Who Are the Dopes - The Brits or the Rest of the World?

                              

With just seven months to go before the biggest sporting event in the world comes to London, British athletes are divided over whether their strong stance against drugs in sport should be matched by the rest of the world’s weaker ruling, or vice versa.

As the rules stand now, British drug cheats will be prevented from competing in their home Olympic Games even though they have served a two-year world wide ban.  They will watch other offenders from elsewhere, such as American Lashawn Merritt, who will defend his 400 metres Olympic gold medal despite being caught using performance enhancing drugs after the Beijing Games in 2008, lining up at London 2012 in search of medals, fame and mass financial reward. 

Although all athletes in Olympic sports are banned for two years for most doping offences once the suspension is completed they are allowed to return to action. It is only the British Olympic Association (BOA) that prevents British athletes who have been banned for drugs from competing at any Olympic Games.

This year, more than ever, the British stance has come into focus, not only with those British former cheats hit by the BOA who realise a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to perform at a home Olympics has been taken away by their National Olympic Committee (NOC), but also with the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) which has declared that the BOA’s lifetime ban violates their anti-doping code and is “non-compliant.”  In other words, the British are being condemned by the global body against drugs cheats in sport for being too hard line against the dopers.

The issue has come to a head because of the Court of Arbitration for Sport’s (CAS) ruling in October that the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) own doping regulation, which barred offenders who had received bans of longer than six months from competing in the next Olympic Games, was unenforceable. This allowed Merritt, and others, to start planning for London. The BOA, in dispute with WADA, will now test its legal right to maintain the ban by taking its case also to CAS in Lausanne.

Amid all the growing rancour, British athletes are left arguing over which is the best outcome. Some, like former Olympic silver medallist and three time European javelin champion Steve Backley, believe the BOA are wholly justified in their approach and that the world should follow suit.

“Drug cheats are like a parasite feasting on the soul of the sport, killing it from its core,” says Backley.  “The BOA is a leading light in the fight against drug abuse and if its rule is changed by force it will devalue what the Olympics stand for, what people respect and the appeal of watching clean, competitive sport.

                               

“Clean athletes need protecting. They need a louder voice than the cheats. I have a message to our world bodies. Please challenge other countries to adopt the same stance as us here in Britain, which is a zero tolerance approach. Bank robbers don’t become bank managers, and no policemen have criminal records. Sport needs the same level of regulation and its athletes who prepare within the rules to celebrate their talent and stand proud in the greatest sporting arena of all.”

Dai Greene, the current world 400 metres hurdles champion and favourite for gold in 2012, could run against Merritt inside London’s Olympic Stadium if they are both, as is likely, selected for their 400 metre relay teams. He is not afraid to condemn such a prospect.

“I think it’s terrible that Lashawn Merritt will be at the Olympics,” he insists, taking time off from crucial winter training. “I don’t condone it at all. I just don’t think there’s any place for drugs cheats in sport.

“I work so hard to get to the top and these people cheat their way to the top. They are taking away a gold medal moment from someone else.  They are taking a final position away from someone who finished ninth, and potential sponsorship money. They’ve effectively stolen money from other athletes. For that reason I’m fully behind the BOA on this. I think sanctions aren’t tough enough in general on drugs cheats.”

Other successful Olympians agree, too. “Whatever happened to drug-free sport?” asks double Olympic swimming champion Rebecca Adlington via Twitter. “I can’t actually believe this has become an issue.”

Yet Backley, Greene and Adlington find themselves in direct conflict with high-profile teammates from the past and present who are opposed to drug cheats but believe Britain’s stance is unfair to its own athletes.

Christian Malcolm is the current Team GB athletics captain who won a silver medal in the 200 metres at the 2010 European Championships. He falls into this compromising category.

“It’s not that I don’t agree that sanctions should be put in place but the way the rest of the world are going I believe it would be best if we all fell in line with WADA,” admits the Welshman.

“Don’t get me wrong. If athletes have taken drugs then of course they should be punished but, at the same time, everyone deserves a second chance in life, a chance for redemption.”

He is joined by some high-profile colleagues. Jessica Ennis, the European and Commonwealth heptathlon champion, believes it is wrong to uphold a rule not applied elsewhere. “It should be a standard rule and it should be the same for everyone,” she argues.

