Meeting Frédéric and Pierre Gousset

As my faithful readers have certainly noticed I am a great fan of the blog Décapassion. It is quite often a source of inspiration for me, with articles both technical and historical, to say nothing of the excellent analyses.

The blog (and the accompanying facebook page) are created by Frédéric and Pierre Gousset (father and son), two great decathlon fans. Frédéric is the author of what is probably the best book ever written on the decathlon and its heroes: Des hommes complets - la formidable histoire du pentathlon et du décathlon à travers les âges. If you can read french (even if your french is a little bit rusty) and you are a decathlon fan, the book will become your bedside book.In case you cannot find the book, try contacting directly the author (see where to find an email below).

I was planning to contact the Goussets, like, forever. But I kept postponing that since I did not have an easy way to do it. Until, one day, I discovered that the email address of Pierre was given in the clear in their facebook page. So, no more excuses, I sent immediately an email and I got an answer the very same day. Living in the same city it was very easy to meet. So we set up a meeting in a parisian café and I got to spend two most enjoyable hours in the company of Frédéric and Pierre Gousset.

My initial idea was that of an interview. But once the discussion started, it became clear that something formal was out of the question. We discovered that, when it comes to athletics, we were kindred spirits. We talked about all the matters that interest both of us: combined events (obviously) and in particular women's decathlon, scoring tables, hyperandrogenism, the coming Olympics and the fact that one has to pay upwards of 1000 euros in order to attend the two days of the decathlon. (Don't get me started on the Olympics. This is supposed to be a write-up of a very positive experience, my so nice meeting with the Goussets. So I will close this parenthesis, lest the simple mention of Olympics spoil my mood). 

One thing is clear: that was not the last meeting we are going to have with Frédéric and Pierre. Their article on how the scoring table should be modified had already spurred my interest. Will it be the kindling for a future collaboration (like the one I had with G. Purdy)? Time will tell. 

PS I was planning to post something on our meeting this week-end. Well, they beat me to the line. They already published an article in their facebook page. 

World Indoors 2024: track events

Following the World Indoors was not a walk in the park this year. World Athletics is monetising the event and has added obstacles for people who, like myself, live in a country where the championships rights are sold to a television channel. But here is the catch: in France the television was showing only the evening events but I was still locked out of the WA channel for the morning ones. The only solution I found was to use my vpn and connect to Greece were there was a full tv coverage, morning and evening. I am afraid we'll have to live with more and more of such shortsighted, fast-buck, restrictions and in the end WA will discover that fewer and fewer people care about Athletics. 

The championships were of very high level. Many athletes who are expected to play a major role in the Paris Olympics were present in Glasgow. N. Lyles went to the Indoors hoping to go back home with two gold medals and, what is perhaps more important, to appear as a convincing choice for the olympic US 4x400 m relay. He could not reach his objectives, beaten by Coleman in the 60 m dash 6.44 s to 6.41 s (and obtaining a second silver in the relay where his 45.68 s split was nothing to write home about). A. Blake was third in 6.46 s, F. Omanyala having to content himself with a fourth place. 

The women's 60 m was a superb race won by J. Alfred (I have been keeping an eye on her since last year) in 6.98 s over E. Swoboda 7.00 s (in the final but 6.98 s in the semis). A surprising Z. Dosso completed the podium in 7.05 s. B. Williams was once more a disappointment, exiting in the semis.

There was no surprise in the women's 400 m. F. Bol dominated the race and L. Klaver obtained silver for the Netherlands. Their times: 49.17 s (a new world record) and 50.16 s. The surprise came in the men's race where K. Warholm (european indoor champion last year) ran out of steam over the last metres of the race and was beaten by A. Doom 45.34 s to 45.25 s. 

The men's 800 m was won by B. Hoppel in 1:44.92 in a tactical race that saw A. Kramer beat E. Crestan for silver on the finish line. The reigning champion M. García (jostled on more than one occasions) finished last. J. Reekie was the favourite of the women's 800 m race but it turned out that she could not follow the acceleration of T. Duguma who won in 2:01.90, Reekie being second in 2:02.72. The bronze medal went to N. Yarigo who at 38 years of age is having the best years of her career. Ex-world champion H. Nakaayi did qualify for the final but she finished at last place.

