2005 World Games

It's New Year's Eve — for me, that's a time to look ahead, not back. So, what's on the schedule for 2005? No Olympics this year, winter or summer; there won't be a Pan Am Games or a Commonwealth Games, either. There will be a world athletics championship, so there should be plenty of doping news, but it will be a slow year for multi-sport competitions for Canadians.

Eight World Games

The previous and scheduled hosts of the World Games.

1981 Santa Clara, USA

1985 London, United Kingdom

1989 Karlsruhe, Germany

1993 The Hague, Netherlands

1997 Lahti, Finland

2001 Akita, Japan

2005 Duisburg, Germany

2009 Kaohsiung, Chinese Taipei

But there is going to be a World Games in 2005, and that's ... well, maybe not exactly something to get excited about, but still something to mark on the calendar. I'm embarassed to admit that I had never heard of the World Games before this week, but I would guess that I'm not the last to find out. These will be the seventh World Games, and knowing the previous six host cities would surely be worth quite a lot in a barroom wager (see inset).

The 2005 World Games will be held in and around Duisburg, Germany, which is located at the junction of the Rhine and Ruhr rivers. One of the features of the World Games is that the events have to be held in existing or independently planned venues. I can vouch for the fact that Duisburg is well-prepared in this regard, having competed there many times.

It might be surprising to find out that the IOC stands behind the World Games — very close behind, in fact. The governing body of the World Games, the IWGA, is run "under the patronage of the International Olympic Committee." The current president of the IWGA is Ron Froehlich, who also happens to be president of the Association of the IOC Recognised International Sports Federations (ARISF). In October of 2000 the IWGA and the IOC signed an official memorandum of understanding, which you can read here.

In this memorandum, the IWGA has essentially agreed to put their sports programme under the control of the IOC. In reality, there isn't much choice. Most of the sports in the World Games are hoping for a spot on the Olympic programme; to get there, they have to be recognised by the IOC, so they have to play by IOC rules. When a World Games sport (for example triathlon or taekwondo) gets popular enough with spectators and sponsors, it graduates to the Olympic programme, leaving the World Games with a perpetual B-list of sports.

You may also notice that the IOC agrees, in the memorandum, to "encourage the National Olympic Committees (NOCs) to support and assist their national multi-sport delegations taking part in the World Games." I don't know whether this happens in other countries, but in Canada, the COC doesn't give any direct support for the World Games. Participants have to use their own funds, or the limited support that their national federations can provide. There are some nice perspectives on this aspect of the World Games, as well as some of the politics behind sport selection, in this excellent 1997 article from Saturday Night magazine.

NBC's Audience Conflict

The Associated Press ran this story a couple of weeks ago, breaking the news that the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is investigating a decency complaint against NBC for its coverage of the 2004 Olympic Games.

At the time, the AP didn't know any specifics about the alleged indecency, or even how many complaints there had been. Well, it turns out that you can read the complaints here. All nine of them.

Of the nine, four refer specifically to the broadcast of the Opening Ceremony, and each one appears to be about something different. Two complaints refer to indecent commercials aired during the Olympics (specifically for Viagra and Cialis). Four refer to obscenities heard on the air, and two of those specifically mention women's volleyball. There was also a complaint about yet another racy profile of U.S. swimmer Amanda Beard.

Now, I probably spent about 30 minutes, total, watching NBC's coverage of the Olympics, and I didn't watch the Opening at all, so I didn't see or hear any of the "offending" material. Since I'm an adult, and I have cable, and I watch sports pretty regularly, I doubt that I would have taken much offense, anyway.

I know that we're only talking about a few nuts, out of tens of millions of viewers — NBC claims that the opening alone was viewed by 56 million people — but it sounds like the FCC is considering taking some action. What kind of standard is being applied here? I wonder how many complaints the FCC receives every Sunday about the NFL broadcast? If these people are really offended by an advertisement for Viagra, Michael Powell must get a lot of e-mail. And I hate to imagine how worked up they must get about beer commercials!

The Olympic television broadcast, of course, attracts a very broad spectrum of viewers. NBC and the other broadcasters, at least in North America, have worked very hard to expand that audience over the past twenty years. The strategy has worked so well that a significant fraction of today's Olympic audience is made up of people who don't particularly like sports, and don't watch other sporting events on TV. This is especially true of the Opening Ceremony, of course, since that doesn't have any sport content at all, but it carries over to the sporting events, too. The offending commercials, the Beard profile, and the uncensored expletives are surely nothing unusual for your average sports fan, but might be shocking to viewers more accustomed to the Family channel. To a certain extent, the networks have gotten themselves into a bit of a mess; maybe they can't continue to treat the Olympics like other big sporting events.

And here's another tip for viewers who are worried that they might accidentally witness something sexy at the Olympics: stay away from beach volleyball. I don't want to denigrate the athletic skills of the participants, which are formidable; and I don't particularly care if they're a bit foul-mouthed. But the official uniform guidelines and the bikini-clad cheerleaders should be a giveaway, folks — you and your family are not the target audience for this show.

The Olympic Experience and Athlete Development

Last month I wrote an essay about the COC's "Top 12" selection criteria for the 2004 Summer Olympic Games. One of the common arguments against raising the standard is that it robs developing athletes of the opportunity to gain experience at the Olympic level. I promised that I would take a look at some data to see if that argument holds water.

I looked at this from a couple of different perspectives, but I kept one common assumption: I assumed that the ultimate goal is to win more medals. You may disagree with this goal; in that case, the rest of this article really isn't for you. Also, I should warn everybody that this is going to get a bit mathematical.

I don't have access to information about athletes who didn't qualify for the games, what the qualification standards were, or how they were specifically applied. I also can't really get into a lot of sport-specific issues, because the small numbers of athletes make a meaningful analysis difficult. What I can do is take a broad look at Olympic performance across all sports. Let's see what conclusions we can draw.

