 players in order to persuade the IOC to allow them eight baseball teams. WBSC President Riccardo Fraccari has accepted the limit of six softball sides.

Surfing WKF tournaments, including their flagship World Championships, feature five men’s and women’s kumite categories, which raises a concern as to how they go about installing an Olympic qualification process and how they select the athletes who will compete at the event itself.

The initial proposal was to have all 10 categories, which were included at the inaugural European Games in Baku in June 2015.

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Sport climbing Much like surfing, sport climbing is seen as a hip option for inclusion for the IOC, who seem desperate to show they are down with the kids.

The International Federation of Sport Climbing, who are behind the sport’s bid for their Olympic debut, claim there are 35 million climbers around the world - an increase of 10 million from the figure in 2013 - and around half of these are under the age of 25.

If sport climbing is accepted for Tokyo 2020, bouldering and lead and speed combined would be the disciplines contested, while 40 climbers would take part in men’s and women’s competitions.

Another sport looking to make its firstever Olympic appearance at Tokyo 2020 is surfing, with their attempt spearheaded by the International Surfing Association.

Men’s and women’s short board events were proposed but it was not immediately clear where competitions would take place as the

Baseball/Softball Although it is widely believed that all five proposed new sports will earn a place on the Tokyo 2020 programme, the joint bid from baseball and softball, led by the World Baseball Softball Confederation, has always been the frontrunner.

Baseball and softball were cut from the Olympics following Beijing 2008. South Korea and Japan were the latest gold medallists in baseball and softball after they overcame Cuba and the United States respectively in the finals eight years ago.

keeping the sport in the city and thus at the heart of the Games.

The preferred option for ISA President Fernando Aguerre was the artificial route due to concerns over the height of waves in Japan in summer time. On the other hand, man-made wave pools can often be costly, which would have been a clear drawback for the IOC. A total of 40 athletes, split equally between men and women, will participate in surfing events at Tokyo 2020 should it be chosen for selection, with the governing body leaning heavily on how cool the sport is perceived to be worldwide.

ISA had put forward bids utilising both natural waves and an artificial pool.

It was then confirmed back in October that the sport would be held in the ocean, despite artificial pools, such as one which opened in Snowdonia in Wales in August 2015, guaranteeing high-quality waves while also @insidethegames

It isn’t all plain sailing for the sport as it has been affected by a row over rival governing bodies after the IFSC split from the International Mountaineering and Climbing Federation back in 2007.

While the IFSC is largely responsible for the competitive side of the sport, having organised the climbing exhibition event during the 2014 Summer Youth Olympic Games in Nanjing, the UIAA still enjoys significant grassroots support.

It also retains control of ice climbing, a winter discipline showcased at the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics which they hope will one day be added to the full Games programme.

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Sport for

goodI Led by the International Olympic Committee, sport has reacted positively to the refugee crisis by setting up new schemes and initiatives designed to help ease the plight of those fleeing their countries.

Michael Pavitt reports 26

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The first event of the Taekwondo Humanitarian Foundation took place in Nepal. Photo: WTF

mages of refugees fleeing war-torn areas have dominated our television screens for more than a year now. With more than 300,000 refugees estimated to have attempted to reach Europe after fleeing unstable areas in Africa and the Middle East, the reaction of Governments has proved mixed. Some have opened doors, others have put up fences. By contrast, the sporting world has reacted positively.

Following a meeting with the United Nations’ secretary general Ban Ki-moon in 2014, International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach pledged “wherever people are in need we are ready to serve, because sport can play a role, and we want to be at your side”.

In November, the IOC acted on this pledge by announcing a $2 million emergency fund for National Olympic Committees. The fund is

aimed at supporting programmes helping refugees and can be viewed as a clear sign of sport being used for the wider development of society, a key priority for Bach.

Further to the financial support, the creation of a special team of Refugee Olympic Athletes to compete at Rio 2016 will see the IOC take advantage of the global television audience to draw further attention to the issues. “By welcoming the team of refugee athletes, we want to send a message of hope for all refugees in our world,” Bach said when officially announcing the team.

Athletes will still have to qualify and reach specific standards but it is hoped the image of a refugee team walking out at the Opening Ceremony on August 5 will resonate with millions of people in their homes.

It would underline that the sporting world

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The Foundation will attempt to build on the work of the Federation’s Taekwondo Peace Corps project, a scheme run since 2008. Among the aims of the Corps is to promote diplomatic,

to the camp, which few international organisations are able to visit, and a key goal was to bring the refugee children closer to the local Turkish population. It is viewed as a good

Chungwon Choue, head of the World Taekwondo Federation, meets Nepal’s Bidhya Devi Bhandari. Photo: WTF

is still aware and prepared to act on key issues affecting society. As well as the IOC, International Federations have continued to roll out various projects aimed at providing relief to those who have been forced to flee their homes in search of safety.

Children are believed to make up around half of the world’s population of refugees, with the uncertainty in their lives also resulting in their opportunities being limited. The World Taekwondo Federation are one organisation who have already launched projects geared at boosting the lives of young displaced people.

In September, WTF’s President Chungwon Choue launched the Taekwondo Humanitarian Foundation in New York City. The initiative will see instructors deployed in refugee camps to teach young children the sport, in a project designed to help keep them active and, hopefully, boost their quality of life.

The pilot schemes have been taking place in Nepal, where hundreds of thousands of people were displaced by a devastating earthquake in 2015, as well as Jordan, which reportedly has camps with around 630,000 refugees from Syria. The Foundation will seek to educate young people about the philosophy of taekwondo and values of Olympism and also provide them with valuable respite from daily life at the camps.