In the men's 1500 m, G. Beamish entered the final stretch in 5th position but 50 m later he was the one winning the race, in 3:36.54. N. Nordas, last year's bronze medalist outdoors, was somewhat disappointing, finishing 5th. And I do not understand the choice of A. Mechaal who participated in both the 3000 and the 1500 m finishing outside the medals in both races. Had he focused on one of the two he could have brought a medal home. 

F. Hailu upgraded her 2022 silver (won in the 800 m) to gold in women's 1500 m, with 4:01.49. The two US runners N. Hiltz and E. McKay obtained silver and bronze thanks to their great finish.

The US women's success in middle distances did not stop there. E. St.-Pierre managed to out-sprint none other than G. Tsegay wining the 3000 m women's title in 8:20.87. Tsegay was second in 8:21.16, the podium being completed by B. Chepkoech in 8:22.68. She looks in great shape and I will be looking forward to her steeple races this summer. J. Kerr, the Ingebrigtsen-slayer, added S. Barega to his list in Glasgow. Only Y. Nuguse could follow his sprint and they ended first and second in 7:42.98 and 7:43.59 winning gold and silver in the men's 3000 m. S. Barega had to content himself with bronze.

C. Samba-Mayela looked ready to repeat her feat of two years ago, when she won the world title of women's 60 m hurdles in  Belgrade. However, it turned out that D. Charlton, who had recently improved the world record, was unbeatable. Charlton won in 7.65 s (a new world record) with Samba-Mayela second in 7.74 s (7.73 s in the semis). P Skryszowska was third in 7.79 s (7.78 in the semis) while N. Visser (an athlete I have been following for years) made a huge mistake on the first hurdle in the semis and could reach the final.

G. Holloway won the men's 60 m hurdles race, in 7.29 s, in his usual fluid style. M. Trajkovic (who just like Visser has been european indoor champion in the distance) did the same mistake as Visser hitting the first hurdle and finished 8th in the final.

There was no suspense for the women's 4x400 m relay. The Netherlands were the number-one favourite and went on to win the race beating the US 3:25.07 to 3:25.34. However the victory was not as easy as one would have predicted Bol not managing to out-distance A. Holmes (who even gained slightly on Bol). The bronze medal went to the UK team, led by the Nielsen twins, Laviai and Lina.

The US were the favourite for the men's 4x400 m relay title, all the more so since they had N. Lyles in their composition. But it turned out that the belgian tornados are unbeatable. And just as they have done two years ago in Belgrade (and last year in Istanbul at the Europeans) they won again thanks to the devastating 44.88 s anchor of A. Doom . They won in 3:02.54, the US finishing second in 3:02.60, the bronze medal going to the dutch team, 3:04.25.

Welcome to the Enhanced Games

I have always had the feeling that someday, somebody would do that. And it's here now. Well, to tell the truth, it will be here when the first Games will take place, something that is still not quite guaranteed. But let us start at the beginning.  

From the Enhanced.org website

There you have it: the proposal is for sports events where there will be no mandatory drug testing. Aron D'Souza, who is heading the Enhanced Games organisation is an australian businessman. He had the idea for the Enhanced Games in 2022. In his own words

Athletes are adults and they have a right to do with their body what they wish: my body, my choice. And no government, no paternalistic sports federation, should be making those decisions for athletes.

And he segued,

If we cut out all the waste, the layers of bureaucracy, the needless building of infrastructure, this event can be delivered for virtually nothing, and we can use all the surplus profits to pay the athletes.

The prize money for exceptional performances can be as high as 1 million dollars. Australian swimmer J. Magnussen (olympic medalist in 2012 and 2016 and two-time 100 m freestyle world champion) vowed to come out of retirement and "push himself to the limit" in an attempt to break the 50 m freestyle world record and pocket the million. But he remarked that "this is not for everyone, and it is certainly not something for young athletes".

According to D'Souza, the IOC is corrupt and greedy, the WADA is an anti-science police force for the IOC, the Olympic system doesn't pay athletes enough and the Olympics include too many sports that don't really matter. 

So, what he proposes is a multisport event including athletics, aquatics, gymnastics, strength and combat sports. A test event is planned for December 2024 to be held in the US (but as of today nothing definitive has been announced).  D'Souza assured the BBC that everything would be done under security measures and under clinical supervision.

