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19/11/2021

Tour de France crash: Legal action not worth disrupting the long history of fan involvement
Calamity marred the opening stage of the 2021 Tour de France, with two harrowing crashes in the final 45km of the stretch from Brest to Landernau.

The second of the two was a “normal” cycling crash – one rider’s wheels clipped another, causing a mass pile up and leaving two riders unable to continue.

But it was the first incident that has been controversial due to its cause – a roadside spectator’s homemade cardboard sign. French police have arrested the fan whose sign interfered with the race, causing German rider Tony Hans-Joachim Martin to swerve into other riders and bring down most of the peloton. The fan holding the sign that read “Allez Omi Opi!” (roughly translated as “Go Grandpa and Grandma”) left the scene, and Belgian rider Jasper Stuyven later tweeted “I hope Omi & Opi are proud of you.”

Race deputy director Pierre-Yves Thouault announced organisers’ plans to take legal action against the fan: “We are suing this woman who behaved so badly. We are doing this so that the tiny minority of people who do this don’t spoil the show for everyone.”
The spectator was clearly careless, looking the wrong way and creating an obstruction with her sign, but it is questionable whether legal action is either realistic or sensible. A huge attraction of the Tour, which is economically important for host cities, is the shared experience of its history and culture among spectators, and with that, the possibility of crashes.

Spectators and speeding objects
In 1994, a policeman stepped out to take a photograph around a corner, causing a crash and several rider injuries. Five years later, Giuseppe Guerini crashed into another spectator standing in the middle of the road taking a picture.

In 2006, it was again cardboard that was the cause of an injury, when Norwegian rider Thor Hushovd was cut by a green cardboard hand waved by a spectator. Ironically, these “hands” had been given out by one of the sponsors.

These incidents are almost inevitable given the proximity of spectators to the fast-travelling riders. The Tour is a huge affair, taking place over 23 days with 21 stages covering 3,500km. It attracts somewhere between 10 and 12 million spectators annually, making it France’s second most popular tourist attraction behind Disneyland Paris.

Of course, there is potential to cause harm whenever you pair sports spectators with fast-moving objects. However, in other sports the injury is normally to the viewers – especially if they stray onto the track. In January 2021, a racegoer entered the Wellington Cup racetrack in New Zealand, narrowly avoiding injury as the horses sped past him.

The most infamous racecourse example was the death of suffragette Emily Davison who was killed by King George V’s horse Anmer at the 1913 Epsom Derby as she made a political protest.
Regulating on the roads
Leaving aside the cultural history of spectator involvement, it is the Tour’s sheer enormity that makes strict crowd control challenging, especially in more remote viewing areas. It is particularly difficult for organisers to control and regulate events that take place on public roads where fans have easy access and can get close to the action.

There are many examples aside from the Tour de France in motor sports, such as the infamous and often deadly Isle of Man TT races and the Monaco Grand Prix. The 24 hours of Le Mans combines a private track and public roads – this event was the site of the worst motor sport disaster, killing 83 spectators in 1955.

In the case of the Tour de France, the potential danger of mixing speeding cyclists and spectators is trumped by the historic, cultural link between the public and the race. This dimension is part of what makes the Tour de France a globally beloved event, and any legal action against the fan will not have a positive outcome. Barriers cannot be installed everywhere, so self-policing is fundamental, but people will always do careless things. No doubt the mystery fan, who will undoubtedly be embarrassed and appalled at the outcome of her actions, will be found and castigated on social media.

Little is to be gained by legal action – though the threat alone may have the desired effect of reminding spectators of their responsibilities. Of the two crashes on stage one of the Tour, the one caused by the careless fan led to one rider withdrawing. But the other accident – caused by riders – led to two cyclists leaving the tour. Crashes are part of the event, however they happen.

Doug Ryder, team principal of African team Qhubeka NextHash, disagreed with the race promoter’s intention to pursue the viewer. “A good conversation has to take place, but I don’t think suing … can help,” he said. “But people need to realise that the speed is high and focus on the riders not on a screen or a moment of glory.”

This incident is a reminder of both the thrill of the close physical relationship between fan and rider, and also the potential risks to both parties. But it is not an area where the law needs to become unnecessarily involved.

Update: The original version of this article said that “the French police are now seeking the fan whose sign interfered with the race”. The article has been update to reflect the fact that the fan, suspected of causing the fall, has been arrested.

