Sportsocracy - 2nd Edition - Sport, drugs and corruption

Sport especially in this decade has been associated and worded alongside by drugs and corruption on many back and front pages in the tabloid and broadsheet newspapers.

In the last ten years the media has highlighted these issues and they have made it known that this sort of newstory gets more airtime and gets more pages than any other sports story, even the most outrageous transfer e.g. If Ronaldinho went to AC Milan for £50 million, if a drugs or corruption exclusive story came along, it would overpower the newsworthy-ness of the superstar being transferred to Milan, a story which would usually flood the back pages. Its obvious that the bad things are highlighted a lot more than the good in UK media, with an England world cup football win aside, (if it ever happens again, imagine the mountainous supplements and amounts of other sports news being ignored if that happened, oblivious to the rest of us who actually want an even spread of sports news, but the masses would get what they want.).

A catastrophic event in any newsworthy way = kerchiiiiiing, £££££'s, JACKPOT, because it makes front page news sells more papers and gets more viewers if you have a camera at the scene. Newspapers and the media, being the humanitarians they are, let a substantial fee go to the needy usually via campaigns led in the papers themselves e.g. New Orleans, refugees from war torn countries etc.

Anyways more to the point it could be said corruption and drugs are rife throughout most sports, as we no athletics, track and field, is full of testosterone filled adonis-esque shaped persons, a lot of which have the muscle mass of bulls and racehorses (Dwain Chambers and Justin Gatlin spring to mind), because of this now the strange looking athletes especially in track and field are the ones who have considerable talent but not built like metaphorical tanks e.g. Kim Collins 100 metre sprinter, Dean Lacey decathlon, Michael Johnson (world and Olympic champion at 200 and 400 metres before he retired). These types of athlete appeal more to me than others, they seem down to earth, honest and have considerable talent and great with the fans, and corruption and drugs seem a world apart from these hard working types.

Drugs obviously have a massive affect on an athlete’s body, giving them quicker recovery times meaning more training can be done, a higher level of practise can be reached meaning personal goals come as well as many, many more positives. The tricks of drug use can be seen with Ben Johnson, a Canadian 100 metres sprinter, who thought he could beat the system and was caught in the wide eye of the world media in 1988 at the Seoul Olympics, even though I was very young at the time I still vaguely remember the story on the news.

Allegedly steroids ended up in his training routine somehow in the track and field off season, which coincidentally was were the steroid use was taking place.

E.g. So he would train-train-train in the off season along with the drug use and he would stop taking the drugs a good few weeks before the athletics season started and with a few diuretics, so his system would get flushed of the illegal drugs. The drugs had already improved the athlete and the drugs were well out of the system for any random drugs tests, but the dates got mixed up and he was caught out when a test found Diuretics in his blood stream, which flushes steroids from the system. It was Borat style high fives all around a cheat was caught, Johnson got stripped of his achievements and medals, and the track and field superstar of the time Carl Lewis rejoiced that a "cheat" had been caught out, ironically Lewis was also involved in drugs accusations later on in his career, but that’s another story. Obviously some athletes had a love for drugs whilst running in the 80's, the 80's.

Follow this link for a video of Johnson’s medal stripping and ban. http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/september/27/newsid_2539000/2539525.stm
An independent view from the fans and sports voyeurs of Johnson’s shame. ttp://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/witness/september/24/newsid_3114000/3114220.stm

The most recent athletics shocker, Justin Gatlin once the world 100 metre and 200 metre champion, was given a 4 year ban for drugs use - to read more, click on http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/athletics/7169473.stm)

For a glossary of the types of drugs athletes use, it also gives you why athletes use them and effects, follow this link http://www.cbc.ca/sports/indepth/drugs/glossary/dictionary.html for more information

This type of drug use is rife in a lot of sports as you can see if you follow the above glossary of drugs link. Some examples are baseballers, martial arts experts, cyclists, cricketers, bobsledders, footballers, skiers, jockeys and horse riding equestrian, and the outcome is drug use is known to be used in any sport possible, if it gives a positive affect to performance and they will use it to become better than they are and obviously all towards the goal to competitively improve, it pushes the phrase "Sometimes people will do anything to win" to the maximum. At the end of the day its the athletes themselves who create the stories for the media so the athletes are to blame for creating the issue and the media are just doing what they do best, exploiting it for newsworthy-ness and making it known to the masses.As well as all the hype and pinpointing drugs in sport, all this drugs jibber jabber has made me a crazy fool and nearly made me forget the latter, corruption.

