A Pipe Dream

In Canada, if you don’t deliver in 21 years, you’re out of luck. We’re tough that way.

Such was the case with Kevin Pipe, relived from his duties as Chief Operating Officer of the CSA last week. The interesting thing about this isn’t that Pipe was let go--he was more or less seen as the devil by the few people in this country who actually care about the sport domestically.

No, what’s amazing is that the bloated, bickering, not-interested-in-anything-unless-it-benefits-themselves bureaucracy that runs Canadian soccer actually had the gumption to do something.

During the 21 years that Pipe ran things, soccer grew from a niche sport played by the children of immigrants, to something much bigger. As you likely have heard, there are more people registered in soccer in Canada that there are people registered in hockey (a misleading statistic and a topic for another day).

However, the performance of the Canadian national team went from playing in the World Cup, to being ranked a bit behind Oman in the men’s ranking (Women’s soccer is doing much better, but Canada’s performance has slipped there in recent years as well).

Despite that freefall, Pipe remained. During the last two decades, if pressed, he would talk about the participation rates and would lament the lack of investment in the game by corporate Canada. He--and thre CSA--rarely took any blame him/themselves.

So, you can understand how stunned people were when Pipe’s firing was announced. “No,” people said, “The CSA can’t be looking in the mirror, can it?”

It’s hard to say, but it is clear that something had to give. The purpose of an organization like the CSA is to produce, develop and foster elite teams. The failure of the men’s national team to qualify for the World Cup during a time when the participation rates in the sport was skyrocketing is, if not unacceptable, then at least exceptionally hard to understand.

And make no mistake. Making a World Cup would benefit everyone, from the four-year-olds chasing butterflies on your neighbourhood pitch, to the elite kid looking to play at a high-level without having to leave the country.

Is firing Kevin Pipe the magic bullet? No, but bringing in a fresh face is a start.

That is if the CSA is interested in a truly fresh face. That's not something that should be taken for granted.

This is a story that we will be keeping an eye on.

Too Young or Too Old

There's been a bit of a controversy brewing around Olympic figure skating — surprise, surprise. This time, the story is the exclusion of Japanese prodigy Mao Asada. Asada has been one of the best skaters in the world this year, winning gold at the Grand Prix final. Unfortunately for the Japanese, Asada is just barely 15 years old — old enough for senior international competitions like the Grand Prix, but too young to compete in the Olympics.

The IOC, I should point out, is not making the rules here; the athlete eligibility criteria are set by the IFs. Figure skating has a minimum age limit only because the ISU sets one. Despite the fact that one of the world's best figure skaters will be unable to compete at the Olympics, ISU officials have stated that there will be no exception, and no rule change, which is as it should be. To modify the rules at this late date, or to make an exception for a single athlete, would be unfair to everybody. But what is this rule all about in the first place?

The age limit is ostensibly for the protection of the athletes, but as this editorial by Philip Hersh points out, it isn't clear that the ISU has thought this through:

"This is a rule based on medical aspects and not a technical one," [ISU President Ottavio] Cinquanta said.

The idea behind that statement is laudable. Rushing young skaters to senior championship competition, with its multiple triple jumps, is dangerous at ages when growth plates have not fused. Young bodies are subject to even more pressure under the new judging system, which rewards programs jammed with technical demands and jumps late in the program.

Yet skaters already are doing the same demanding technical elements, especially jumps, to compete on the senior Grand Prix level and, in many cases, to compete at the junior level. This is especially true of prepubescent girls, whose hipless, small-chested bodies often have the perfect strength-weight ratio to pull off jump after jump.

The risk of long-term physical damage from such repetitive pounding is well documented. Less evident is how that can be compounded physically and mentally when skaters face the frustration of trying to keep doing those jumps with the changed center of gravity and proportions of a woman's body.

If the ISU really were concerned about skaters' health, it would severely limit the number of triple jumps women (and, to a lesser extent, men) can do in competition, especially before they reach the senior level.

Asada did 11 jumps — six triples, including the difficult triple axel, and five doubles, four in combinations after triples — in her free skate at the Grand Prix Final. To get extra credit, she did seven of the jumps in the second half of the four-minute program, when fatigue makes the body more susceptible to injury. It is plainly absurd to say Asada is old enough to do that in December but not in February …

I don't have a lot to add. It may be a good thing to prevent young athletes from doing lots of jumps, but this rule doesn't seem to accomplish that goal.

And as long as we're on the topic of eligibility rules and IFs, here's some soccer news that's a few weeks old; FIFA is planning to eliminate the loophole that allows men's football teams to bring three over-age players to the Olympics. The men's football competition at the Olympic Games will become strictly an under-23 tournament. In this case, FIFA is protecting the health of its brand rather than the health of its athletes; they are only interested in the supremacy of the World Cup, and won't let the world's best play anywhere else.

Not-So-United Kingdom

As host nation for the 2012 summer Olympics, Great Britain has an automatic spot in all of the team sport tournaments. You might expect that soccer, in particular, would be a medal hope for the UK. You'd be wrong, though — Great Britain has not even entered the Olympic tournament since 1972.

UK at the Olympics

Great Britain last competed in the Olympic soccer tournament in 1972. In 1974 the English FA abolished the formal distinction between professional and amateur soccer players. This left all English players ineligible for the Olympics, which were then only open to amateurs.

In more recent times, the various national associations have been reluctant to field a Great Britain team at the Olympics because they were nervous for their independent status within FIFA, and specifically for the World Cup.

Britain's Olympic History - The FA

The major stumbling block is that while the Olympic team competes under the British flag, England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland are fiercely separate entities in soccer.

A few weeks ago FIFA president Sepp Blatter stated that Great Britain would field men's and women's soccer teams for the 2012 Olympic Games. There are some wrinkles to be ironed out, but England coach Sven Goran Eriksson and other English soccer officials are behind the idea, and it looks ready to go ahead.

Somebody forgot to send the Scots the memo, though; now Scottish fans want their own Olympic team for 2012. Not just for soccer, mind you, but for everything — and they think they've found a loophole. The Olympic Charter states:

Although most national Olympic committees are from nations, the IOC also recognises independent territories, commonwealths, protectorates and geographical areas.

They're right, of course; Puerto Rico, for example, sends its own team, and there have been numerous other examples of "geographical areas" like the so-called Unified Team in the 1992 games.

And of course, if it's a good idea for Scotland, it must be a good idea for Wales, too. Watch for Northern Ireland's petition in the next few days.

Incidentally, the Welsh article references one of the world's most abused performance measures, the medals-per-capita scoring system:

For a small nation [Wales] have always punched above our weight at international competitions - achieving greater success per head of population than any other country in the UK at Manchester's 2002 Commonwealth Games.

That reminds me of a story, and of course begs a few good charts, but that will have to wait for another day.