“As of 2014, there were 19.5 million refugees in camps throughout the world,” Choue said launching the Foundation. “It is time to act. The World Taekwondo Federation, which administers the Olympic sport globally, is doing just that. Its mandate is to deploy taekwondo coaches to refugee camps worldwide, bringing the benefits of fitness, sport, self-defence, self-belief and self-respect to those who need it most.” www.facebook.com/insidethegames

International Judo Federation President Marius Vizer receives the Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al-Maktoum Creative Sports Award.

Photo: IJF

national and individual growth, sending talented young people overseas to teach the principles of the sport. More than 100 countries have so far been involved in the project in the hope that the initiative will boost communication between countries involved.

The WTF revealed earlier this year that they would be extending the Humanitarian Foundation’s work to the Kilis refugee camp in Turkey where 17,000 Syrians, 10,000 of them aged under 15, now live. A project to boost the lives of its residents has already been implemented at the site by the International Judo Federation.

Led by the IJF’s head director of the Judo for Peace Commission, Nicolas Messner, the project is targeted at teaching children judo and its values during weekly sessions. A total of 300 children have benefited so far from the programme, run in partnership with the Turkish Judo Federation, local authorities and the refugee camp.

The IJF have provided coaches and equipment @insidethegames

way of integrating the refugees into society and promoting peace.

“Taking judo to refugee camps near war-torn Syria and in or near other areas of conflict has brought refugee children a small island of happiness,” said IJF President Marius Vizer. “We need to invest in our children. Sport can change the world and judo can teach young refugees honesty and fearlessness.”

Nicolas Messner leads an IJF project to help Syrian refugees.

Photo: Nicolas Messner

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With several countries heavily impacted by conflict, their Federations will often have little opportunity to help to develop talented athletes or coaches. As a consequence, International Federations have become more active in trying to support the nations through development programmes.

For instance, the International Weightlifting Federation, who established their programme in 2009, held a coaching seminar in Jordan last November. While there were attendees from the host country, many of the participants in the initiative came from neighbouring Syria and Palestine, with the hope that they would be able to gain valuable insights into how they could help them to evolve the sport and continue their athletes’ progression.

Financial support is also vital to helping smaller nations to find and help their talented athletes to flourish. The Pacific Islands have been able to count on the IWF’s backing through the Oceania Talent Identification Programme, which has been implemented since 2012. Aimed at finding the next generation of lifters by visiting schools throughout the region, nearly 10,000 young people have taken part in it over the last two years.

Its success has been shown by several of the participants having competed at major continental events such as the Oceania Championships, the 2015 Pacific Games and the Commonwealth Youth Games, held last year in Samoa. Among the graduates of the programme is David Katoatau, who became the first Kiribati athlete to win a Commonwealth Games medal, claiming gold in the 105 kilogram division at Glasgow 2014.

So successful was the judo initiative, which is set to be expanded to focus on involving more girls, it received recognition at the Sheikh Mohammed Bin

Kiribati’s David Katoatau is one of the most successful graduates of an IWF scheme to identify talented weightlifters in Oceania. Photo: Getty Images

Rashid Al-Maktoum Creative Sports Awards in January, where the IJF won the International Creative Organisation Award.

Each of the Association of Summer Olympic International Federations members was allowed to submit one entry for the award, with the IJF project ultimately named the winner after submissions were examined by a

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group of referees appointed by the award’s Board of Trustees.

The existence of the award reflects the growing awareness of the sporting world that they can provide a key contribution, especially given the current global context.

Whether that is providing opportunities for children to take part in sport in camps, work from

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National Olympic Committees to help refugees integrate into society or the IOC providing emergency aid, the projects highlight that sport can have an impact on the world.

Away from doping issues at the highest level of competition or governance scandals off the field, it is worth remembering that sport can, actually, be a force for good.

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Cycle of Trust It was not so long ago that the UCI was the governing body most in crisis, racked by allegations of rampant drug use and corruption at the highest levels.

Brian Cookson’s election, however, is proof that it is possible to turn things around, as he tells Michael Pavitt

W

hen launching his campaign to become the International Cycling Union President in June 2013, one key pledge was at the heart of Brian Cookson’s manifesto. Simply titled, “Rebuild trust in the UCI”. The task itself, though, was anything but simple, with cycling’s governing body viewed as one of, if not the most problematic, of all the International Federations at the time.

It was perhaps best encapsulated at the end of a bitterly fought election campaign, when the UCI’s Congress was held up over the question of whether Pat McQuaid had the right to stand, to defend the position he had held since 2005.

After the intervention of Cookson, who proposed a straight vote to move the proceedings on in Florence, he ultimately prevailed 24-18 against his Irish rival.

The scale of the task ahead would not have come as any surprise to Cookson, who had served as British Cycling’s President for 16 years and been a member of the UCI Management Committee since 2009. Allegations of corruption had tarnished the image of the governing body itself, while the sport was scarred by numerous doping controversies.

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The most famous of these was the confession in January 2013 of American Lance Armstrong, who admitted that he had doped for all seven of his Tour de France victories.

Looking back to his election, Cookson believes he took over a sport “racked with disputes” and a governing body in constant conflict with key organisations, such as the World Anti-Doping Agency. Just over two years on from becoming President, the Briton, now 64, expressed his view that putting into place independent processes within the organisation has boosted its credibility.

“One of the first things I tried to do to move forward in partnership, to re-establish the integrity and credibility of the sport, was making sure we had independent processes in place,” he said. “So finalising the process of separating out cycling’s anti-doping activities into a separate foundation, a legal team which is externally scrutinised. We have been reviewing our Ethics Commission and Ethics Code, while we have also brought in independent members into the Ethics Commission from outside of cycling.”

The Cycling Anti-Doping Foundation is one such body that has been made independent.

Established in 2008 by the UCI, it runs cycling’s anti-doping programme. Among its roles are to conduct in and out-of-competition testing, as well as manage the UCI’s athlete biological passport programme. While the Foundation is given a working brief by the world governing body’s Anti-Doping Commission and receives funding, no members of the UCI appear on its Board.