I used the COC's athlete profile search tool to compile the following statistics and lists. I wrote a MATLAB script to query and mine the database.

Is Olympic Experience Worth Anything?

The first question I tried to answer is this: does Olympic experience increase an athlete's ability to win medals?

I looked at the last five summer Olympic games teams, from 1988 to 2004. If you add up the number of athletes on the five Canadian teams, you get a total of 1543 athlete-games. (Note that this is greater than the number of unique athletes.) Of these, 1037 (67%) were athletes attending their first Olympics.

Of these 1037 first-time Olympians, 89 (8.6%) won medals. Of the 506 experienced Olympians, 64 (12.6%) won medals.

At first glance, this seems to prove conclusively that Olympic games experience gives an athlete a huge advantage when it comes to winning medals. There is one confounding factor, however, which is that athletes who have already been to one or more Olympics are generally older.

Figure 1

Figure 1 — Age distribution of Canadian Olympic athletes, 1988-2004 (click to enlarge).

Figure 1 (inset right) shows the age distribution of Canadian Olympic athletes from 1988 to 2004. The median age for first-time Olympians was 25 years; the median age for experienced Olympians was 29 years. That four-year difference in age and experience, independent from attendance at an Olympic Games, could partially account for the observed difference in performance.

To study the question of age bias in the analysis, I took all of the athletes in the two groups and divided them into sub-groups by age. I excluded the very youngest athletes, because there were very few with Olympic experience; similarly, I excluded the very oldest athletes, because there were very few rookies. Within each of the remaining age sub-groups, I calculated the percentage of first-time Olympians and the percentage of experienced Olympians who won at least one medal.

Figure 2

Figure 2 — The relationship between medal performance and age for Canadian Olympic athletes, 1988-2004 (click to enlarge).

Figure 2 (inset right) shows the results. The red line shows the percentage of athletes with Olympic experience in each age band who won medals, and the green line shows the percentage of athletes without Olympic experience in each age band who won medals. Note that an athlete might have been a first-time Olympian in 1988, and an experienced Olympian in 1992 and 1996; that athlete would contribute to three different points on the plot.

In general, the red line is higher than the green line, which indicates that the athletes with Olympic experience do enjoy an advantage over their colleagues of the same age in terms of winning medals.

There's another interesting result here, which is that age doesn't seem to matter all that much, especially for the first-timers; all age groups had about the same probability of winning a medal. Or perhaps more precisely, the distribution wasn't as strongly peaked as I expected.

But What Kind Of Experience?

So, experience as an Olympic competitor does seem to give athletes a slight edge when it comes to winning medals, which is in line with the conventional wisdom. The next question to ask is whether the quality of that previous experience matters, and if so, how much?

For this purpose, I looked at all the first-time Olympians from 1988, 1992, and 1996. I looked at their best result in their first Olympics, and then checked to see whether they won a medal in their second or subsequent Olympics. I started with 1988 because the boycotts in 1980 and 1984 obviously cause a distortion in this kind of longitudinal analysis, and I stopped with 1996 because the first-timers in 2000 and 2004 may not yet have had time to develop their full potential.

Figure 3

Figure 3 — The relationship between initial Olympic performance and medal potential, 1988-1996 (click to enlarge).

Figure 3 (inset right) shows the results of this study. The horizontal axis divides the first-time Olympians into categories by their best result at their first Olympics. The vertical axis shows the percentage of those athletes who won medals in later Olympic games.

Overall, 33 out of 638 (5.2%) first-time olympians won medals in their second or subsequent Olympics. Figure 3 shows conclusively that the better you do your first time, the more likely you are to win a medal later. No big surprise there.

What I am most interested in here, for the sake of the discussion surrounding the top 12 selection standard, is the group that did not finish twelfth place or better in their first Olympics; the lowest and right-most point on Figure 3. To keep the terminology of the discussion simple, I'm going to refer to these as "D-Olympians," short for developing Olympians. To recap, then, a D-Olympian is an athlete at their first Olympic games who does not finish twelfth or better in any event.

At each summer Olympic games between 1998 and 1996, 25-35% of Canadian athletes were D-Olympians. If the COC top 12 standard could be magically applied with perfect foresight, then these athletes would be among the group excluded from the Canadian team. If we want to provide beneficial experience for future medallists, is this a reasonable place to make a cut-off?

There were 7 D-Olympians (2.3% of all D-Olympians) in the 1988, 1992, and 1996 Summer Games who eventually won Olympic medals. Since I concluded earlier that experience helps, there is a chance that these seven medals would not have been won if the top 12 standard had been applied to the team selection.

Let's look at the seven individuals who later won medals, to see if we can refine our assessment of that chance.

The Exceptional Seven

There are some interesting common threads in this list of seven D-Olympians who defied the odds.

Four of these athletes (Brunet, Walton, Surin, and Chalmers) were close enough to top 12 that they probably would have achieved the COC qualification standard. The standards are always designed to identify those athletes with the ability to finish in the top 12.

All of these athletes were young in their D-Olympic year. The median age for Canadian first-time Olympians in these three games was 25. Chalmers, the oldest in the group, was still young for a long-distance runner.

Five of the seven (Brunet, Surin, Gilbert, Walton, and Montminy) didn't win their medals until two Olympics (8 years) after they were D-Olympians.

Four of the seven (Surin, Gilbert, Walton, and Lareau) won their medals in events that they didn't compete in at their D-Olympics.

Four of the seven (Brunet, Surin, Lareau, and Montminy) claim Quebec as their home province, with one each from Ontario, Manitoba, and BC. Does Quebec do a better job at nurturing D-Olympians than other provinces?

Caroline Brunet (Canoe/Kayak) was 19 years old in 1988 when she finished 13th in women's kayak singles. She went on to win three Olympic medals in 1996, 2000, and 2004. She also competed in 1992, and finished seventh.