Paula Radcliffe, the women’s marathon world record holder, has been a long-time activist against drugs in sport, but even she believes the BOA stance is unfair towards athletes such as Dwain Chambers, the British sprinter and a recent world indoor 60 metres champion who served a two-year ban for his part in the BALCO laboratory scandal in San Francisco that also led to the criminal conviction of American Olympic champion sprinter Marion Jones. He is back competing in Britain but, under BOA rules, cannot run at the 2012 Games.

                            

“It’s not right to have people in Britain banned from the Olympics whereas if they were from other countries they’d be able to compete,” she states. “I’d rather see everybody take the BOA’s rule but, if not, then I believe you need to be sympathetic towards Dwain and the situation he faces. Drug testing needs to be fair.”

A third argument has now emerged from the debate, one represented by, among others, Mark Cavendish, the current world road race cycling champion who is favourite to strike gold on the streets of London next July.

He believes that a two-year-ban is sufficient, especially if like his cycling compatriot David Millar, who served a doping ban and will miss the 2012 Games under current BOA regulations, the athlete has shown genuine contrition.

“I would love to see David on the start line in London,” says Cavendish, who also took the green jersey in this year’s Tour de France. “He’s a massive anti-doping campaigner and in my eyes has redeemed himself. I’ve talked to David a lot about the past and he’s always been extremely honest and open. He deserves another chance.”

Not surprisingly, Millar is in agreement. “There is a place for lifetime bans in sport, but I’d like to think what I’ve been through is a shining example of being worth a second chance,” opines the Scottish cyclist.

“I push hard to educate people on the complexities of doping within sport but it seems to me only fair that every country should act under the same umbrella.”

Both he and Chambers will be eligible to compete for Britain at the London Games if the BOA is forced to drop their lifetime Olympic bans, but this will only happen after a fight from the BOA’s Chairman, Lord Colin Moynihan.

“We now have a situation where drug cheats are allowed to compete at the London Games because of the IOC ruling collapse,” says the former Minister for Sport during Margaret Thatcher’s government. “For the time being at least British drug cheats will not be competing there. Now sport must make a decision. Is the answer really a watered-down, toothless gesture towards zero tolerance, or do we actually want zero tolerance?”

The man who also won an Olympic silver medal as a rowing cox may be standing firm, as indeed are many of today’s and yesterday’s British Olympic stars, but the unity has gone from the British cause and the first streams of doubt appear to pouring through the breaking dam.  

                             

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Hollywood's Gay Abandon

Has Hollywood finally embraced homosexuality? The answer, belatedly, appears to be “yes” if the new biopic of J Edgar Hoover is anything to go by. Clint Eastwood’s biopic of the controversial and all-powerful founder of the FBI sees Leonardo DiCaprio in the title role hinting at a gay relationship, providing yet more comparatively recent evidence that Hollywood is bending over backwards to accommodate a relaxed liberal approach to homosexuality. This, palpably, was not always the case.

                          

Hoover has always been a figure of immense interest, debate and disagreement. He may have founded the FBI, contributed to its success and to its controversy via corruption and illegal harassment, but the biggest question has always seemed to be - was he or wasn’t he? This is of course referring to Hoover’s sexuality and cross dressing which seems to be the most prevalent concern of the American Press. Luckily J.Edgar has been written by the talented Dustin Lance Black who wrote the script for Milk so it may be expected that the subject-matter will be approached with sensitivity and respect.

What makes this so interesting is that the film is a take on a man who impacted enormously on modern American history who was possibly homosexual. It is not necessarily a major part of the story yet Di Caprio and Eastwood have been providing interviews about their feelings on gay marriage and Hoover’s sexuality.

Is it because Hollywood is now more politically correct and eager to showcase just how far it has come?  Many Americans, although more accommodating now, appear to have  a fascination with homosexuality. In Hollywood through the ages, homosexuality is either portrayed hideously, a vehicle for malice or a sentimental journey of martyrdom.  British films on the other hand treat homosexuality with blasé candour and do not see it as quite as controversial.

In a Hollywood film the depiction of homosexuality is often one-dimensional, pandering to the stereotypes fictionalised by the fearful public. This leads to fascinating correlations between almost a hundred years of gay portrayal on film. Even as far back as the 1920s, characters such as ‘the sissy’ were given a platform to indoctrinate and dictate to the masses.  Gay characters were villainized, (Rope 1948), murdered, (Suddenly Last Summer 1959) insane, (Rebecca 1940) or had to engage in self flagellation to redeem their ‘troubled souls’ (The Children’s Hour 1962).