Similarly, Legal Anti-Doping Services, established in October 2013, also operates independently. The body intervene when breaches in anti-doping rules are reported and instigates disciplinary procedures in cases, in line with UCI’s regulations. The unit took over from UCI Legal Service, with strict guidelines claimed to be in place regarding working relationships with the UCI itself. Their Anti-Doping Tribunal, set up in January 2015, was also put into place to prevent either the governing body or National Federations from giving riders favourable verdicts.

As a result of the processes, Cookson claimed neither he nor the UCI Management Committee would be able to intervene in anti-doping, with his role as President seeing him notified around “an hour or two” before the media.

Brian Cookson (right) defeated Pat McQuaid (left) to become the new UCI President in September 2013. Photo: Getty Images

“We have made a reality of what other sports are being told that they must do, which is to separate the roles of governance and promotion of the sport, from the discipline and antidoping,” he said. “I am not complacent about it or waving it in anyone’s faces, but I think that we have done that.

“These problems if we are honest about it will not go away, but we have tightened the noose very, very considerably and we have done that, in part, by making sure our processes are entirely independent. They are not able to be interfered with by me or anybody else for political, promotional or image related issues.”

Members of the UCI’s Management Committee are also required to sign a register of interest, declaring where any potential conflicts could arise. For instance, Cookson’s own declaration references his spell as President of

The UCI is still recovering from the drugs scandal involving Lance Armstrong. Photo: Getty Images

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Brian Cookson has worked hard to restore trust in cycling since his election as UCI President. Photo: Getty Images

British Cycling and that his son Oliver works for the WorldTour team Dimension Data. He asserts that due to the process being in place no conflicts should arise and has promised to exclude himself from any instances where the possibility may occur.

Building a better relationship with WADA and National Anti-Doping Agencies was among the key promises on which Cookson’s election campaign had been fought. The Briton had observed that at the time the UCI was in “open conflict with the very people it should be working in partnership with”.

Among those was the United States Anti-Doping Agency, whose chief executive Travis Tygart had played a key role in the downfall of Armstrong. He had reflected after Cookson’s triumph that the old leadership of the UCI had tried to “obstruct our investigation” and “failed to take necessary and decisive action” after they had released their reasoned decision into the Armstrong case in October 2012.

A new name at the top of the UCI was clearly welcomed by the American. Cookson claimed one of his first phone calls in his position was to then WADA President John Fahey in an effort to smooth over relations between the two organisations.

Cookson believes he now has a good working relationship with Fahey’s successor, fellow www.facebook.com/insidethegames

Briton Sir Craig Reedie, and pointed to the UCI having secured 10 sharing agreements with National Anti-Doping Agencies, including USADA. It allows for rider information and best practices to be shared between the organisations, while the agreements are also viewed as showing an improved relationship across the board.

“We have now got the confidence of those independent anti-doping agencies, rather than being in constant conflict or at war with them,” Cookson said. “We don’t get into those kind of disputes about jurisdiction, which seemed to be so problematic around the time of Lance Armstrong.

“I can remember very well at the time, the UCI seemed to be more concerned over who had jurisdiction, the UCI or USADA. To me, and I said this at the time, the important thing was to try to catch the people who are cheating, not arguing over who has jurisdiction.”

The publication of the 227-page Cycling Independent Reform Commission report, which looked into the sport’s doping past and allegations of corruption against its former leaders, has been viewed as a landmark moment for the UCI. The three-man Commission, led by Swiss politician and former state prosecutor Dick Marty, cleared former Presidents Pat McQuaid and Hein Verbruggen of corruption but claimed @insidethegames

the latter had personally got involved on a number of occasions to protect the top cyclists, especially Armstrong.

Verbruggen continues to dispute the findings of the report, which cost the governing body CHF2.25 million, but Cookson believes the independent scrutiny was necessary to help the sport move on from the Armstrong era.

“I do not know of any other sport that has thrown itself open to that kind of scrutiny, willingly, over a long extended period of time, with a substantial budget that we provided,” he said. “We have to learn from what happened in the past and acknowledge we were in a problematic situation, which I think previous administrations within the UCI had difficulty doing.

“I think it’s an advantage I had and my administration have, in that we have been given a new broom and we haven’t been inhibited by the past so much. I think it is something that other sports are still struggling with. We had to throw ourselves open to that independent scrutiny, we had also to change our leadership and our governance processes. They aren’t things you can do in one day, they are things you have to keep working at.”

The report gave an outline of what the panel considered to be key challenges facing anti-doping efforts in the sport, including abuse of Therapeutic Use Exemptions, use of new

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Astana were allowed to keep their WorldTour licence despite several of their riders testing positive for banned drugs. Photo: Getty Images

designer drugs and micro-dosing of banned substances to avoid detection by anti-doping authorities. Recommendations, such as the introduction of night time testing and a fit-and-proper-persons requirement for team’s key staff, were put to the governing body.

Cookson claimed the UCI have either already implemented, or are in the process of implementing, the vast majority of the suggestions. He also admitted he could understand why an assertion of one former rider that 90 per cent of the peloton were still doping was newsworthy at the time, but believes it was an “unfair snippet” to take out of the lengthy report.

“What it does demonstrate is that this was not a document that I or anyone else here at the UCI edited or demanded things be redacted from,” he said. “We said, produce a report and you have carte blanche to publish what has been said. That is what they did and some of it made uncomfortable reading. I don’t believe that 90 per cent are still doping, but even if it were 10 per cent it would still be www.facebook.com/insidethegames

too many.”

Despite the strengthening of independent processes and the introduction of anti-doping measures following the CIRC report, the UCI are still facing challenges.

The governing body referred the Astana Pro Team’s WorldTour licence to the Licence Commission, after the independent Institute of Sport Sciences of the University of Lausanne audit of the team’s anti-doping culture, policies, structures and management. It followed several doping cases involving their riders.