Brian Walton (Cycling) was 23 years old in 1988 when he finished 13th in the men's team time trial. He went on to win a silver medal in 1996 in the points race. He did not compete in 1992.

Angela Chalmers (Athletics) was 25 years old in 1988 when she finished 14th in the women's 3000m. She went on to win a bronze medal in 1992.

Bruny Surin (Athletics) was 21 years old in 1988 when he finished 15th in the men's long jump. He went on to win a gold medal in 1996 in the 4x100m relay. He also competed in 1992, and finished fourth in the 100m.

Anne Montminy (Diving) was 17 years old in 1992 when she finished 17th in the women's 10m platform. She went on to win two medals in 2000. She also competed in 1996, and was 24th in the 10m platform. She entered the 1996 games with a fourth-place world ranking.

Glenroy Gilbert (Athletics) was 20 years old in 1998 when he finished 22nd in the men's long jump. He went on to win a gold medal in 1996 in the 4x100m relay. He also competed in 1992, and was disqualified in the long jump. Although not listed on the COC database, elsewhere I find that he was also part of the 4x100m relay team that finished 15th in 1992.

Sebastien Lareau (Tennis) was 23 years old in 1996 when he was eliminated in the round of 64 in men's singles. He went on to win a gold medal in 2000 in men's doubles.

Can we conclude anything about the Olympic experience with respect to developing medallists? If these seven athletes had been denied their first Olympic experience due to a tough qualifying standard, would it have stunted their later careers?

The first four of these athletes were very close to a top 12 finish; they probably would have been selected to their D-Olympic team even in the face of a top 12 standard, simply because the standards are not meant to make such fine distinctions.

Montminy would definitely have made the 1996 Olympic team, even if she had failed to qualify in 1992, assuming that it didn't end her career. Similarly, Gilbert probably would have qualified in 1992, although this is less certain than Montminy's case. Therefore, these two athletes would not have gone into their "medal Olympics" as rookies.

Lareau is probably the only one of the seven athletes who would have arrived at his medal Olympics without any prior Olympic experience, had a top 12 standard been in effect. However, as a professional tennis player, he competed in many events that are considered more prestigious than the Olympics. It seems unlikely that his first-round singles defeat in 1996 had a significant effect on his doubles performance in 2000.

Conclusions

Of course we cannot possibly ever know the answers to the questions I have been asking: "what would have happened if ..." We can't predict, for individual athletes, how the future would have been changed if selection standards had been tougher.

However, my analysis leads me to two conclusions. First, that previous Olympic experience does give athletes a small advantage when it comes to winning medals. But second, that almost all athletes who go on to win Olympic medals finish in the top 12 at their first games. In other words, the athlete who competes for the "experience" of finishing twentieth is almost never going to win an Olympic medal. If medals are important, then the COC's money is better spent elsewhere.

Victor Conte's 20/20 Interview

I only got around to watching the Victor Conte 20/20 interview last night. The episode, entitled "Catch Me If You Can," aired on Friday, but I was travelling that day.

It's not every day that you see somebody admit to a criminal offense on network television. It's an interesting strategy for a defendant who is asking to have the charges against him dismissed. Obviously, this is a guy who values public attention more than he values his lawyers' advice. But the legal issues here aren't really my area of expertise.

Conte was asked several times if he thought what he did was wrong. He gave various answers, but this quote pretty much sums up his argument in a nutshell:

It's not cheating if everybody is doing it. And if you've got the knowledge that that's what everyone is doing, and those are the real rules of the game, then you're not cheating.

According to this logic, if everybody's breaking a rule, which isn't really enforced, then it isn't cheating to join in. That makes performance-enhancing drug use roughly equivalent to using oversized goalie pads in hockey.

Is Everybody Doing It?

But who is "everybody," anyway, I wonder? The woman who finished fifth in her 100 m semifinal in Athens — was she on drugs? Some people will say, who cares? But don't forget, that forgotten athlete is one of the fastest 20 women in the world. Do you need drugs to get into the top 20? The top 50? Even if you concede that all of the winners are dirty (and our national hero and doping role model Ben Johnson says it's true), how far down does this reach?

Here's an illuminating fact. The great Jesse Owens, in 1936, ran the 100m in 10.3 seconds. I think we can safely assume that Mr. Owens was not using anabolic steroids, EPO, insulin, or human growth hormone. Now, if the drug-free Jesse Owens had competed at the 2004 Olympics, on his 1936-era cinder track, in his 1936-era shoes, without starting blocks, and run a 10.3, he would have had the 31st-fastest time in the second round of competition. So surely, we can conclude, a modern athlete could run drug-free and finish better than 31st. Surely the advances in technology and training in the past 70 years would mean that an honest athlete could go even faster than 10.3 seconds.

I conclude, from this simple thought experiment, that there are clean competitors in the top 30 in the men's 100m, and probably in the top 20. And if you don't need drugs to be among the top 20 in the world, then I think Conte's rationalization of his action — and his clients' — is just so much bullshit. They didn't take drugs to level the playing field; they took drugs to win. And in my book, that's cheating. Pretty simple.

Canada's 2004 Performance (Part II)

The COC announced their medal targets for the next three Olympic Games, which includes the extremely ambitious goal of finishing first in the medal standings in 2010 in Vancouver.

Earlier I wrote an entry about Canada's Olympic Team performance in Athens this past summer, and commented on the small number of medals won by Canadians who went into the Games as defending world champions.

This same topic is being discussed around the COC. In those circles, the discussion is framed in terms of Canada's "conversion" of high world rankings into medals.

My lovely assistant and I have collected some more data on this subject ourselves; a good resource on this subject is the Official Athens Olympics website, which contains participant profiles and official results.

You can see our raw data here. The following table summarizes my findings on the medal conversion rates of six countries in 2004. Further explanation and discussion follows.