According to the Enhanced.org webpage:

Enhanced acknowledges that science has always played a central role in sports. Only in the past 50 years has the advancement of performance science in professional sports been stifled. Athletes have been forced into a cat-and-mouse game with drug testing agencies like WADA, attempting to stay one step ahead of the latest oppressive and invasive testing methodologies.

Enhanced athletes embrace the human belief in scientific development, ignoring the anti-science stigma. When used correctly, the inclusion of performance enhancements can have significantly positive effects on the results of training and exercise routines. Simply put, performance enhancements augment the effects of training.

Although I am not embracing the whole Enhanced rhetoric, I have a remark on the "past 50 years" point. Those who have followed my series on amateurism myth may recall that the IOC has been for almost a century preoccupied with the question of amateurism and only when, in the eighties, they decided that accepting professional athletes would add to the value of their product, did they start caring about doping and started using the arguments about "clean" sport and shifted their efforts towards the enforcement of anti-doping rules. 

The reactions of the IOC and WADA were what one would have expected. They unanimously condemned the proposals of D'Souza. The International Fair Play Committee (I did not know that something like that existed, but apparently it was created in 1963) declared that 

[The Enhanced Games] would be devoid of any fair play and sportsmanship. Moreover, they represent a potentially catastrophic healthcare risk to its participants, as athletes and their collaborators will inevitably try to push beyond healthy limits.

Quite expectedly Lord Sebastian was dismissive. At a conference just before the World Indoor Championships, he said "I'm sure crazy things happen in other areas, we get them from time to time. I'm not losing any sleep over it". But he warned that "If anyone is stupid enough to want to take part in this, and they come from the traditional and philosophical end of our sport, they will be banned and they will be banned for a long time".

D'Souza's response was immediate. He pointed out that many leaders of the Olympic movement, some of whom he was sure Lord Coe would consider part of his team, seem to be enthusiastic and have engaged with Enhanced. He noted that the very same week the 'Enhanced Games' organised the Inaugural Conference on Human Enhancement at the House of Lords in London, which ensured that 'the government and scientific leaders present know that the future of sports science isn't nonsense' as Coe suggested. And he concluded that "Enhanced Games are inevitable".

Well, I will believe this when I see the first event organised. As to the whole idea of test-free competitions, I have no clear opinion. The article "The Dangerous Promise of the Pro-Doping Enhanced Games” in the Outside site summarises the situation in a, what I feel, non-partisan way.  They conclude with the sentence "the best argument against the Enhanced Games might be something as banal as: better the devil you know than the devil you don’t". I will certainly keep an eye open and report on this if there are any significant news.

Soviet Union and the IOC (bonus track of "the amateurism myth")

Russia was not present in the first modern Olympics in Athens (although they had entered the names of competitors). The first participation of the Russian Empire was in the Paris, 1900, Games (without much success). They appeared again in the 1908 Games, winning their first gold medal (in figure skating) as well as two silver and again in 1912 with a large team which brought home two silver and three bronze medals. Then the World War disrupted the Olympics, the February and October revolutions did away with the tsarist regime in Russia and the Russian Empire disappeared. Soviet Union was finally created in 1922. 

The initial attitude of Soviet Union towards the Olympics was a most negative one. For them , the Olympic Games was a bourgeois invention, a misogynist, colonialist, and elitist movement that served to deflect workers from class struggles. The Games were a tool of “imperialist propaganda” hidden under “hypocritical phraseology about fidelity to the idea of brotherhood and friendship of the peoples in sport”. The soviet ideal of sport was a centralised state one, with mass participation, aiming at promoting social integration and health and preparing the population for national defence. It is interesting to point out here that the soviets' ideals about sport were very close to the beliefs of de Coubertin about the moral and educative power of amateur sport.

Shunning the Olympics the soviets decided to sponsor a rival thereof, the Red Sport International. The latter was founded already in 1921 and was an affiliate of the Communist International. The first Spartakiads took place in 1923 within formations of the Red Army and the International Workers' Olympiad was held in 1925. The first all-Union Spartakiad was organised in Moscow in 1928. Again, one cannot help pointing out that these communist organisations were closer to the Coubertenian spirit of amateurism than the baron’s socially and racially exclusive, patriarchal, and increasingly commercialised Olympics.