The independent Licence Commission imposed conditions on the team which were fulfilled and enabled the team to keep its licence. Additionally, after two positive tests within a 12-month period, the Russian registered Katusha team escaped a temporary suspension earlier this year, because one of the cases was concerning recreational use of cocaine.

These cases have attracted some criticism, not least from Cookson’s predecessor @insidethegames

McQuaid, who has claimed the UCI are not doing enough. Cookson admits the issues will never completely go away, stating that there will always be “a percentage who try to cheat”.

The decision of German broadcasters ARD to return to the Tour de France, after a three-year absence in light of doping controversies, is viewed by Cookson as a sign that confidence in the UCI and cycling is being restored. He believes sponsors, broadcasters and the public now have more faith in the sport they are watching.

“We are seeing a number of sponsors coming into the sport now,” he said. “I have said all along that even if you do not accept the moral and ethical arguments about stopping doping and running the sport with integrity, the reality is there is an economic driver here as well.

“The public, the media and sponsors do not want to get involved in a sport which is seen as being full of cheating, lying and manipulation.

We had to do something about that and we are seeing the benefits of that, I really believe that.”

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Lausanne gearing up for second

century as the Olympic Capital It has never staged the Olympic Games but Lausanne is the centre of world sport thanks to the IOC having its headquarters in the city. Philip Barker looks back at how, over the course of the last century, the Swiss city became the Olympic Capital

F

or over a century, welcoming the international sporting family has been a familiar role for “The Olympic Capital”. Even the city railway station is adorned with the five Olympic Rings.

It was in 1915 that Baron Pierre de Coubertin finally fulfilled his wish to establish Olympic headquarters in the city on the shores of Lake Geneva - known locally as Lake Leman - for the first time. He had been planning to move there since 1907. “Lausanne was the most apt location

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imaginable for the establishment of the administrative headquarters of Olympism,” Coubertin said.

The International Olympic Committee Session had met at Lausanne’s Casino de Montbenon in 1913. The all-male IOC membership included a Duke and a Marquis, three Barons, eight Counts, a Colonel, a Professor and a Vicar.

In one of their unhappier episodes they stripped American Jim Thorpe of his Olympic 1912 decathlon and pentathlon gold medals because he had received money for playing small time baseball. This infringed the strict amateur regulations of the time.

An Olympic “Congress” held under the “high patronage of Federal Council of the Swiss Confederation” attracted academics, doctors and professors of medicine. Away from the meetings, guests were entertained by a Venetian fete, a choral performance and a wrestling display by torchlight.

“The town was bedecked with flags and a troop of small boy scouts formed a guard of honour on the steps,” said a delighted Coubertin.

When World War One came in 1914, Coubertin was determined to have

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Lausanne as a neutral home for the Olympic Movement. “Olympism will find, in the independent and proud atmosphere which one breathes here, a guarantee of the liberty, indispensable to its progress,” he said.

By this time he had also enlisted in the French army. “I judge it to be incorrect that our Committee should be presided over by a soldier,” he said and asked Godefroy de Blonay of Switzerland to become interim President.

“You will be aware of his competence and his devotion.”

An Olympic Institute based on the gymnasium of antiquity in Ancient Olympia was set up in Lausanne. This had long been another of Coubertin’s dreams. Lausanne architects Eugene Monod and Alphonse Laverierre had submitted a design for the newly introduced artistic contests at the 1912 Stockholm Olympics. It won gold.

It was not until 1919 that the Olympic Family gathered again. It was in Lausanne that they confirmed Antwerp as hosts for the 1920 Olympics. Over the next decade they returned to the Swiss city on a regular basis.

Headquarters were established at Mon Repos, a magnificent villa above the city. Coubertin appointed Frederic Auckenthaler, a young ice hockey player, as administrator. He stayed for three years.

When the IOC met in Lausanne in 1929, basketball, handball, canoeing, rugby, lacrosse and even billiards sought an Olympic place. Even then, the size of the Games was already a burning issue. The Scandinavians had their own solution: “A complete suppression of all women’s events from the Games.” The IOC Executive Committee was asked to examine the programme and, tellingly, they did not rule out the exclusion of women’s sport.

By a curious coincidence, it was at this time that the IOC recruited a woman to the staff.

Lydia Zanchi responded when secretary general Albert Berdez asked, “Have you a few hours to spare for the IOC?” Zanchi campaigned for women’s suffrage in Switzerland and remained with the IOC until 1966. “I lived with the IOC as in a second family,” she said. She also found time to campaign for women to have the vote in Switzerland, if not yet at the IOC. Coubertin was granted the freedom of Lausanne in 1937, shortly before his death.

World War Two prevented the Olympic Games taking place in 1940 and 1944, but the IOC’s 50th anniversary was still celebrated in 1944, albeit in muted fashion. A wreath was laid at Coubertin’s grave and there were gymnastic www.facebook.com/insidethegames

displays and lectures in Lausanne.

After the war, the city received the Olympic Cup and in 1948, a visit from the Olympic flame on its way to London.

Mayor Pierre Graber went to the 1952 Helsinki Games and returned inspired. “I became convinced that Lausanne could legitimately put forward its candidature for the 1960 Games.”

An “Olympic” Stadium was built, but Rome won the vote. Graber later admitted: “The Summer Games have grown to a scale out of all proportion with that of Lausanne.”

The official IOC headquarters had remained the Mon Repos villa in the centre of town since 1922, but the administration was very low-key.

A jeweller called Otto Mayer was now “Chancellor”, but behind the grand title, he ran the IOC from his shop.

When Mayer stood down, he was briefly replaced by Eric Jonas and later an Indonesian Dutchman called Johannes Westerhoff. He departed after suggesting the IOC move from Lausanne.