Analysis of 2003 world championship medallists performing at the 2004 Olympic Games: all medallists

	AUS	CUB	HUN	CAN	BUL	NOR
Population (millions)	19.9	11.3	10.0	32.5	7.5	4.5
2004 Olympic Medallists	49	27	17	12	12	6
2003 World Championship Medallists at 2004 Olympics	36	19	19	15	13	3
Percentage Change (2003 to 2004)	+36%	+42%	+11%	-20%	-8%	+100%
Number of 2003 Medallists Winning 2004 Olympic Medals	18	14	9	5	8	2
Percentage of 2003 Medallists Winning 2004 Olympic Medals	50%	74%	47%	33%	62%	67%

Note 1 — An athlete or team is counted as a 2003 world championship medallist only if their sport held a world championship in 2003, and the athlete or team won a medal in an event that is contested at the Olympics.

Note 2 — For team events where a team consists of fewer than four athletes, then the team is counted as a 2003 world championship medallist only if the team competing in Athens is identical to the team that won a medal at the 2003 world championships.

Note 3 — For Hungary, Robert Fazekas (Discus) and Adrian Annus (Hammer) were not counted as 2003 world championship medallists, although both athletes won a silver medal at the 2003 world athletics championships. Both were disqualified from the 2004 Olympics for doping violations, after initially being awarded a gold medal.

The six countries were chosen for various reasons. Australia and Norway are often used in Canada as a benchmark of the performance that Canada should be able to achieve — Australia in the summer Olympics, and Norway in the winter Olympics. I chose Cuba as an example of a low-resource and low-population country that outperforms Canada in spite of these disadvantages. Hungary is similar to Cuba in population, but more prosperous, and with a broader sporting focus. I picked Bulgaria just because they tied Canada in the medal table.

The first line of the table is the national population, in millions. Canada is the most populous nation in the group at 32.5 million people.

The second line is the 2004 medal total. Canada finished 19th among all nations, with 12 medals.

The third line is the number of 2003 world championship medallists who competed in the same event at the 2004 Olympics. I am going to interpret this as a simple measure of the number of "medal favourites" from each country. This neglects, among other things, those athletes who were young and rising stars in 2004. However, what I am most interested in here is how established performers, who had already proven themselves, performed at the Olympic Games.

The fifth line is the overall percentage difference between the number of medal favourites (by this simple statistic) and the actual number of medals. Canada had the worst performance of all six countries, by this measure. However, this percentage change is not applicable specifically for the group of favourites, as it includes all medals by all athletes in 2004. This is therefore a combination of the success rate of the medal favourites, and the new medals won by non-favourites.

The sixth and seventh lines in the table really underline the conversion issue. These indicate the number and percentage of medal favourites who actually won medals in their favoured events. Note that this does not include athletes who were favoured in one event, but won medals in a different event at the 2004 Games. Here we can see that Canada's conversion rate was only 5/15, or 33%, which is easily the lowest of the six countries studied here.

To finish the point I started in my earlier entry, Canada looks even worse when we just consider 2003 gold medallists:

Analysis of 2003 world championship medallists performing at the 2004 Olympic Games: gold medallists

	AUS	CUB	HUN	CAN	BUL	NOR
Population (millions)	19.9	11.3	10.0	32.5	7.5	4.5
2004 Olympic Gold Medallists	17	9	8	3	2	5
2003 World Championship Gold Medallists at 2004 Olympics	12	6	4	6	5	2
Percentage Change (2003 to 2004)	+42%	+50%	+100%	-50%	-60%	+150%
Number of 2003 Gold Medallists Winning 2004 Olympic Medals	9	6	4	2	5	2
Percentage of 2003 Gold Medallists Winning 2004 Olympic Medals	75%	100%	100%	33%	100%	100%

Overall, if you were a 2003 world championship medallist from one of these five countries (not including Canada), you had a slightly better than 60% probability of winning a medal at the Olympics. If you were a 2003 gold medallist, you had almost a 90% probability of winning a medal at the Olympics! Canadians converted, either way, at a rate of only one in three.

There are several possible explanations for the discrepancies in conversion rate. First of all, it could be just luck, or normal statistical variation. Perhaps the ball just didn't bounce Canada's way this time. One way to answer this question would be to analyze past Olympics in the same way.

Second, some of the discrepancy is probably due to the differences between sports. For example, it might be much easier to repeat as a medallist in swimming, where conditions are carefully controlled and strategic considerations are minimal, than it is in sailing. Some of these countries are dominant in a small group of sports. For example, Cuba won most of its medals in combat sports (Boxing, Wrestling, Judo, etc.). The sports contested by Canada, Australia, Hungary, and Norway, however, have a significant overlap. A proper analysis of this issue would have to consider the "conversion history" of each event at the Games.

Finally, and most interesting if true, it could be that there is something about Canadian athletes and their preparation that puts them at a disadvantage when it comes to being favourites at the Olympic Games. Remember that we are talking about the world's elite athletes here, who have already on at least one occasion proved themselves to be among the top 3 in the world. Canada's sport system has helped them reach — or, at least, has not prevented them from reaching — this level. So what is it that we're doing wrong for the Olympics? This is a question that the COC would like to answer.

It is worth emphasizing, though, that even if we can turn our athletes into excellent "converters," it isn't going to transform us into a sporting powerhouse. If Canadian medal favourites had converted at a rate of 60%, that would have meant four more medals, for a total of 16. (The gold medal analysis indicates that at least three of the new medals should have been expected from our defending world champions.) That would be two more than we won in Sydney, but still short of the 22 in Atlanta, and still quite poor for our population. Even if our conversion rate could be elevated to 80%, we'd only be talking about an additional 7 medals for a total of 19. So if we really want to catch Australia, or even Cuba, we'll have to figure out a way to get better conversion and more favourites to start with.

