As the husband, sometime coach and training partner (usually a stride and a half behind) of two-time Olympian and former British and Commonwealth record holder track athlete Kirsty Wade, I would like to make a couple of observations about the calamitous state that sport finds itself in as the latest incarnation of the Olympic “ideal” approaches (IOC ruling let down sport, say anti-dopers, Sport, 1 August).
First, regarding all the public handwringing over athletes who have been cheated of medals in recent years – if this has come as surprise then it smacks of naivety at best and disingenuousness at worst. As we all know, state-sponsored doping did not begin with Russia. Organised doping was undertaken by a number of nations from the 1970s onwards and probably earlier. During my wife’s international career, she had to come to terms with the fact that others in her events were cheating. Some were caught, many others were not. How do you deal with this? By trying to be the best you can be and knowing that it is about maximising your own innate abilities. You either have to accept this or find another way to make a living.
However, if international sport is to survive then the public must be able to believe what they are watching. The drip-drip effect of high-profile doping across a whole range of sports has eroded this faith. Who is to blame? In the end, as with most things in life, it is down to money. In 2011, the IOC negotiated a deal with NBC in the US for TV rights to the four summer and winter Olympic Games from 2014 to 2020 for $4.38bn. In 2015, the IOC contributed $13.7m of Wada’s total budget of $28.06m. By my calculations that is approximately 0.2875% of the income the IOC brought in from selling the rights to a single region for an eight-year period. A relatively small proportional increase would transform the capability of the drug testing programme. In April 2015, the IOC, in the interests of “transparency”, released the “compensation” figures paid to the members of a “non-profit” organisation, including a €225,000 per year payment to President Thomas Bach. All 105 IOC members are entitled to $900 per day while on Olympic business, including the day before and after to include travel time. Good luck with trying to find any more detail on these payments on olympic.org, the IOC website – in the interests of transparency, obviously.
If Olympic sport is to continue to be taken seriously then those in charge of the purse strings need to fund a viable worldwide drug-testing system, without restrictions. If not, the credibility of sport, the golden goose that created such enormous wealth for the IOC, will be well and truly killed.
Tony Wade
Isle of Lewis
• In the excellent article by the heads of 13 major national anti-doping organisations around the world (‘When it mattered most IOC failed to lead – or protect clean athletes’, Sport, 1 August), I see that UK Anti Doping’s signature is conspicuously absent. Are they as pusillanimous as the IOC itself?
John Phillips
London
• In 1943, when the International Olympic Committee leader Count Henri Baillet de Latour died, his coffin was driven through the streets of Brussels, draped in a swastika-lined shroud that bore the words “Adolf Hitler”. The 1936 Berlin Olympics set the pattern for all successive Games, involving massive costs and the avoidance of inconvenient truths.
Tom McNab
St Albans, Hertfordshire
• The simplest solution would be to allow all athletes who wish to take drugs to do so. The outcome would be fascinating.
Tommy Gee
Wingfield, Suffolk
• Simon Jenkins is right (Denationalise the Olympics to really stamp out cheating, 28 July). It is time to abolish the Olympics and end its chauvinistic nationalism and its extravagant waste of resources in construction and air travel. If we are to have them, then base them permanently in Greece, without flags and national anthems, just sportsmen and women competing, even perhaps as in ancient times, naked, without badges or uniforms.
Lionel Burman
West Kirby, Wirral
• Several items lately have bemoaned the size and cost of the Olympics. A possible alternative model might be a four-year cycle (rather than a single year) within which major sports finals could take place under the Olympic banner. Soccer and rugby, for example, already have their World Cups. Other sports could choose appropriate venues and years within the four-year cycle. Thus no one country and no one year would carry the full burden.
David Griffiths
Wilmslow, Cheshire
• Brilliant idea of Matthew Engel’s to house the Olympics permanently in Athens (The problem with the Olympic Games, 30 July). San Serriffe would be even better.
Rev John James
Watchfield, Somerset
• Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com
• The last letter was amended on 4 August 2016 to correct the spelling of San Serriffe.
