Cas leniency is like Great Train Robbers getting community service, but a lesson in realpolitik may concentrate mindsHere is a question you may not expect to find in a sports column. When a journalist is assassinated, do financial markets care? The answer, according to new research in the journal Applied Economics, is a resounding yes. And there is more in the detail. If the murdered journalist was an editor or worked in television, stock prices of companies with headquarters in that country declined on average by 2.18%. However, if they were tortured beforehand, they fell by 3%. And if they were killed by military officials, prices went down even further by 4.62%.This awful set of statistics tells us that the...
The Russian oligarch has moved on from Arsenal to Everton but more intriguing is his decision to buy Pierre de Coubertin’s 1892 manifesto and donate it to the Olympic MuseumAt last, the mystery buyer of the world’s most expensive piece of sports memorabilia has been revealed as the Russian tycoon Alisher Usmanov. The cuddly oligarch purchased Pierre de Coubertin’s original 1892 Olympic manifesto for $8.8m (£6.8m) in December – a whole week after he had suggested Wada’s Russian doping ban was a “lynching”, and a whole two weeks after the IOC president, Thomas Bach, had awarded Usmanov the IOC Trophy of Olympic Values in his capacity as the deep-pocketed bankroller and president of the International Fencing Federation. As Bach advised...
Few sporting nations are qualified to talk with certainty about the failings of others and, with London 2012 the most dope-ridden Olympics ever staged, Britain is not one of themAnd what a time it was, and what a time. Here’s a festive quiz question. What do you get if you cross Vladimir Putin, Victor Orban, Ali Bongo, Boris Johnson and Robert Mugabe? Answer: a VIP guest box at the London 2012 opening ceremony!A time of innocence. A time of confidence. A time of mob-handed despots on a summer junket, so many in fact that those Games are still ranked as the second-largest gathering of world leaders ever assembled – discounting UN summits, none of which have been able to boast...
Dick Pound’s defence of his latest successor as Wada president, Craig Reedie, just doesn’t stand upEncouraging news for the embattled Wada president, Sir Craig Reedie, as the founder Wada president, Dick Pound, rides eye-catchingly to his defence. By way of recap, Russia last week missed the deadline to allow the World Anti‑Doping Agency access to the Moscow laboratory that was at the heart of its massive state-sponsored doping programme. This deadline was itself a bizarre act of faith on Wada’s part, given that Russia has failed to comply with two crucial recommendations of the McLaren report which uncovered the vast scale of their cheating.Anyway, the predictably missed deadline has gone down like the proverbial sandwich with many national anti-doping authorities,...
Not surprisingly reinstating Russia to international competition has not gone down particularly well, and the Wada president’s insistence he had no alternative is a laughable responseI am affronted on behalf of the World Anti-Doping Agency president Craig Reedie to learn that he was pointedly not invited to this week’s White House event entitled “Advancing International Commitment to Clean Sports: Reforming the World Anti-Doping Agency”. In many ways the White House should be a place of camaraderie for Sir Craig. He certainly wouldn’t have been the only guy in the place who thinks he has been treated very unfairly over matters relating to Russian urine.“I am used to athletes complaining,” sniffed Reedie of the outrage over last month’s Wada decision to...