Dick Pound Stays On at WADA

This isn't meant to be my diary of doping news, and I hope it doesn't turn out that way. But there was some news from the World Anti-Doping Agency yesterday, and that gives me an excuse to write about WADA in the bigger picture.

The lead item in the Canadian media (e.g. The Globe and Mail) was that WADA chairman Dick Pound was re-elected for another three-year term. Mr. Pound has been WADA chairman since the inception of the organization. He was unopposed. In the rest of the world, the story ran under headlines announcing a budget increase of 1.5M USD for 2005.

There were other announcements from WADA, including the election of a new vice-chairman, the formation of an athletes' working committee, and the accreditation of a new testing laboratory.

WADA's Law-And-Order Approach

WADA was created with several "objects" in its charter, among them to reinforce ethical principles, protect the health of athletes, and develop education and prevention programmes. Mostly, though, the agency spends its time and money promoting tougher and more consistent rules and more vigorous enforcement. Mr. Pound himself seems to favour this get-tough approach. He is at his most enthusiastic when he is discussing the crime-and-punishment aspects of his anti-doping work, and he has been criticized at times for making public accusations or even threats of punishment without proof.

The Goldman Survey

Whenever the subject of drugs in sport comes up, you are almost certain to hear about Robert Goldman's survey of elite athletes. Goldman published the results in his book Death in the Locker Room II: Drugs and Sports (1992, Elite Sports Medicine Publications). The most-cited result is often used to demonstrate that high-performance athletes will do anything to win. Goldman asked athletes if they would take a one-time dose of an undetectable substance that would guarantee victory in every competition, if the consequence was certain death at the end of five years. According to Goldman, more than 50% (103 out of 198) said that they would.

The survey itself has never been submitted to a peer review, and has never been published. It is unlikely that Goldman's methods would stand up to scientific scrutiny, and the 50% number is vigorously disputed by other experts. The result, unfortunately, has attained the status of an urban legend.

The WADA web site contains numerous references to a "fight against doping in sport." I can't help but be reminded of the War On Drugs. That "War" has also led to numerous get-tough measures, including mandatory minimum sentencing and so-called three-strikes laws. So the question this raises in my mind is: are stiffer penalties and tougher enforcement going to win the fight against doping?

Currently, although WADA is still working towards a uniform drug code across all sports in all countries, the basic penalties for doping are a two-year ban from competition for a first offense, and a lifetime ban from competition for a second offense. There are variations depending on the substance detected, but these are the usual punishments for the most severe infractions. On top of this, results can be annulled if a positive test occurs in competition (and sometimes even when it doesn't).

The Goldman survey (see box inset) is sometimes used to support the claim that even the most severe penalties can have no deterrent value. Flaws in the study aside, I am not sure that this logic is sound. What the Goldman results illustrate is that for some elite athletes, sporting glory is more important than almost anything else. The guarantee of getting away with the drug use is a key factor that is sometimes overlooked. More than anything else, the current doping penalities threaten a loss of glory, and that may indeed have a significant deterrent effect. By this logic, the annullment of competition results (medals and world records) is actually a more significant deterrent than any suspension.

On the other hand, my impression is that doping recidivism is pretty high (I haven't been able to find any statistics on this). If true, that would indicate that suspensions don't do much to rehabilitate the offenders. However, they still serve the purpose of removing known cheaters from competition.

Fundamentally, I believe that the majority of athletes, even at the highest levels, are honest, and want to win while playing within the rules. For these athletes the threat of being publicly labelled a cheater is the best deterrent available. There are, of course, a small number who want to win at any cost. I don't know how (or even if) athletes suffering from this "condition" can be treated; banning them from competition is a brutal but effective solution. Of course, you have to catch them first.

Some athletes, slightly apart from the hard-core cheaters, resort to doping because they see cheating around them and believe that they must use drugs in order to level the playing field. WADA can help to eliminate doping in this group, by making them believe that the cheaters are going to get caught. From this point of view, effective testing that catches a very high percentage of cheaters is much more important than the penalties that are handed down.

WADA Aiming at Doctors?

Dick Pound also turned up in this story by Alan Panzieri in the National Post (subscription required) last week. The athletes' commission of the IOC has proposed that athletes should be required to name their personal coach and their doctor on their doping-control forms. Currently, it is a doping offense to prescribe, administer, or encourage use of performance-enhancing substances, but it is usually difficult to link the guilty athlete to the responsible coaches and doctors. The Post story intimates that Pound and WADA would consider the modified form to be an aid to prosecuting those who support and conceal doping.

I realize that a charge of cheating does not carry the same burden of proof as a criminal trial, but personally I think that this strays too far from the principle that the accused is innocent until proven guilty. Pound is quoted in the article as saying that it "strains credulity" to believe that a coach or doctor doesn't know "everything that is going on" with an athlete. Based on my personal experience, it doesn't strain my credulity at all, especially as far as doctors are concerned.

During my years on the national team, Dr. Don McKenzie served as our team doctor. Dr. McKenzie is a staunch opponent of doping and is currently the chair of the ICF medical committee; you could not find a more responsible or ethical doctor in any sport. However, there is no way that Dr. McKenzie could control or take responsibility for the actions of all of the athletes on the team. Had any one of us decided to use a banned substance, it would have been relatively easy to hide it from the doctor. In fact, Dr. McKenzie's well-known stance against doping would have encouraged concealment. And if a cheater found another doctor who was willing to provide advice or drugs, he or she would be unlikely to name that doctor on their doping-control form.

Of course team doctors do have an influence over and a responsibility for the athletes in their care, and crooked doctors are part of the doping problem. But most team doctors don't live with the athletes, and usually don't even see them on a weekly basis unless there is a health concern. In my opinion, a positive dope test provides proof of an athlete's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. The culpability of the team doctor, on the other hand, is much less certain. Does your doctor know about everything that you put into your body? Certainly, it would be great if we could catch and punish those doctors that are administering organized doping programs, but we must be careful not to tangle up a large number of innocent doctors in the same net.

