Say what you like about British hypocrisy. It’s still the best hypocrisy in the world. This is a robust hypocrisy, sustained by centuries-old structures and conventions. British hypocrisy speaks confidently. It wears a well-cut suit. It peers down the rims of its half-moon glasses as it gives you a cold, deathly half-handshake and looks towards the door. Above all British hypocrisy doesn’t have to explain itself – and let’s be absolutely clear on this point – to the likes of you.
At which point, enter Sebastian Coe, Alberto Salazar, Mo Farah and the nauseating obfuscation of the BBC-platformed British athletics commentariat. Mainly, though, enter Coe, who as president of the IAAF operates under an unconditional duty of care to protect the reputation, legacy and probity of his sport.
It was presumably in this capacity Coe suggested this week that athletes who had won medals under the coaching of Salazar at the Nike-sponsored training campus in Oregon should “not be tarnished” by the fact Salazar himself has now been banned from the sport for a string of doping violations at the Nike-sponsored training campus in Oregon. These athletes should not be tarnished because none of them have actually failed a drugs test.
It is the kind of statement you find yourself staring at, trying to find its edges. It is easy to see why Coe might be confused. We have a murder, but no body. A doping has happened. And yet no athlete has been doped. The obvious conclusion is that Salazar must be a very inaccurate doper.
There are of course cynics out there who will suggest there is something odd about a then-Nike-employed IAAF president (38 years, resigned in 2015) offering his disinterested thoughts on the doping violations of a Nike-funded coach at a Nike-run campus. That what Coe is really saying is that the achievements and future prospects of Sebastian Coe should not be “tarnished” by a scandal that is, you suspect, only now kicking into gear.
But it can’t be just that. British hypocrisy is a powerful, resilient substance. But it’s not that good.
Or is it? Consider Neil Black, UK Athletics’ performance director, who announced in August 2017 that he had confronted Salazar like a man stalking a cougar in the wild, had looked him in the eye and from that one look knew instantly there was nothing awry and that Salazar would definitely not end up being banned for doping violations. Black will clearly have to resign. If only out of embarrassment.
Or will he? Consider for a moment the celebrity cheerleaders of the BBC punditry studios. “Everybody knew that there was cheating going on and people getting away with it. It was seriously affecting the credibility of the sport.” The uncompromising words, there, of Paula Radcliffe. But not this week. That was Paula Radcliffe, zero-tolerance author of Paula: My Story So Far, in a chapter called “Taking on the cheats”.
That version of Radcliffe, a kind of anti-doping Che Guevara, has apparently been decommissioned. It has been replaced by the version that appeared this week on the BBC to offer up an interview of vomit-inducing faux piety during which she saw, in Salazar, a coach who was guilty of no more than “overstepping the line”, of wanting to win – sigh – too much, whose doping violations were, you know, kind of OK.
“Have real anti-doping rules been transgressed by athletes? I don’t think so. Otherwise we would have seen athletes banned at this point,” Radcliffe announced, the same Radcliffe who wrote in her own book that “Everybody knows the tests are not guaranteed to expose the cheats.” Which one is it! This is confusing!
Instead Radcliffe, fearless crusader for the truth, suggested it had been a waste of money to expose the doping violations of the sport’s most high-profile coach. A bit later she pulled an improvised foil helmet out of her holdall and implied the entire investigation was designed to distract from the recent Christian Coleman case, despite predating it by four years, a suggestion so asinine it is probably an affront to the word “asinine” to align the two.
The one thing Radcliffe didn’t offer up during this stream of thought-blurts was the fact that she is herself an ambassador for Nike. Similarly Steve Cram, so eloquent in his condemnation of Justin Gatlin, so resolute on the mass-banning of Russian athletes, was silent on his own ties to Nike, all the while insisting this week that there should be no guilt by association for those associated with a guilty coach.
And like it or not all of this leaves some uncomfortable questions. Questions about just how involved Salazar has been with UK Athletics in the last nine years. Or how exhaustive the UK Athletics investigation into the Nike Oregon project actually was (UK Athletics, naturally, has a long-term sponsorship deal with Nike).
Plus of course, questions about Farah. Let’s face it, there are plenty of people out there who want Farah to fall, for the hundreds of clean drug tests to count for nothing. It is a frightening prospect. Farah has been a brilliant champion. He remains the face of British Athletics, and of Coe’s own greatest triumph.
And yet, it is only human to feel wary, to want to know a little more about the star UK athlete at a programme that has now been entirely discredited.
Just as it is bizarre to insist, as Coe does, that there really is nothing to see, that nobody should be tarnished by any of this. British hypocrisy can take you a long way. But good luck with that one.
