Wada report: Dream of clean atheltics is a Utopian fantasy - we're bound for imperfect future

Don't write me off: Paula Radcliffe after setting her world best in London in 2003
Dave Shopland
Dan Jones13 January 2016

I think all of us have wished at some point that we could scrub history clean and start again with a blank slate.

Wouldn’t it be nice to airbrush all the girls or boys we shouldn’t have kissed; the drinks we shouldn’t have drunk; the bouncers we shouldn’t have goaded in that Cambridge nightclub in 2001 so that they picked us up and hurled us into the street, meaning we scuffed the knees of our green leather drainpipe jeans, which were then, like, ruined? Just hypothetically, I mean.

With a nod to the movies, we can call this concept ‘the eternal sunshine of the spotless mind’. This week UK Athletics applied the logic of the spotless mind to the sport, in their A Manifesto For A Clean Athletics. As you may know, 2016 is an Olympic year, and athletics is in the toilet. Drugs. Bribes. Blackmail. Lies. Cover-ups. It is the only sport that makes football look good, and is ripe for reform.

That is where UKA have stepped in, with a 14-point programme to save athletics. Much of this manifesto is perfectly reasonable, its ideals summed up by chairman Ed Warner’s calls for “greater transparency, tougher sanctions, longer bans”.

Nestled among it all, however, is a more radical suggestion. UKA argue that, as well as taking measures to improve policing and general ethics, athletics should,“investigate the implications of drawing a line under all pre-existing sport records… [and commence] a new set of records based on performances in the new Clean Athletics era”.

In other words, athletics would declare a Year Zero, dismissing every record set by every athlete in history as having been tainted by association with an era of widespread rule-bending, deception and chemical enhancement.

Just as Christians count their years from the birth of Jesus of Nazareth in 1AD, and music fanatics from Dylan going electric in July 1965, so athletics fans would speak of CE and BCE: the Clean Era, and Before the Clean Era.

Bold thinking or madness? To their credit, UKA say their manifesto is a call to debate, not a watertight programme for immediate action. They are trying to provoke, not to solve.

But, of course, we only have to think for a couple of seconds about the implications of sweeping the Tippex brush across the pages of sporting achievement to see that it is no solution at all.

Indeed, the idea of declaring history corrupt beyond salvation and starting again in a Clean Athletics era is no more helpful than the oldest canard in the whole drugs-in-sport debate: just let them all dope, and see what happens.

There are two clear objections to launching a new book of ‘clean’ sporting records. The first is that it is wildly unfair on those athletes from past ages who did not cheat. As Paula Radcliffe — holder of the women’s marathon world record and in the view of the UK Anti-Doping Agency, not a cheat — has argued, it would be pretty rum to throw out records like hers simply because they were set in an age when others doped.

Neither would it seem fair to ditch Colin Jackson’s 60m hurdles record, or Jonathan Edwards’ sensational 18.29m triple-jump record, still standing from 1995. Would we wipe out Usain Bolt’s famous 9.58sec and 19.19sec? And if we did, how would we feel if, say, Justin Gatlin set the first ‘clean’ record? Not great, I’d imagine. Which brings us to the next objection to resetting world records. It assumes that the will actually exists among all athletes and coaches to embark on this brave new era of fair play and clean competition.

I don’t want to seem unduly cynical, but if there is one lesson that recent sporting history suggests, it is that the dream of a Clean Athletics era is at best a generation or two away from realisation, and more likely a Utopian fantasy. In sport, as in all things, we travel from an imperfect past to an imperfect future. There, that’s a cheery thought, isn’t it?

Don’t be a dope, Bellew

David Haye, who fights Mark de Mori on Saturday, used to talk about going to Hollywood, so has he been beaten to the punch? It’s cruiserweight Tony Bellew who plays Pretty Ricky Conlan, Toxteth gangster turned world champion, in the new Rocky film, Creed. So is he the new Vinnie Jones, swapping British sport for LA fame? “I’ll never become Hollywood,” he says. “I’ll always be Tony Bellew, the dope from Liverpool.” You say that now, mate.

Bale? I’d go for Kane

Harry Hubbard/Getty Images

Anyone who fancies bringing Gareth Bale back from Madrid has to contemplate paying the best part of £100m to do so. Good value? I’d have thought that the man who has effectively filled Bale’s totemic role at Spurs, Harry Kane, is a far better bet. Bale has scored 50 times for Real in 108 matches. During that time, Kane has also scored 50 — in 104 games. Expensive. But not galactico expensive.

It's curtains for Pogba

Ruben Sprich/Reuters

The Ballon d’Or ceremony always delivers at least two things: Lionel Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo wins, and someone turns up wearing the stupidest tux you’ve seen. Well, Messi cruised to a fifth triumph this year but there was a marked improvement in the tux-spotting stakes. Neymar went dressed for a 1920s gangster-themed murder-mystery party, while Paul Pogba wore a pair of expensive curtains.

We can hear Lions' roar

Plenty to savour, too, in the Six Nations — not least getting a first look at Eddie Jones’ remodelled England. But looking ahead, was it not just a little bit thrilling to hear that the Lions machine is rumbling into action for next year’s tour to New Zealand? Warren Gatland is confirmed as the frontrunner to lead the party — an appointment is due in late summer. World Cups, Six Nations — I love them. But I love the Lions best of all.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in