Yet another obituary!
I hadn’t thought about Jim Baxter for years but it was his name that came to mind when I was trying to, think of whom Carvalho of Chelsea reminds me. Carvalho doesn’t appear to have Baxter’s endearing cheekiness, borne of his obvious joy in sharing his gifts with the crowd, but Carvalho has that unhurried precision of movement that is reminiscent of Baxter. Of contemporary players, the only one who has a similar spirit is Ronaldinho. Besides televised games, such as the bravura 1967 performance against England that most writers are justly mentioning, I saw him play live for Sunderland against United. He was a joy to watch. A truly unique, great player.
The Ronaldinho connection reminds me of how football is a kind of universal language. Poor kids from around the world, growing up in tough, tough places learn to express themselves as artists with the ball. I’ve always, I admit, found the Scots particularly interesting in this regard. In my mind, Scots produce among the toughest and the greatest finesse players. In the latter category, besides Baxter we have Alex Young and in the former players like Ian Ure and Billy Bremner. Paddy Crerand was a combination. Not that Baxter couldn’t take a knock. He could; it’s just that the ball artist in him predominated.
I’ll have a Glenmorangie to your memory, Jim.
Thursday, February 17, 2005
Wednesday, February 09, 2005
Steroids Rant
The latest advance leak of Jose Canseco’s forthcoming book focuses on supposedly shocking revelations about steroids use among baseball players, including Mark McGuire. The non-denial denials are amusing. Several notables have leapt to Mark McGuire’s defence by pointing out that he spent hours working out.
I may have this wrong but I thought the entire point of taking steroids was so that you can work out more. This is why I’ve never understood what the fuss is about. If people want to push their bodies beyond “normal” limits in training and to use chemicals to help them do this, what’s the problem? Steroids don’t make anyone faster, better coordinated or even stronger. The don't help Barry Bonds or anyone else hit a baseball travelling at 95 miles per hour. They just allow people to train longer and more intensively.
Steroids and other drug controversies in athletics are just a perpetuation of the hoary traditions of “sham amateurism”. Drugs just replaced money as the forbidden ingredient in athletic accomplishment. As for the harm the drugs do, well, people do a lot of harm to themselves and others in the pursuit of ambition. The worst harm is done by those for whom power itself is a drug. Athletes are pretty low on the scale of causers of collateral damage. Unfortunately a lot of people have now built careers, reputations and businesses around drug testing.
One of these is Dick Pound, the uber-lord of the international drug testing cartel. I’ve always suspected that Pound set up Ben Johnson back in Korea in 1988. Those with long memories may recall that there was a lot of talk about someone spiking Johnson’s water. Here’s my theory.
Start with the hypothesis that the IOC muckamucks wanted to hand someone’s head on a platter to the media to prove they were “cracking down”. Who better than the winner of the signature event, the 100 meters? All the better that this would hand a likely victory to poster-boy Carl Lewis, who was fiercely protected from his now-admitted drug use by the US Olympic godfathers. All it need was for someone in the Canadian establishment to agree to make Johnson the fallguy. Step forward Mr Pound, eager to please the IOC cabal. The Canadian Olympic mafia never liked the renegade Francis and the inarticulate Johnson, well – he was from the Caribbean.
Under the testing protocols of the era, it wasn’t enough to find the metabolic breakdown chemicals from known steroids in the urine; there had to be a “smoking gun”, evidence of the steroid from which the chemicals could have been derived. Charlie Francis, Johnson’s coach, was too smart to have allowed his protégé to take nandralone, or whatever, within a critical period (say two weeks) of the Olympics. So, spike the water, do the test and the rest is history.
I’m not a big athletics fan and I’m now a distinct non-fan of the Lords of the Rings and their periodic circus. Yet Johnson’s run in the final at the Seoul Olympics is among the most exciting sports events I’ve witnessed. Dulce et decorum est pro dux veritas. All the tawdry accomplishments of the Pounds and Rogges of this World are nothing compared to burning off the World’s best over 100meters in 9.87 sec. If that’s all Ben can take away that’s still a lot more than the great majority of us.
The latest advance leak of Jose Canseco’s forthcoming book focuses on supposedly shocking revelations about steroids use among baseball players, including Mark McGuire. The non-denial denials are amusing. Several notables have leapt to Mark McGuire’s defence by pointing out that he spent hours working out.
I may have this wrong but I thought the entire point of taking steroids was so that you can work out more. This is why I’ve never understood what the fuss is about. If people want to push their bodies beyond “normal” limits in training and to use chemicals to help them do this, what’s the problem? Steroids don’t make anyone faster, better coordinated or even stronger. The don't help Barry Bonds or anyone else hit a baseball travelling at 95 miles per hour. They just allow people to train longer and more intensively.
Steroids and other drug controversies in athletics are just a perpetuation of the hoary traditions of “sham amateurism”. Drugs just replaced money as the forbidden ingredient in athletic accomplishment. As for the harm the drugs do, well, people do a lot of harm to themselves and others in the pursuit of ambition. The worst harm is done by those for whom power itself is a drug. Athletes are pretty low on the scale of causers of collateral damage. Unfortunately a lot of people have now built careers, reputations and businesses around drug testing.
One of these is Dick Pound, the uber-lord of the international drug testing cartel. I’ve always suspected that Pound set up Ben Johnson back in Korea in 1988. Those with long memories may recall that there was a lot of talk about someone spiking Johnson’s water. Here’s my theory.
Start with the hypothesis that the IOC muckamucks wanted to hand someone’s head on a platter to the media to prove they were “cracking down”. Who better than the winner of the signature event, the 100 meters? All the better that this would hand a likely victory to poster-boy Carl Lewis, who was fiercely protected from his now-admitted drug use by the US Olympic godfathers. All it need was for someone in the Canadian establishment to agree to make Johnson the fallguy. Step forward Mr Pound, eager to please the IOC cabal. The Canadian Olympic mafia never liked the renegade Francis and the inarticulate Johnson, well – he was from the Caribbean.
Under the testing protocols of the era, it wasn’t enough to find the metabolic breakdown chemicals from known steroids in the urine; there had to be a “smoking gun”, evidence of the steroid from which the chemicals could have been derived. Charlie Francis, Johnson’s coach, was too smart to have allowed his protégé to take nandralone, or whatever, within a critical period (say two weeks) of the Olympics. So, spike the water, do the test and the rest is history.
I’m not a big athletics fan and I’m now a distinct non-fan of the Lords of the Rings and their periodic circus. Yet Johnson’s run in the final at the Seoul Olympics is among the most exciting sports events I’ve witnessed. Dulce et decorum est pro dux veritas. All the tawdry accomplishments of the Pounds and Rogges of this World are nothing compared to burning off the World’s best over 100meters in 9.87 sec. If that’s all Ben can take away that’s still a lot more than the great majority of us.
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