Here are some examples of corruption in sport : -

A couple of suffice examples of corruption

Tennis corruption

(from BBC sport http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/tennis/7169287.stm)

Venus Williams is this week competing in the JB Group Classic. Reigning Wimbledon champion Venus Williams says she does not believe tennis is rife with corruption. The sport has recently been tainted by rumours of match-fixing, while the ATP, the governing body of men's tennis, has been investigating irregular betting. When asked whether she had seen any evidence of match-fixing, Williams replied: "I don't think it is a big thing for tennis, to be honest. We're OK, I don't see it as a problem. I don't think about it per se." The 27-year-old is playing in the star-studded JB Group Classic in Hong Kong, in what is her first competitive tournament since October. Williams, who graduated from design college during her break from the game, crushed China's Peng Shuai, the world number 45, 6-1 6-2 on Thursday to reach the semi-finals of the invitational event. "I haven't been out there in a long time and had to fight for every point, but I felt all the things I have practised really paid off," said Williams, who now faces Elena Dementieva after the Russian beat top seed Ana Ivanovic.

Ivanovic, the world number four from Serbia, said she had not encountered any foul play in women's tennis, while two-time Grand Slam winner Maria Sharapova believes the game is in good health. "I think it's in the best interests of players and the tour to keep the sport as clean as possible," said Sharapova, who plays Anna Chakvetadze in the other semi-final. "It's unfortunate that you do hear those things. Whether they're true you're not sure because sometimes it's just a bunch of rumours so unless you get a fact sheet or facts they will remain rumours." The players are in Asia preparing for the Australian Open where officials have set up a police taskforce to ensure that the first Grand Slam of the year remains corruption-free.
On Monday, tennis icon Martina Navratilova backed efforts to rid tennis of corruption but conceded that match-fixing was hard to prove. Three Italian players - Potito Starace, Daniele Bracciali and Alessio di Mauro - were hit with suspensions last year for betting on matches.

Football Corruption

As you will see football and corruption are linked strongly. There are many, many stories involved with corruption too many to list here so click the link and delve into the dark side of football and choose the link of your choice : -From Google search http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=football+corruption&metaCorruption in sport can be betting scams, match fixing, point-goals shaving, illegal betting by professional sportspersons in events in which they are taking part, its all about rigging the event to make an opportunity for another.

Some well known corrupt acts are Bruce Grobbelaar, an ex Liverpool goalkeeper who was accused of letting goals in in matches, John Fashanu was also remarked to have taken part as well as ex Tottenham Hotspur goalie Hans Segars, another is the major Italian football scandal in 2006 when Serie A teams were deducted points and the mighty, footballing, Turin, giants Juventus faced relegation, but the farce the season after in Serie B was even more embarrassing for the Italian FA when Juventus walked through the season and back into the Italian top flight, so the punishment was more like a holiday from Serie A in which most of Juve's superstar players stayed for.

Usually corruption is brought about by a third party or consortium of people away from football, possibly gangsters but not always, who offer gifts and money to pro-sportsmen and women to do something like throw a match, set, game etc and all parties get a positive extrinsic benefit if not caught. Bungs to agents is another corrupt case, offering money to agents to get the players they want is the main benefit in this type of corruption, basically is showing how bent and fraudulent agents in football can be, I’m not saying they are all like that they are all trying to make a bit of money at the end of the day, but it brings a bad name to football and the governing bodies hate it so it will be tackled accordingly.

Corruption and drugs in sport will continue as well as the extrinsic benefactors are there for the taking for the prosperous criminal minded few, and the drugs for the cheating kind to get that edge they need.

All comments are gladly welcomed.