However the attitude of the USSR towards the Olympics changed after WWII. All of a sudden Stalin realised that the propaganda tool that were the Olympics could well be turned into a vessel for soviet propaganda. And thus the self-imposed athletic isolation of Soviet Union ended. Of course this was a source of worry for princes, counts, barons, generals, and wealthy businessmen that composed the IOC. Already at the end of the War, Edström, the IOC president, had remarked that the great  problem will be the question of Russia. (That was somewhat hypocritical, since the thorny problem was how to deal with the members of Nazi and Fascist parties already members of the IOC). 

But, in practice there has been no opposition to the admission of the USSR in the IOC. Even a die-hard anti-communist like Brundage declared already in 1944, that "if the Russians would agree to live up to the rules and regulations of the Federations and the International Olympic Committee there is no reason why they should not be members". The problem is that the Russians were not eager to agree with these rules and regulations. The soviet athletes were supported by the state and their exceptional performances rewarded. Moreover while the Olympic Charter required a complete separation between the state and the national Olympic committee this was something totally impossible in USSR. Brundage himself recognised this in 1950, wondering "how there can be a Russian Olympic Committee that is autonomous". But Brundage being essentially a hypocrite, he did not hesitate to defend the USSR, once the latter was a member of the IOC with himself at the presidency. Returning for a trip to the Soviet Union, Brundage, when challenged by a USOA representative concerning material rewards to athletes, he replied "I was told by the Russians that they know the Olympic rules and follow them".

In 1946, Edström wrote to N. Romanov, who was the chairman of the All-Union Soviet Sports Committee, that “your country’s sports organisation must adhere to the rules and amateur regulations of their respective international sports federations and an Olympic committee must be formed in Moscow”. The letter went unanswered but in 1947, Romanov formally applied for membership to the IAAF (that was the name of World Athletics at that time). But the application came with some special demands. They asked that russian become an official language of the IAAF, that a seat be reserved to UUSR in the executive council and also that Spain (ruled by Franco's fascists government) be expelled. Lord Burghley, president of the IAAF refused and, surprisingly, the soviets dropped their demands. Lord Burghley then travelled to Russia where he obtained reassurances that the existing soviet policy of remunerating athletes had been abolished and that the (western) rules of amateurism were accepted. So he endorsed the soviet application and moreover agreed to grant amnesty to russian athletes who had previously received cash payments.

Soviet Union did not participate in the London, 1948, Games (but were represented by a special emissary). Finally in 1951 it was announced that Soviet Union had formed an Olympic Committee. The president was C. Andrianov, a high-ranking Communist Party official and former head of the Moscow Sports Union. He did not speak any of the IOC official languages. In 1951 (almost unanimously with only three abstentions and no vote against) USSR was officially invited to join the IOC. And, pronto, the Russians announced that they would name their own IOC members. Edström was most unhappy with this but he could not do anything: if he rejected Andrianov, who would the IOC elect in his place? So, Andrianov was elected and a year later A. Romanov joined him.

Brundage, who succeeded Edström, was under the illusion that, given time, the Soviets would learn to respect the Olympic principles and abandon the professional character of communist sport. He tried desperately to avoid the nationalism pervading everything during the Cold War era. He even prohibited Olympic medal tables and proposed (without success) to replace national anthems with the Olympic hymn. Alas, contrary to our baron's teachings, everybody believed that winning was more important than taking part.

The soviets were masters of misdirection, playing a game of silence, ignorance, and denial. “Calumniatory accusals of soviet sportsmen in ‘professionalism,’ by some representatives of foreign press”, Andrianov decried, “do not contribute to the strengthening of friendly relations between the sportsmen of all countries and to the rising of the authority of the Olympic Movement". And he counter-attacked by stating that “America has the most professionals of all”, which is fact may be true. And the British regularly lent support to the Soviets, warning that the commercial orientation of collegiate sport “makes the United States’ representatives so vulnerable, when they talk about amateurism”.

Thus Soviet Union became a member of the IOC and would participate in all the Games from 1952 to 1988 (the Soviet Union was dissolved in 1991) with one notable exception, that of the 1984 Games, a retaliatory move after the USA boycott of the 1980, Moscow, Games. But the story of the boycotts should better be told on some other occasion.