19/11/2021

Banned from the Tokyo Olympics for pot? Let the athletes decide what drugs should be allowed
The recent suspension of American sprinter Sha’Carri Richardson, who was supposed to be heading to the Tokyo Olympic Games, for testing positive for ma*****na has once again raised questions about what drugs should be banned from sports.

Richardson’s suspension is seen by many as an absurd case — namely, the idea of ma*****na enhancing the performance in the 100-metre sprint. But as President Joe Biden noted: “The rules are the rules.” And Richardson herself has admitted being responsible for her actions.

But why is a recreational drug like ma*****na on the banned substances list in the first place? And should we be reviewing this list because they seem like “such ridiculous and cruel standards”?

There are some with more extreme views on doping. They take a position that could be called pharmaceutical libertarianism — just stop this silly testing game, which costs a great deal of money that could be wisely spent elsewhere in the world of sport.
Some PEDs are minor
Certainly, many of the hundreds of banned substances are really minor when it comes to performance enhancement. But there are also some, like the potential use of gene doping, that make taking steroids look like eating Smarties.

The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) came into being in 1999, shortly after the famous 1998 Tour de France Festina scandal when civil authorities stepped in for the first time to lay charges for doping.

At the time the first banned list was created, I was director for ethics and education at WADA and I attended some of those early meetings of the agency. There was no question the United States was not going to sign on the World Anti-Doping Code (WADC) unless ma*****na was on the banned list. At that time, Gen. Barry McCaffrey, the director of the U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy, wanted the code to deal with recreational drugs too, which were part of his office’s mandate.

Caffeine was also on the banned list at the time because of pressure from South American representatives, who didn’t have the money to run an educational campaign to combat an abuse problem in the region. They wanted WADA to deal with the issue instead. Caffeine was eventually taken off the list, but not before some athletes lost their medals for its use.
There have been political interests involved, and also potential conflicts of interest, because the more things there are to test for, the more money the accredited labs can make from those tests (which can cost more than $1,000 per test).

19/11/2021

How the COVID-19 delay of the Tokyo Olympics helped some athletes break records
After an unprecedented delay due to a once-in-a-century global health crisis, the Tokyo Games are finally ready to begin. Yet the athletes, like the Games themselves, have changed.

The year of lockdowns, isolation, and the threat — or reality — of catching COVID-19 and losing friends and loved ones has been daunting for athletes. Some, willingly or not, retired early, while others recalibrated and kept going.

And some are thriving.
Last year sports psychiatrist Carla Edwards and I wrote about how athlete mental health was front and centre during the pandemic. Athletes aren’t immune to COVID-19 and its effects.

For more than a few, however, the extra year has been a chance to demonstrate their creativity and inspire us with their resilience.

Evidence of improvement
We are starting to see evidence of maintenance or improvement in performance emerge in sport and exercise medicine research (in countries like Norway, Italy and Spain), and in the results as sport has resumed.

Despite the hardships, those of us in sport have noticed that the pandemic has provided many athletes the chance to recover, recharge and recommit.

Damian Warner, a Canadian track star and Rio 2016 Olympic bronze medallist, had said he was disappointed with his results at the 2019 world track and field championships after recovering from two sprained ankles.
The world stopped
By early 2020, Warner was once again in the best shape of his life, but then the world stopped. As talk of Olympic postponement became reality, Warner rallied to his training, embracing what he could not change.

“I think I’ll just be a little bit healthier with one more year,” Warner told CBC last April. “From last year to this year my discus and shot put improved… so if I take another year to continue to hone and continue to improve those skills, I think they can be even better next year.”

In May, he set three new decathlon bests in the 100 metres, long jump and 110-metre hurdles — earning a new Canadian record for overall points (8,995), the third highest of all time.

Remarkable improvements
A year ago, the New York Times reported on the phenomenon of athletes thriving through lockdown.

Their list of examples included four Olympians and Olympic hopefuls who all showed remarkable improvements during the lockdowns precipitated by the pandemic’s first wave in the spring of 2020: 2016 American Olympic champion shot-putter Ryan Crouser; the 16-year-old aspiring U.S. Olympic swimmer Claire Curzon; American discus thrower Valarie Allman; and Ugandan Olympic middle distance runner Joshua Cheptegei.

19/11/2021

19/11/2021