In 1968, the IOC headquarters moved to the lakeside Château de Vidy. It had belonged to the De Loys family and it was even said that Napoleon had stayed there. Mon Repos still remained an Olympic building and eventually became the home of Olympic Solidarity.

IOC President Avery Brundage appointed a French journalist and former swimmer Monique Berlioux to take charge of public relations. Very soon, she was in charge of the entire office.

In 1972, the Irishman Lord Killanin became President and received the ceremonial keys to Lausanne, but continued to live in Dublin and

Past and present IOC Presidents Jacques Rogge and Thomas Bach with the statue of Baron Pierre de Coubertin.

Photo: Getty Images

left the office in the hands of Berlioux.

The full IOC membership gathered in Lausanne once more in 1975 to find preparations for the following year’s Olympic Games in Montreal at crisis point. The arrival of African sports leader Abraham Ordia to request the suspension of Rhodesia was a pointer for political troubles ahead. Montreal 1976 was hit by an African boycott in protest at New Zealand’s continued sporting contact with South Africa, then under apartheid.

Killanin stood down in 1980. His successor, Spaniard Juan Antonio Samaranch, decided to live full-time in Lausanne. Very soon he clashed with Berlioux, who left in the mid-1980s.

The builders had also moved into Vidy and a new annex opened in October 1986.

That year, host cities for 1992 Summer and Winter Games were also decided across the city at the Palais de Beaulieu.

The financial success of the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics had encouraged the largest field in

The opening of the Olympic Museum in 1993 has helped turn Lausanne into the “Olympic Capital”. Photo: Getty Images

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Š Genuine Effect

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years. The French resort of Albertville and Samaranch’s home city of Barcelona were the last winter and summer host cities elected in the same year.

Lausanne launched a bid for the 1994 Winter Games with a team including future IOC Executive Director for the Olympic Games, Gilbert Felli. “There’s no substitute for know-how,” they claimed. Unfortunately, a public referendum in mid-1988 put an end to the bid. The dream of staging Olympic sport finally came to fruition when Lausanne was last year chosen to host the 2022 Winter Youth Olympic Games.

Even so, the 1990s prove Lausanne’s busiest Olympic decade even without the Games. In 1993, the long planned Olympic Museum finally opened at Quai d’Ouchy. “Our great ship is afloat,” IOC member Raymond Gafner, a former ice hockey official born and bred in Lausanne, said. Figure skating champion Katarina Witt, legendary gymnast Vera Caslavska and film maker Bud Greenspan joined the festivities.

Four years later, the IOC were back for another vote. Even though South African President Nelson Mandela was in Lausanne supporting Cape Town, Athens were chosen to host the 2004 Games. At this Session the IOC recognised the International Rugby Board, their first step to Olympic re-admission.

But within a year the IOC were rocked by revelations of bribery in the bidding campaign for the 2002 Winter Olympics awarded to Salt Lake City in the United States. “We must root out all forms of inappropriate or unethical behaviour amongst our membership,” said Samaranch at a specially convened Session in Lausanne.

Six members were expelled and bidding rules

A flood at the IOC’s offices in November 2012 caused severe damage. Photo: Getty Images

were tightened. Before 1999 was out, the IOC met again in Lausanne to ratify reforms. Those on the Athletes’ Commission became fully fledged IOC members and even the Olympic Oath was modified to read: “Committing ourselves to a sport without doping and without drugs.”

The presence of the IOC has turned Lausanne not only into the Olympic Capital but also the administration centre of world sport. The Maison du Sport International, financed by the IOC, the canton of Vaud and the city of Lausanne, hosts some 30 Internaltional Federations and companies connected to the Olympic Movement. Hosting this year’s SportAccord Convention is another sign of how important Lausanne is to the Olympic Family.

The IOC survived the Salt Lake City 2002 scandal and is now a thriving multi-billion, multi-national company. In the meantime, there had been a flood to follow the earthquake. This was no new scandal, however, simply a burst water pipe.

At the Extraordinary Session in Monte Carlo in 2014, the IOC unveiled plans for a $160 million overhaul of their headquarters.

Complete with solar panels and technology to harness the waters of the lake, it will be “a place that respects tradition and brings modernity and transparency to the Movement”. The modernisation of their Vidy complex began earlier this year. When it is finished, it should be a fitting location for a second century in the “Olympic Capital”.

The IOC have started building their new headquarters called Olympic Unity House. Photo: 3XN

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Lillehammer proved the Olympics is not wasted on the Youth This year’s Winter Youth Olympic Games in Norway may have helped ensure the future of an event that was facing serious question marks.

Liam Morgan was there to experience a Games that proved the critics wrong

I

f the International Olympic Committee was looking for a valid reason to prolong the existence of the Youth Olympic Games as a concept, Lillehammer 2016 certainly provided

it.

The event in the Norwegian resort, which has strong links with the Olympic Movement having hosted what many feel is the best-ever edition of the Winter Games in 1994, was heralded as a unanimous success on all fronts.

The second Winter Youth Olympic Games were bereft of any serious issues and passed by in a flash of enjoyment and optimism, and not just from the athletes.

Doubts and concerns over the future of the Youth Olympic Games quickly turned to delirium and celebration. IOC President Thomas Bach could barely keep the smile from his face during his closing press conference. He claimed they had “got the best conditions they could

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have expected”, while praising organisers for their “excellent” work.

Executive Director for the Olympic Games Christophe Dubi also insisted that Lillehammer 2016 had “exceeded the expectations” of the IOC and had seemingly breathed new life into an event which had attracted plenty of criticism among some of its membership in recent times.

Richard Pound, the Canadian who is now the most senior member of the IOC, was the loudest of the opposition in the build-up.

“It will not stop ‘couch potatoes sitting on the couch,” he said in a clear dig at one of Bach’s preferred sentiments. “People do not put away their iPads, and run-out into nature because of this.”

