Olympic Claims

In Criminal Justice Matters No 88 (June 2012) ‘(In)security and the re-ordered Olympic city’ Pete Fussey explored issues around Olympic-related security and insecurity in advance of the Games.  Writing between the Games and the Paralympics I hope to assess some of those same issues.

First though some ‘conflict-of-interests’ confessions.  I was the external examiner on Peter’s PhD on CCTV and am very pleased to see the extent to which he has been able expand upon that work.  Also I’m a sports fan and have spent much of the past few weeks watching - live and recorded - the Olympics.  I agree with much that Peter says though I will be picking away at some aspects.  But, I’m not going to assert an ‘I-was-there’ standpointism where my experience of attending trumps his prospective theoretical position.  I went to the Olympic Park 6 times (3 Athletics, 1 Women’s Hockey, 1 Men’s Water Polo, 1 Women’s Basketball and 1 Track Cycling after another event) and the Lea Valley White Water Centre for Canoe Slalom.

Fussey picks out ‘a number of specific strategies [which] are consistently applied’: Militarisation, Privatisation, Technology and Surveillance, Physical Design and Behavioural regulation.  Whilst all might have been expected from his studies of other mega-events but the first two had a particular inconsistency in their application that might not have been anticipated.

Leading up to the Games much was made of the ‘missiles on rooftops’ but the experience of imilitarisation was in the form of actual serving members of the armed forces in the wake of the G4S security shortfall.  This even lead some commentators to eulogise them.  I can vouch for their friendly efficiency (and, like the policing of the torch relay a massive PR coup for them).  So actual militarisation trumped privatisation to the extent that 2 Govt Ministers were said to have had second thoughts about the limits of privatisation.  We shall see.

The technology and surveillance was less obvious but behind all such friendliness we find that Disney are using military strength face-recognition.  And again the physical and behavioural issues remind us of Disney.  Not only did the Olympic Park remind me of Disney but so did people’s appreciation of it.  But most had not read Clifford D. Shearing and Phillip C. Stenning’s ‘From the Panopticon to Disney World: the Development of Discipline’.  More hopeful though, are Warren’s conclusions in ‘Popular Cultural Practices in the “Postmodern City”’ that even:

Disneyland, demonstrates that contemporary urban landscapes are complicated and contradictory sites that hegemonically embed both dominant cultural and economic relations and creative resistance to them.

My derives around Stratford attempted some resistance, as does this.  But, and scandalously under-reported save on Twitter, were some more active complaints.  Thus Femen demonstrated outside City Hall against the inclusion of Islamic countries at the Olympics.  Yet I joined in the cheers for a Saudi and Palestinian woman athlete sporting ‘racing Hijabs’.

There is a dreadful irony in the success of the cycling team and the kettling of cycle born protestors on the night of the Opening Ceremony.  And further ironies in the on-screen lauding of the protests of Tommie Smith and John Carlos.  Past protests - on the right side - are seen to be acceptable.

But perhaps the best news is an unexpected Olympic legacy, of life imitating art as the suffragettes from the opening ceremony discover their feminism.

The Drugs don't work - but keep taking the tablets

The Guardian has Bradley Wiggins saying: ‘I can never dope because it would cost me everything if I took drugs I would stand to lose my reputation, my livelihood, my marriage, my family, my house, my titles …’

Such statements remind me of the social bonds discussed in the self/control theories of Hirschi. Those are keeping Bradley in line. 

But the Tour de France is famous for its doping and the performance of the Sky team, for which Wiggins rides, has been compared to that of Lance Armstrong’s (leading to a rant by Wiggins).  Armstrong continues to show that even being shown to be clean brings no peace; to the doubters you must also have cheated the tests.  Franck Schleck and Remy di Gregorio (at the time of writing) are the only two riders to fail this year.

Yet I continue to watch the Tour with enjoyment: the sights, the tactics, the sheer spectacle.  Similarly I don’t think what drugs have aided the performance of the actors, singers, writers or dancers I enjoy.  My main worry for Wiggins is not that he will be tempted to dope but that given the high stakes others may seek to spike his food or drink as Schleck claims his was. 

Amongst the plethora of Olympic stories are the bold claims of LOCOG and WADA.