COC Reviews Selection Criteria

This past weekend, the Canadian Olympic Committee board of directors met in Toronto and began the process of setting the Olympic selection criteria for 2008. I thought that I would take the opportunity to comment on this issue, which received a lot of press this past summer.

For 2004, the COC applied a uniform "top 12" criterion in all non-team sports (team sports were exempt; Canada qualified only in baseball, softball, and women's water polo). That is, an athlete or crew had to demonstrate the ability to achieve a top twelve finish in their event at the Olympics. In many cases, this is significantly tougher than the qualification standards set by the international federations (IFs) in their respective sports.

The end result was that some athletes who had met their IF qualification standard were not quite good enough to make the Canadian team. Understandably, this caused some anger among the athletes. Top officials at some of Canada's national sport federations (NSFs), who had to apply the top 12 criterion in selecting their Olympic teams, were also unhappy.

Against Top 12

It wasn't difficult to find people who thought that top 12 was a bad idea this August. Some stories survive on the web:

AthletesCAN

CANSPORT

Calgary Herald

The Link

Before, during, and after the Games, the media and many sports advocacy organizations picked up on these voices of dissent, and came down hard on the COC (examples inset). Personally, I'm a supporter of the top 12 criteria, and I think that the arguments put against it are either one-sided or just plain wrong. Here's my rebuttal to the usual arguments.

"Top 12 is unfair"

In the weeks before the Games started, there were two very well-written and personal articles posted on Runner's Web: one by Bruce Deacon, and another by Nicole Stevenson. These are two of Canada's top marathon runners. Canada was not represented in either Olympic marathon.

These two editorials typify the athlete's response to the COC standard; "If I'm the best in Canada, I should be at the Olympics; it isn't fair to set a tougher standard." This argument seems reasonable on its face, especially to the general public. However, I think that applying a uniform and tough standard is actually more fair than ceding the decision to the IFs.

For the 2004 marathon, the IF for athletics (the IAAF) raised the qualifying times and publicly encouraged national Olympic committees to send participants to Athens. This was designed to enlarge the field for the marathons, which of course have their historical roots in Greece. Williams picked up on Stevenson's story, in particular, and became one of her most prominent supporters. He stated several times on CBC television that the COC's refusal to send Stevenson was disgraceful.

What Williams and other journalists don't consider is whether this would have been fair to other Canadian athletes. Would it be fair to make an exception for the marathon, while other track and field athletes are left home for being unable to meet a tougher standard?

Similarly, would it be fair to allow a top 40 trap shooter to go to Athens, when the IF for rowing has set their field size much smaller? Sometimes different IFs set very different criteria. The top 12 standard allows the COC to ensure that athletes from different sports have to meet similar standards. That's only fair.

There is one important aspect of the top 12 standard which is unfair, and that is that it will not be applied to the 2006 Winter Olympic Games. If the top 12 standard is supported for the summer athletes as part of a broader plan to improve performance, then why shouldn't it be applied for winter athletes, too?

"Participation is what's important"

Many newspapers, and some athlete advocacy organizations, made the argument that Canada should send as many athletes as they are allowed to send to the Olympics, because participation — not performance — is what's important.

There are many people in Canada who actually believe this, and I can understand that point of view. On the other hand, there are many others, particularly in the media, who want to have it both ways. They espouse participation and the "Olympic experience," but are first in line to criticize the Canadian sport system when Canada doesn't win lots of medals at the Olympics.

The top 12 standard was instituted by the COC as part of a bigger plan to achieve better performances at the Olympics. It is fair to criticize the COC for having the wrong goal, if that is what you believe. It is also fair to criticize this particular strategy as a means of achieving that goal. It is not fair, however, to criticize the goal and then to condemn the COC when the Olympic teams perform poorly.

"Top 12 stifles development"

Some critics have argued that the top 12 standard actually hinders athletes from making it to the elite level. The argument goes like this; a young but promising athlete, not able to make the top 12 cut, is denied an opportunity to compete at the Olympics. Without the opportunity to appear on the big stage, the young athlete's development is slowed or perhaps cut off altogether.

If true, then this would mean that the COC policy is actually going to contribute to poorer team performance at future Olympics. Although there is some logic to this argument, it is (as far as I know) unsupported by any analysis. Personally, I think that the positive effects of this kind of experience are overstated; but more study of this issue is required. So, I am going to do some, and I will post the results here when it is complete. It is possible that there is a case to be made here.

"Top 12 didn't work"

Of course, Canada won only 12 medals at the 2004 Olympics. Many people, after the fact, will look at the medal table and conclude that the top 12 standard did not "work" in 2004. A closer look, however, reveals that the Canadian team was, in some ways, the best team that ever represented Canada. Canadians achieved more top 12 finishes and more top 8 finishes than ever before. It is not clear why this improved performance did not translate into an increased number of medals. I have some thoughts on this matter, and I am working on pulling some data together. It does deserve some more investigation.

In some cases the tough selection process is being used as an explanation for sub-par performances in Athens. For example, the swimming team did not perform well. Critics have noted that the final qualification opportunity was only five weeks before the Games, and that athletes who peaked for qualification had an unavoidable letdown in Athens. This probably is part of the reason for the poor performance in the pool, but I think that the root of this failure is poor management of the selection process. The timing of the selection events is partially in the control of the NSFs, and it is up to them to adjust their season schedule so that athletes can have the best possible preparation.

At any rate, as many people have pointed out in their criticisms of the policy, the application of a top 12 standard by itself cannot really be expected to lead to better performances. Cutting out the weakest athletes from the team will not logically improve the performances of the strongest athletes. What it does do, however, is allow a concentration of resources on those athletes with the best chances at medals. It reduced the cost of sending the Olympic team to Athens, which allows the COC to spend more money on the best of the best. This is one component of an overall shift towards a committment to high performance by the COC.