While Bach countered with a witty repartee - “You can never stop the dissenting voice you have heard a few days before these Games” - he knows Pound was not alone in his feelings towards the Youth Olympic Games.

New Zealand’s Barry Maister and Sweden’s IOC Athletes’ Commission member Stefan Holm were two prominent members to question the low-profile nature of the event.

Other IOC members, particularly those who would count themselves as being among the old guard, had privately voiced their scepticism about the Youth Olympics.

As is often the case, the large majority of dissent centred on the financial side, especially after the Summer Youth Olympic Games in Nanjing in 2014, which was an event as far removed from the original idea pioneered by

former IOC President Jacques Rogge as was possible. The Chinese treated it like a main Olympics and trying to turn it into something that it was clearly never meant to be could have potentially caused fatal long-term damage to the event.

The IOC held discussions about its future last year, with a view towards potentially scrapping the event altogether. Another idea had been shifting it to a more culture-heavy programme, rather than a sporting competition.

Lillehammer 2016 may just have changed all those negative perceptions, however. The low-cost nature of the Games certainly helped, with the use of existing venues an integral part of the blueprint, and the passion and fervour shown by locals was unforeseen even by organisers. They attended both sport and cultural activities in their thousands.

The Organising Committee got everything

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spot on, from transport to volunteers to the low-key Closing Ceremony, which felt more like a music festival than the traditional over-the-top spectacle we see so often at major Games.

It is important that this spirit and enthusiasm is harnessed in the right way if the event is to continue to have a long-term future. That seems the intention of the IOC, who have set-up a Tripartite Commission to explore what lies ahead for the Youth Olympic Games and have moved to quell suggestions the next winter edition in Lausanne in 2020 may be the last.

Still the questions remain. Does it have a future? For Leandro Larosa, chief executive of Buenos Aires 2018, the next Summer Youth Olympics, the answer is an unequivocal yes.

“There is no doubt [that it has a future],” he said. “I think it is such an amazing tool for the International Federations. Lillehammer was a great example of the way we can engage with a lot of people and gave the best example of reasons why they should be kept.”

Larosa may yet still have to convince some of the IOC electorate that he is right. One member told insidethegames after the conclusion of Lillehammer 2016 that three options were on the table: “We could scrap it, continue it or amend it.”

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Main: The Winter Youth Olympic Games took place in the heart of Lillehammer.

Photo: Lillehammer 2016 Top right: Big crowds supported events at Lillehammer 2016.

Photo: Lillehammer 2016 Bottom left: Even the youngest of Olympic fans felt part of things in Norway.

Photo: Lillehammer 2016

Peru’s Ivan Dibos sees it differently, however. “My opinion is that they [the Youth Olympic Games] should continue, as it serves as preparation for potential elite athletes,” he said.

Even that particular notion can be challenged, though, as the value for competitors such as Chloe Kim, the American snowboarder who already has a senior Winter X Games title to her name at the age of 15, may not seem as significant.

Of course, the flipside of this is that athletes must surely benefit from exposure to the multi-sport environment, where they often thrive despite being taken out of their comfort zone and placed into unfamiliar surroundings.

The next edition of the Winter Youth Olympics will take place in a region which will be familiar to many within the Olympic Movement.

Lausanne, the Olympic Capital, is tasked with continuing the momentum of Lillehammer 2016 in four years’ time.

Lausanne 2020 chief executive Ian Logan is all too aware of the responsibility that lays on the shoulders of the Organising Committee.

“We have to show that it is not only worth doing but we have to kill the rumours that Lausanne will be the last one,” he said. “The IOC will be convinced before the Games even arrive that they are worth keeping.

“The three words from Agenda 2020 were credibility, sustainability and youth so how can you say, with this success the Games have had, that you will stop the Youth Games?”

Logan, a former fighter pilot, hopes their Games can soar above that of the Norwegian resort, despite fears they may yet be shot down entirely. He promises a “magic” event in the Swiss town in 2020.

He knows Lillehammer 2016 is unquestionably a tough act to follow for future hosts, but for now at least, it looks as though the Youth Olympic Games are here to stay.

@insidethegames

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39

Long shadow cast over

sport by match-fixing allegations

Tennis is the latest sport facing claims that some of its top players have been involved in match-fixing.

Liam Morgan finds out what they are doing about it

T

he New Year is supposed to herald the start of a better dawn, but for tennis, it brought nothing but reminders of old problems.

With 2016 barely three weeks old, on the eve of the first Grand Slam tournament of the year, the Australian Open, reports surfaced of widespread match-fixing within the game after an investigation by the BBC and Buzzfeed claimed that 16 players ranked in the top 50 in the world across the past decade have been repeatedly flagged as having potentially thrown matches.

It was claimed that this information had not been sufficiently acted upon by those who govern the sport and bodies such as the Tennis Integrity Unit, set up in 2008 to prevent corruption. Poor funding has made it difficult to function effectively.

These accusations were swiftly refuted by Association of Tennis Professionals President and chief executive Chris Kermode. He dismissed claims that evidence of match-fixing

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“had been supressed for any reason or isn’t being thoroughly investigated”.

Global tennis stars such as Novak Djokovic, the current world number one and winner of 11 Grand Slam titles, have spoken out on the issue.

The Serbian remained defiant after an Italian newspaper reported that he had deliberately wanted to lose a match in 2007, calling the accusations “absurd”.

Britain’s Andy Murray added his opinion to the piece when he said he was not surprised about the allegations of corruption within his sport, while also raising a valid point about the hypocrisy of betting companies sponsoring major tournaments.

The issue of match-fixing in tennis is nothing new - it has remained a prominent chink in the game’s armour for many years now - but the fact that this particular instance involved players in the upper echelons of the sport is perhaps the aspect that rankles most.