Even when Hollywood creates films with positive portrayals of homosexuality there are still fundamental flaws that betray an underlying discomfort. For example Philadelphia was seen to be a groundbreaking film in constructing a sympathetic approach to homosexual relationships and compassion for the AIDs epidemic of the 1980s. Whilst the heart of this film is not brought into question, it is true to say that  the safety casting of all American good guy Tom Hanks was used to ease the American public into an unthreatening homosexual world. And whilst Andrew Beckett succeeds in obtaining the justice he so rightfully deserves from his bigoted boss, he still follows the pattern of many homosexuals depicted on screen by dying. In this case he is almost martyred as a pin up for ‘normality.’  There is little subtlety.

                             

Once again in Brokeback Mountain, hailed as being pioneering, the heroic lovers did not enjoy a happy ending. Beautifully shot, scripted and acted as it was, the story still followed the pattern of Hollywood films by allowing Jake Gyllenhaal’s character Jack Twist to be brutally murdered.

Comparing American films with British films regarding homosexuality leaves no doubt of their contrasting approaches. On the one hand the American ‘sissy’ was never explicitly exposed as gay, but the nasty characterization left no doubt in the audience’s mind of what in their eyes he was, a snivelling, wimpy effeminate.

In the groundbreaking British film Victim, noted for being the first English language movie to say the word “homosexual,” Dirk Bogarde is a gay barrister who falls for a younger man. In this film Bogarde, who was a homosexual in real life, was showing a sexual passion which was honest and powerful yet subtly nonchalant. This non-sensationalized film was banned in America. The British film industry has tried harder with undoing stereotypes such as John Hannah’s character in Four Weddings and a Funeral,  who delivers a moving eulogy to his deceased gay partner played by Simon Callow. They had a normal, loving relationship that transcends the stereotype. Ian McKellen lauded Callow’s and Hannah’s performances claiming that “they had done a hundred times more for homosexuals than Philadelphia”.

Why is this difference so obvious? Perhaps the British are not naive to homosexuality or pretend it is not there so do not find it a shock when they see it represented on film. This may in part be due to our long-standing thespian culture and camp love for drag and pantomime. Looking at a microcosm of American culture would show that this free expression has not been assimilated quite so easily in Hollywood. In fairness to Hollywood there have been some brave exceptions with mavericks fighting the censorship.  Gore Vidal envisaged Ben Hur as a gay love affair and, to an extent it was, although he just did not tell the audience. Charlton Heston was not made aware of Vidal’s intent, but Stephen Boyd who played Messala, Ben Hur’s ‘lover,’ was well aware of Vidal’s intention and milked the close ups in the film, showing passionate desire for Ben Hur in non so subtle looks to the camera.   Vidal, himself homosexual, was ironically mocking an audience who thought that they were witnessing a macho epic, but any discerning eye could work out the homosexual connotations implied. It was so wonderfully deceiving and also constructive in showing that men could be the butch idol and gay. 

                             

A recent work that deserves praise is Milk, the caring and affectionate film by Gus Van Sans about the first gay politician Harvey Milk. Although not a ballsy defiance of censorship, due to the modern times we live in, it was finally a realistic, moving portrayal of an incredibly influential man. It showed his relationships to be loving, normal and uses humour as a device most effectively to make the audience feel a part of Milk’s life and his posse of activists.

So in light of this success perhaps Hollywood has turned the corner on its murky past and even all those years ago when Hollywood was calling the shots in demonising homosexuality there was hope in British films. Only time will tell if Hollywood breaks the formula for homosexual depiction on film. We can only hope. Perhaps Di Caprio’s recreation of J Edgar Hoover will speed up a process of realistic interpretation that American cinema, at last, appears to have begun.  

This Sporting Life (or lack of).

My hatred of physical exercise stems from childhood. I mean it sucks. It is pressurising. It is responsible for your social standing at school. I blame the time honoured tradition of sports days. School sports days are satanic. There is no other way of putting it. They are put in place solely to commit evil, to pick out the weaklings and stamp all over what remains of their dwindling self esteem. It is the teacher’s revenge. There are always two camps of children that take part in sports days. A) The popular, healthy sprightly child who always gets top billing in the school plays, and B) the spotty, slightly podgy kid who always plays livestock in the school plays. Usually sheep, perhaps a reindeer in the nativity if lucky. Guess which one I was?

                             

Now you might think, given my searing good looks and devilish figure that I was child A) but I must disappoint. I hated sport and it all stems from bloody sports day.