London 2012 will carry out an unprecedented number of tests to ensure the health and rights of the athletes, and that the integrity of the Games is upheld.

The drug testing facility to be run by GlaxoSmithKline and its associated regime is backed up by this video.  The video seeks to deny drugs yet stylistically evokes them and concludes, which is interesting for a drug company.

But let’s examine those claims: athletes health, rights and the integrity of the games.

athletes health

The occasional transgressions of professional footballers often affords us an insight into their training regimes.  They are scant compared to far-less-well-rewarded swimmers, cyclists and other athletes.  And yet all are unlikely to enjoy good health while practising their sport and retirement brings further problems.  Fitness may be good for your health but professional sport is likely to be bad.  Liz Pike notes that athletes normalize illness and injury and her two-year ethnographic study of female rowers showed that medical support for these athletes was both insufficient and inadequate.  Moreover the demands of capitalism mean that the Olympic ‘ideal’ is paid for by corporate sponsors, many in the obesity business.  Neville Rigby and Amandine Garde argue that in:

concluding long-term exclusivity agreements with iconic junk food brands, the International Olympic Committee has failed to support public health policy.

Turning to rights 

It is my experience of talking to athletes that they whole-heartedly embrace the drug and other testing regimes foisted on them.  They subscribe to the ideology of the ‘drug cheat’, perhaps for fear that, as with politicians and the ‘war on drugs’, any questioning of the policy leads to embarrassing questions about youthful ingestion/inhalation.  The Church of WADA/IOC punishes heretics.

And yet, some dare speak out.  For instance EU Athletes and UNI Global Union use a rights-based discourse to raise some challenge:

The lack of effectiveness of the present system is deeply worrying and does not justify the violation of athletes’ fundamental rights [...] Athletes need anti-doping rules that are effective and fair. The WADA Code fails on both counts and that is why we are launching our legal challenges today.

Speaking more personally and with some fervour Andy Murray complains, “I just want to enjoy a normal life without people bashing on your door at four in the morning.”  And some doctors, with the protection of the white coat of science have argued, “Far from being unfair, drugs that enhance performance actually promote equality”

As a criminologist with an interest in human rights I’m taken by the comparison with Sex Offenders Register which requires registration and notification within 3 days whereas the elite athletes have to predict months in advance where they will be and risk ‘failing’ a test if not there.

I would suggest that the compromises to athletes health and rights combined with the IOC’s supine relations with big business and corruption scandals (similar for FIFA) means that it also fails the integrity test.

and back to drugs

But just as athletes loathe the 'drug cheat' they show the same motivation and will do anything ‘legal’ to achieve an advantage, as this advert for vitamins shows. And this website on such ergogenic aids.

But fans of Ben Goldacre’s blog Bad Science will not be surprised to discover the 'Lack of evidence' that popular sports products work.  Dr Carl Heneghan of the Oxford University Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine asked the manufacturer’s of Lucozade Sport for their evidence that the drink was an "an isotonic performance fuel to take you faster, stronger, for longer"  He said the mountain of data included 101 trials that the Oxford team were able to examine before concluding: "In this case, the quality of the evidence is poor, the size of the effect is often minuscule and it certainly doesn't apply to the population at large who are buying these products.”  So in seeking to gain a legal advantage we may have been cheated.  The best cons work on our greed and gullibility.

Oh, and a final irony.  The manufacturers of Lucozade are GlaxoSmithKline who will be running the drugs lab.

However I have two weeks blocked out for the Games and will attend 3 athletics sessions, one men’s hockey, one women’s basketball, a canoe slalom (I’ve already white-water rafted the course), some water polo plus hours of TV.  The paralympics brings swimming and cycling into the frame.  I’m not even sure the games are a ‘unifying force’ but they are ‘tarnished’.  But what Spectacle isn’t?

Let’s see if I can smuggle my opinions past security.

Martial Farts

OK probably more sports law than sports criminology but Taekwondo's Aaron Cook continues to challenge the failure of his Federation to select him for the Olympics.  On reports it is difficult not to think that his independent mindedness is being punished by the 'blazers' - those combined police officers, prosecutors, judges and gaolers who run much sport.