Further outrage was evident recently when the International Tennis Federation were forced to explain why they kept the suspension of two umpires under wraps. Kazakhstan’s Kirill Parfenov was banned for life in February 2015 and Croatia’s Denis Pitner received a 12-month sanction in August of the same year, but details of the punishments only emerged at the beginning of February 2016.

For entities like the European Sports Security Association, who guard against illegal gambling

and match fixing in sport, this came as little surprise. The company, a non-profit organisation established in 2005, released a report in February which revealed nearly three quarters of suspicious alerts they issued involved tennis.

But while alerting the relevant authorities, be it sporting federations or criminal prosecutors, is all well and good, ESSA secretary general Khalid Ali admitted a key obstacle for the monitoring industry is what is done with the information they provide, seemingly controverting Kermode’s comments when the explosive news hit the headlines in January.

“For us in some ways it has been quite positive in the sense that the issue here is what is happening with information that is being given to the sports federations and authorities - that’s been one of the biggest problems we’ve had,” he said.

“We pass on information and we don’t really know where it is going. Our members are giving us information about suspicious bets but it’s whether or not the sport is actually investigating it. What’s come out is that tennis is understaffed, they don’t really have any betting experts and they have a number of structural issues which they need to start to change.”

Steps have since been taken to combat the problem, including the establishment of an Independent Review Panel - tasked with “thoroughly” investigating the allegations of corruption in international professional tennis

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LIAM MORGAN REPORTER, INSIDETHEGAMES and the effectiveness of existing anti-corruption practices and procedures.

Rooting out such an endemic issue is going to take a lot more than discussions and reviews, however. A constant hurdle for the tennis authorities remains the frequency of suspicious activity at Challenger Tour level, the secondary circuit of men’s tennis governed by the ATP, as players can often be left out of pocket at the end of each year as travel and other expenses can outweigh their earnings from the game itself. They see match-fixing as a way to make a quick buck.

Only roughly the top 120 to 130 professional competitors in the men’s game are likely to make a profit from their duties on the tennis court, leaving 1,000 or so in the doldrums, unsure of when or where their next pay cheque might arrive.

“The tennis authorities know that and most people know that,” said Ali. “There’s not much money at lower level and it is not big criminal gangs - it’s actually players who are trying to defraud our betting operators.

“The last thing you want to be doing is paying out to criminals.”

It is this aspect of criminality within matchfixing that continues to disturb. The fact that there are those organising illegal betting syndicates infiltrating sports such as tennis, and putting pressure on sportspeople to follow their illicit orders, provides a constant danger to what we believe in. Criminal match-fixers are simply not welcome in any sport.

Worryingly, the involvement of criminal organisations is becoming more frequent with regard to tennis and other sports, according to Alex Inglot, who works as the director of communications and public affairs for Sportradar, an organisation similar to ESSA who work closely with 12 sports.

“What this speaks to is the increasing attractiveness of match-fixing as a criminal endeavour,” Inglot, brother of Britain’s Davis Cup winner Dominic, said. “If you look at it from the point of view of criminal organisations, match-fixing is quite an attractive avenue because it’s low cost, low risk, low sanctions but high revenue and high incomes.

“We have a lot of people talking about how this is an existential threat to sport, and it is the moment any legal competition stops being trusted, you’re going to get a real problem.

There needs to be that increased urgency to start really chipping away at these match-fixing enterprises and entities.”

Cricket is another sport which has had persistent difficulties with match-fixing, though it differs in that it often involves black www.facebook.com/insidethegames

markets in dark corners of the sub-continent which are not monitored. Back in 2010, former Pakistan captain Salman Butt and fast bowler Mohammad Asif were given jail time for their part in a spot-fixing scandal, where no-balls were deliberately bowled in a Test match against England. Their team-mate Mohammad Amir was also banned but not imprisoned.

Butt was given the longest sentence as he was jailed for 30 months, though he was let out after eight, and Asif served half of a one-year term. It remains one of the worst incidents of match-fixing to ever hit the sport.

The issue reared its ugly head once again earlier this year as former South African international Gulam Bodi was banned for 20 years for his attempt at fixing matches in the Ram Slam Twenty20 competition, the country’s highest-level domestic tournament in the shortest form of the game.

Many thought the length of his suspension was a step forward, yet it still induced staunch debate as it effectively ended his career and thus his potential to earn a living.

Should those found guilty of match-fixing be banished for eternity, particularly with a first offence case such as Bodi’s, or should they be allowed a second chance? If the South African had been punished for doping, for example, he might have got away with a more lenient sentence.

Scandals such as Bodi’s and those in tennis dominate the media coverage of matchfixing, and it is perhaps easy to forget that sporting-related fixing cases, where matches are manipulated purely for the result and not necessarily for money, are also on the up.

Football in particular has wrestled with the issue, and has had its fair share of notable incidents. At the 1982 World Cup in Italy, a victory for West Germany by one or two goals in their last group match against Austria would see them both qualify after the other game, between Algeria and Chile, had already finished.

Sure enough, the Germans took a 10th minute lead and the scenes that followed were as clear as day. Chances were at a premium and those that were created were deliberately squandered, while the players seemed to revel in passing the ball sideways and backwards.

Action was subsequently taken by FIFA, who then ordered final group matches at future tournaments be played simultaneously in order to avoid a repeat of the blatant and embarrassing situation.

The Italian case of 10 years ago still sends shivers down the spines of football fans, where some of the top clubs were found to have been interfering with the appointments of match @insidethegames

Cricket fans in Pakistan react angrily after their team was accused of match-fixing. Photo: Getty Images

officials to ensure their team were given referees they deemed to be favourable.

Juventus, Fiorentina and Lazio were all initially relegated from Serie ‘A’ to ‘B’ for their role but the latter two clubs successfully appealed, though they began the following season with heavy points deductions.

Today, allegations are still levelled at Olympiacos President Savvas Theodoridis, who is accused of running a fixing syndicate in order to ensure his team wins. They have been Greek Super League champions for 17 of the past 19 seasons and his son, Theodore Theodoridis, has just been appointed as new FIFA President Gianni Infantino’s replacement as general secretary at UEFA. Make of that what you will.