                         

 I mean, isn’t it cruel enough to force the unsporty kids to take part in the 100 metre sprint, even more so the long distance. Everyone laughs and cheers as the chubby little blonde kid with a blotched red face (not dissimilar to a boozy Glaswegian on a winter pub crawl) is overlapped by child A. The parents laugh and cheer, the child’s testosterone fuelled father has his head in his hands. It’s all over. He will never see his son on the rugby team. Does the alternative mean drama? Or joining the choir? Dear god, it doesn’t bear thinking about. He might as well come out now!

Alas, the worst is still to come. To the truly terribly unsporty children, they must pay for their lack of co ordination, their lack of endurance and their disgusting lack of competitiveness. Welcome the obstacle relay race... Tubular bells. I’d rather be put on the rack, dunked and disembowelled than participate in an obstacle relay race ever again. To engage children in self flagellation via obstacle courses is pure barbarity of medieval levels! I was eight years old. My race ended in disaster. After successfully putting on five layers of clothing, not dropping the egg in the egg and spoon race and progressing to the rubber ring over the waist sprint, I realised I was miles ahead of the other ‘reject’ kids. Fantastic. This was my big chance. Alas I was thwarted. Some stupid (cunning?) mother had provided a baby’s rubber ring in my lane, a ring so small that I couldn’t get it past my bloody thighs. Cue very embarrassing prolonged twoddle to the finish line, last by a mile, where a baying mob exploded with laughter as two teachers mustered all their strength to attempt to release me from the ring. They eventually had to deflate it to get me out.

Since that horrific experience, forever ingrained in my mind, I have had a very lack lustre approach to sport my whole life. I hated swimming because I belly flopped when I dived. Hockey was good for rage but incredibly tedious. Netball was the girls ‘elite’ sport and I had butter fingers. I was, for a short period, good at rounders due to being left handed, but as soon as the fielders cottoned on, they always caught me out. The more sports we did, the more I hid in the toilet. I never went to the gym in my late teenage years and had a serious aversion to anything strenuous. This attitude progressed to university where the most amount of exercise I ever got was running to One Stop during the X Factor breaks to procure space raiders.

In light of my unhealthy past, I decided to join the gym down my road.  However this provided other issues. A rant is brewing up. Firstly I had to have a stupid induction where I was patronised by some foetus boy, barely out of nappies who was explaining to me what a rowing machine was with the pomposity of a disc jockey who had just ‘discovered’ a new band. He then proceeded to write me out a card of his recommendations. Apparently I am only fit for 15minutes of exercise per day. After expelling all my mental energy on imagining foetus boy in painful scenarios (mainly involving a baby’s rubber ring on sports day) I caved in but gave him what I hoped was my most effective Stafford dirty look. Since then I have been going to the gym semi regularly and as a result have now acquired some gym pet peeves. They are, as follows:

1)      Those private school, stay at home mums who have spent so long in the gym that their arms are nothing more than a sinewy mat of crossed veins and tissue-like stringiness. That combined with the walnut fake tan that they seem to love so much, makes for uncomfortable viewing. Think Madonna meets Bride of Chucky.

2)      Those private school, stay at home mums who bring their twelve year old daughters to the gym and plonk them on the treadmill whilst discussing the merits of last week’s colonic irrigation. Children are impressionable and insecure and should be nowhere near a gym. These Stepford Wife drones must be thwarted before they corrupt the next generation. It is wrong. End of.

               

3)      People who spend longer than 30 minutes on the easy exercise bike because they want to finish watching Countdown. For god’s sake, stop hoarding the easy bike! I’m going to miss Horrible Histories!

4)      The young girls who wear a full face of make up to the gym. What is the point! Unless you are coming from work there is no excuse. I found a fake eyelash on a treadmill once, and immediately my imagination went into overdrive. They have finally found a reptilian way to shed skin. Do you really think that the melted baddies from Raider of the Lost Ark look is seriously a better alternative to au natural? Get a grip.

5)      Like a toddler who has just made his first turd in the toilet and is looking for praise, those pumped up men waiting for women to coo and aaah at their steely torsos. If only their brains were as big as their pecs.

                  

Of course this bitterness stems from the fact that I and the dog are both on diets. And despite him thieving a tub of flora off the worktop and finishing off my sandwich, he is still beating me! My new fangled gym membership has failed. Perhaps a tapeworm is all I can hope for now. That or heartbreak.