A new constitution has been adopted by a sport that has been riddled with doping and corruption in an attempt to retain the place it has held on the Games’ schedule since 1896In all the excitement it was easy to miss the press release put out by the International Olympic Committee on 6 August announcing a tweak to rule 59 1.2b of the Olympic charter. But in one little corner of the Games hundreds of athletes and officials were hanging on the change. The rule now states that the IOC’s executive board has the power to “suspend any sport, discipline or event” if the federation running it acts “in a manner likely to tarnish the Olympic movement”. Which, for those...
Years of bribery, cover-ups and money-laundering have been uncovered by a Canadian law professor, but who would fund an investigative team to scrutinise sports federations?Moments before powerlifters attempt a superhuman feat of strength, they like to hold a capsule of ammonia to their nose, snort deeply, and feel a huge jolt of adrenaline rip through their bodies. But it is going to take far more than smelling salts to revive weightlifting’s reputation after the publication of a truly eye-bulging independent investigation by the Canadian law professor Richard McLaren. Corruption. Cronyism. Cover-ups. Bribes. An omerta that would impress the five families. It’s all there in a 122-page report that leaves the reader feeling they have bathed in a fetid swamp.Think Fifa...
One side of the argument believes that women’s sport must be protected, the other that gender identification trumps everything. Debate is needed to find a fair solutionI can’t stop thinking about Feagaiga Stowers. Or rather a picture of the 18-year-old Samoan, standing on the second step of a podium last week, looking stoic but sad. By any measure Stowers is a remarkable woman. As a child she was a victim of sexual violence, and sought refuge at a Victim Support Group where she began weightlifting and went from being “shy and hopeless” – her words – to a world junior and Commonwealth Games champion. Yet having been chosen to be the flag bearer at the Pacific Games, she missed out...
The IOC’s decision to keep 2012 Olympics samples for 10 years has led to a steady drip of retrospective failed tests that have given the London Games an unwanted recordTen or so years ago the Evening Standard ran the billboard headline “London Fashion Week Cocaine Shock”. Presumably the twist was that there was someone alive surprised to find it was going on, since the revelation seemed just about as startling as the fact they were playing baccarat in Rick’s place. Over Christmas, the International Weightlifting Federation dropped another bombshell when it announced that five Olympics weightlifters have just been provisionally suspended because some “adverse analytical findings” were discovered when the International Olympic Committee recently retested samples provided in 2012.There were...