19 July, 2016

A great article by Swift_Girl

Those who follow my blog have certainly already encountered references to Louise Caraher's work. She has a very active twitter account interacting with plenty of people. If you are an athletics fan I suggest that you start following her tweets. There was for instance this remark on Felix with which I agree 100 %


Her feelings for J. Gatlin are encapsulated in her photo.


Today I am not going to bother you with Gatlin but just draw your attention to her excellent article which appeared in her blog:

Problems in Athletics & an Exercise in Cognitive Dissonance

Her point is that Athletics are a mess and she identifies four main problems:

1. Governance,
2. Doping,
3. CAS ruling on hyperandrogenism, and
4. Nationality hopping.

I couldn't put it better. Those are the things that are plaguing us today.

We are hearing that L. Diack, IAAF's ex-president, was involved in misappropriation of resources. But, Sir Sebastian, the current president, was vice-president at that time. How come he never suspected anything?

Doping is a major issue and I am afraid that Russia is just the tip of the iceberg.

The CAS ruling on hyperandrogenism is simply destroying women's track and field. Just two days ago we saw Semenya run an 800 m in 1:55 slowing down in the end. What are we going to do when she wins in Rio and breaks Kratoshvilova's world record?

Nationality hopping is becoming a major issue for Europe. When the only countries practicing this were Bahrein or the Emirates nobody seemed to care. I am afraid that it might be too late already.

I am not going to repeat all her arguments here. I strongly suggest that you head over to the swiftgirlathletics blog and read her article for yourself. 

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