Swim Canada Continues Shake-Up

Swim Canada has been under a lot of pressure to make changes since the poor performance at the 2004 Games. And the performance was poor, although it's simplistic and unfair to just keep trotting out the "no medals" mantra.

This past weekend's annual general meeting is being widely reported as some kind of failure of nerve because "only" three of seven members of the board of directors were replaced.

Replacing three of seven board members is actually a huge change; I don't really know what more the members were hoping for. I hope that at least a few of the cowardly former swimmers who called for a housecleaning during the Games put their money where their mouths are and stood for election.

In September, Swim Canada fired 12-year head coach Dave Johnson; they're also searching for a new director general and a new national team director. Altogether, that's a major purge, and a very real opportunity for a fresh start.

I have served for four years as a volunteer for one of Canada's most successful NSFs, and briefly with the COC, and I'll tell you my impression of Swim Canada from here; it's an overweight organization with bitter internal politics and unclear long-term goals. The national body doesn't get along with the provinces, or the clubs, or the universities, and for the most part they don't get along with each other either. The poor performance in Athens stimulated a lot of unproductive whining, but could also provide an impetus for significant change. If they get the right people in charge, there is no reason why Canada can't again be a significant player in high performance swimming. But it's going to be a lot of work.

Doping News

Too much news about doping in the last couple of weeks.

BALCO Sprinters Granted Delay

Hearings at the Court of Arbitration for Sport for Tim Montgomery and Chryste Gains have been postponed until June and July, respectively. Gains and Montgomery have been charged with doping offenses by the U.S. anti-doping agency, and both face lifetime bans if found guilty. The interesting twist here is that neither athlete tested positive. Both are being charged based on evidence obtained during the BALCO investigation.

While watching the 2004 Olympics on CBC, I was often exasperated by Brian Williams' poor grasp of the facts. This news story reminded me of one particular instance. Williams stated several times that U.S. sprinter Kelli White had been suspended as a result of the BALCO investigation. He seemed to be insinuating that this is somehow unfair treatment, handing down suspensions without a positive test result. In fact, White is currently serving a two-year ban, but tested positive for a stimulant at the 2003 World Championships and has since admitted to using performance-enhancing substances. Her case is certainly linked to the BALCO investigation, but she is not in the same position as Montgomery and others.

Nina Kraft Ashamed ... To Get Caught

German triathlete Nina Kraft, winner of the 2004 Ironman world championship, has been disqualified after a positive test for EPO. Kraft has admitted taking the drug. The world championship title passes to Natascha Badmann (SWI), followed by Heather Fuhr (CAN) and Kate Major (AUS).

Since being caught out, Kraft admits to being ashamed and says that she never really rejoiced in her win. While it is somewhat refreshing that she didn't immediately deny the test result, I don't think that we can find anything particularly admirable in this. In her "charming" victory speech in Hawaii, she apparently went on at length about all her hard work and thanked her coach/boyfriend Martin Malleier for making it possible. Apparently he did support her ... in the decision to start using EPO. Asked about doping in triathlon, she was quoted as saying: "In triathlon there is not so much money that the athlete would turn to doping. It's different from cycling and athletics. I believe that in triathlon one does not dope." I guess she hoped that everybody else would believe it, too.

End of the Jerome Young Story

U.S. sprinter Jerome Young has received a lifetime ban for a second doping offense. Young's drug of choice was also EPO, which is unusual for a 400m specialist. He tested positive for EPO at a meet in July 2004. He has denied using any banned substances, but previously tested positive for nandrolone (a steroid) in 1999.

This has been a very high-profile case. In an outrageous decision, the USOC exonerated Young for his 1999 positive test, allowed him to compete in Sydney (where he won a gold medal in the 4x400m relay), and did not inform the IAAF. The IAAF has since recommended that the gold medal-winning relay team be disqualified. That recommendation (but not Young's lifetime ban) has been challenged by the USOC, and the appeal will be reviewed by the CAS. And lest you feel sorry for the five "innocent" members of that relay team, note that two other members are currently serving suspensions for doping offenses after the fact.

Doping of Non-Humans

Finally, it looks like Germany is going to lose another Olympic equestrian gold. Two of their show jumping horses (Goldfever and Ringwood Cockatoo) have failed their dope tests, as recently confirmed by B sample results. I am not an expert in equestrian sports, but as I read it the gold medal in question is in the team show jumping event. Germany lost two other apparent gold medals in Athens, under protest, due to a timing violation. The gold medallist in the individual show jumping event, Cian O'Connor (IRL), has also received notice of a positive B sample test. That's the horse's sample again, not the rider's. O'Connor and his vet admit to the drug use, but deny any wrongdoing.

It is interesting to note that the IOC only takes responsibility for testing the human participants in the Games. The horse testing is managed by the International Federation for Equestrian Sports, although any decision on disqualification rests with the IOC. Since I have had to submit to a drug test before, I naturally wondered how this works for horses. Apparently urine and blood samples are taken. And yes, they make the horses pee in a cup.

Bids for 2012 Submitted

The five short-list bids for the 2012 Olympics were submitted today. This marks the start of the final evaluation stage. IOC officials will visit each of the candidate sites. The full IOC membership will choose the winner in a vote on 6 July 2005. The short list includes five candidates: London, Madrid, Moscow, New York, and Paris.

Four cities (Istanbul, Leipzig, Havana, and Rio de Janeiro) were earlier rejected and did not make the short list.

Moscow has got to be considered the longest shot here, but hell, if Atlanta can host the Olympics, I suppose anything is possible.

New York seems to have two fairly significant political problems. One, local opposition (e.g. NewYorkGames.org and Hells Kitchen Online) seems vocal and well-organized; and two, the U.S. is currently rather unpopular.

That leaves one of the big three EU capitals. The winner will be the group that can win votes from outside of Europe. I will wager that the technical and sporting merits of the three bids play very little role in the outcome this time.