Perhaps it is high time we looked forward, rather than back, at what can be done to truly extirpate an issue which continues to be a thorn in the side of many sports we know and love.

The Magglingen Convention is one such method. Agreed back in 2014, the initiative, coined by the Council of Europe, aims to establish national bodies to deal with matchfixing in any country, be it in Europe or elsewhere, who wish to throw their weight behind combating the problem. All they have to do is sign up.

The national bodies in question would feature sports organisations, National Olympic Committees, players’ unions and other stakeholders, creating a united authority tasked with tackling the issue to its core.

“We are starting to join the dots between those people who are participating in the fix and those who are organising and financing the fixes and really that is the next step,” Inglot said.

“Betting related match-fixing and organised crime match-fixing is quite a new phenomenon - while it’s growing rapidly, the way we react to it needs to mature with time. There’s a journey still ahead of us in getting clarity in how we are going to deal with it.”

The path to complete eradication is some way off, but here’s hoping we can talk about match-fixing scandals as purely a thing of the past sooner rather than later.

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MIKE ROWBOTTOM CHIEF FEATURE WRITER, INSIDETHEGAMES

Silver linings and all that…

Mike Rowbottom registers an unrivalled Year of Sporting Discord - and suggests not three, but four harmonious solutions

O

K, so FIFA is still trying to drag itself free from the mire of corruption and bribery recently revealed to have polluted so much of its operation over the last 20 years.

OK, so the former President of the International Association of Athletics Federations stands accused of “active corruption” in connection with a cover-up of Russian doping. And Russia now risks being ineligible for the Rio 2016 Olympic Games.

And athletics now faces a crisis of trust similar to that encountered by cycling following its own recent doping scandals.

All right, so tennis, a sport which has always aspired to an image as white as regulation Wimbledon wear, is now bedaubed with lurid revelations of match-fixing and, following Maria Sharapova’s LA Confidential press conference, doping.

As for cricket, well yes, cricket is currently enduring the latest in a series of match-fixing alarms, this time in South Africa, where one leading player has recently been banned for 20 years having been caught in what the National Cricket Federation described as “the planning phase”. (Uncomfortable echoes here).

And of course there has been an almighty discord in the last year between the International Olympic Committee and SportAccord, whose then President, Marius Vizer, used the SportAccord Convention last April to denounce the IOC system as “expired, outdated, wrong, unfair and not at all transparent.” (Say what you mean, Marius.

Don’t beat around the bush…)

But hey, as David Essex once sang, with that cheeky old Top of the Pops twinkle in his eye - “every cloud’s got a silver-lining”.

For instance, the first big cycling scandal of 2016 was over a motor concealed in the frame of a bike found in the pit-zone of a 19-year-old Belgian rider at the UCI Cyclo-Cross World Championships in Belgium. Mechanical

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Like pop star David Essex, sport must hope every cloud’s got a silver lining.

doping! Takes the attention away from performance-enhancing drugs for once, doesn’t it! (Perhaps someone had confused the event with the Motocross World Champs?

Mistakes can happen.)

The doping case involving Sharapova has given all those people in the sport who don’t like her, or maybe just envy the fact that she was the top-earning female athlete of the year in 2015 with an income of $29.7 million, an ideal opportunity to stick the boot in. It’s all about personalities, yeah? Anything that gets people talking about the sport can’t be all bad!

And here’s another bonus. Not a word on any further cheating in international bridge following the 2014 revelation that two German world champions, both medical doctors, were found guilty of cheating by exchanging coded signals through coughing!

Nor, indeed, have we heard of anything out of order in the world of the conker competition following the recent - crackdown, I suppose one must say - following a range of distressing attempts to gain unfair advantage by either baking or substituting conkers, or introducing elasticity to the supporting string.

You know, the subconscious is a wonderful thing. Recently I awoke from a disturbing dream in which I knew I was doping and I knew I was going to be found out but in the meantime I couldn’t remember where my laptop was and the press conference had already started at another hotel across town.

This is not strictly relevant to my argument here. But it is nevertheless a timely reminder that we must never forget the power of our sleeping minds and that it is always wise to check the location of any press conference, and to ensure you have packed all necessary working equipment.

Getting back to the main thread, however, I have taken a little time out to compose my thoughts on the massively challenging

question of corruption and doping within world sport, and I have come up with one or two suggestions which I like to think will solve the whole issue. (They won’t, but I like to think they will).

Suggestion one: Take a leaf out of the book of those who have suggested re-writing world records in athletics to get rid of those marks thought to have been unfairly achieved. Let’s sweep the whole sporting structure away and start again - with new sporting events. The 70 metres hop. Synchronised golf. Scythefighting! Let’s really mix it up!! (This way, of course, we can interest The Youth, and thus ensure we retain our Presidency of the International Federation. Sorry, I mean thus ensure we make sport relevant to the young generation.)

Suggestion two: Institute the Scopolamine Games. All competitors would have to submit to ingestion of the truth drug and pass a series of searching questions regarding ingestion of other drugs they shouldn’t have ingested. This in itself would prove a compelling process for spectators. (Russia could stage the SP-117 Games, referencing its own truth serum of choice within secret service circles.)

Suggestion three is a variation on the same theme, but one which might also create unique pre-performance drama for spectators - namely, to put potential competitors through the same doping questions while they are wired up to lie detectors courtside, trackside or pitch side. This variation would also work nicely with sports administrators being questioned over corruption.

Suggestion four: Just tell sporting performers that if they cheat, they render their own performances null and void, and insult the viewing public. And tell administrators that if they extort bribes and condone cheating, they debase themselves and betray the athletes they purport to serve. On second thoughts, scrub suggestion four - it would never work.

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