Conte, Kenteris Complaining

Two unrelated yet somehow similar stories in the last week about drugs in sport.

Sunday, Kostas Kenteris spoke out to deny that he and Katerina Thanou faked their motorcycle accident in Athens this summer.

Today, Victor Conte's lawyer moved to have the case against his client dismissed. Conte is one of the defendants in the ongoing BALCO case.

The two stories may be directly related. The two Greek athletes have been implicated in the BALCO investigation by at least one source.

The other thing connecting these two stories is that neither Kenteris nor Conte is actually denying the central charge against them. Kenteris is claiming that he wasn't properly given notice for the drug test he missed in Athens. Conte is claiming miscondunct by the U.S. Attorney's office. Both legitimate legal points, and no doubt important to the individuals involved; but technicalities in the big picture. Basically, both of the accused are arguing that they aren't being given a fair trial, without denying real wrongdoing.

Canada's 2004 Performance (Part I)

I know I've missed the boat on the 2004 Olympics, and nobody in Canada cares any more ... but I have some things that I still need to get off my chest (even if nobody's reading).

Today's topic: maybe the Canadian sports "system" isn't to blame for everything.

Canadian sports fans are well aware that Canada won "only" twelve medals in Athens. There's been a lot written about this subject, some pretty insightful and some just stupid. I have quite a few thoughts about this myself. I'll present one of those today.

As noted, it is "common knowledge" that Canada had a very poor performance at the Athens Olympics. In fact, however, if we measure success by top 8 or top 12 finishes, the 2004 Olympics were Canada's best Games ever. So, why so few medals? A lot of people would see the low total as an indictment of Canada's whole approach to sports. But maybe it only means that some of our very best athletes failed to perform to their abilities.

Canada's World Champions in Athens

Perdita Felicien (Athletics)

7th, 100m Hurdles

Alexandre Despatie (Aquatics)

4th, 10m platform diving

Emilie Heymans (Aquatics)

4th, 10m platform diving

Karen Cockburn (Gymnastics)

2nd, women's trampoline

Price crew (Rowing)

5th, men's eight

Baerg Crew (Rowing)

2nd, men's coxless four

As far as I can figure out, there were six Canadian individuals or teams who entered the 2004 Olympics as the defending (2003) World Champions. These six world champions didn't do very well defending their titles in Athens (see inset), coming away with a total of two silver medals (Heymans and Despatie did win medals in other events). I know that nobody likes to accuse athletes of choking any more, and in fact I'm not going to either. My point is, the Canadian sports system helped these people become world champions in 2003, which indicates to me that there are lots of things going right. Is it really fair to blame the same sports system for their performances at the Olympics? Does it make sense to assume that they would have performed better if only they had more funding? After all, they obviously had enough funding in 2003. So what happened in 2004?

Two silvers from six world champions seems like a poor payoff to me. Add two more medals from this group, and Canada would have matched the overall performance in Sydney. And this is one area where I don't see how you can blame the national sports program. It has to come down to individual athletes or teams, and their coaches.

Welcome, Sports Fans

There's an article by Jasper Griffin in the Oct 21st issue of the New York Review of Books called "The Myth of the Olympics," an interesting but somewhat meandering journey through some of the history of the ancient Olympics Games. In case you're not familiar with the NYRB, the article is a book review / literary criticism mixed with an opportunity for the author to show off his own viewpoints and knowledge. In this case the article covers five different books.

If you are an electronic subscriber, you can read the article here, or you can purchase the single article for $4 USD. I recommend picking up the full issue at your local newsagent or library; you'll get a lot more interesting reading on current events as a bonus.

The article touches on a wide range of interesting subjects, including the rewards that awaited the winners of the ancient games, the penalties that were applied to cheaters, and the existence of a parallel but secretive competition for women.

There is a quote from the end of the review that I had not seen before. Here is an excerpt from the last paragraph of the article:

There are those, said Plato, who go to the Olympics to compete; there are those who go to watch; and there are those who go to buy and sell things. Of the three, he characteristically adds, the noblest are those who go to watch, for their activity is closest to pure contemplation, the highest activity of the human mind. It is a striking thought that in our own time many would vote to give the most honored place to the competitors ..., while others would prefer to single out the entrepeneurs who promote economic progress ... but few or none would vote for the observer, the mere spectator ... The sports fan, so patronized by the contemporary highbrow, can console himself that he has the approval of the king of philosophers.

Elsewhere I find part of this quote attributed to Aristotle, but the winner (if Google hits count as votes) appears to be Pythagoras. Any way you look at it, we thinking sports fans have some very prestigious philosophical forefathers! Here is (allegedly) a full quote (source), which is actually quite a bit deeper than Griffin describes:

Life is like a gathering at the Olympic festival, to which, having set forth from different lives and backgrounds, people flock for three motives. To compete for the glory of the crown, to buy and sell or as spectators. So in life, some enter the services of fame and others of money, but the best choice is that of these few who spend their time in the contemplation of nature, and as lovers of wisdom.

I should point out that almost nothing survives of Pythagoras' writings, so the veracity of the exact wording has to be taken with a grain of salt or two.

Plato himself was apparently an athlete as well as a scholar. I'll bet you didn't know that there is a Hall of Fame that counts Plato and former POTUS Gerald Ford among its members. If that Hall is looking for their next "ancient inductee," I could suggest Milon of Kroton, who was a pupil of Pythagoras and six times Olympic wrestling champion. Incidentally, I note that Plato and Pindar, unlike James Naismith and Arthur Ashe, are not listed as a posthumous inductees!

A Google search for "Plato Olympics" also turned up this article. If this wasn't such a fine, fine university I would accuse them of dumbing down their academic curriculum for jocks. Interesting to hear that Robert Weir is still shaping athletic careers at Stanford. He wasn't very helpful to mine.