1981 – A Sporting Chance
Once again, I had embraced a comfortable myth about the past, only having to reject it after paying more attention! The myth concerns sport and the importance of the rules. As I read about a famous sporting incident in 1981, I had concluded this event might have been one of the first breaches in the wall of doing the right thing.
That year, the third series of the World One Day International cricket tournament was being held in Australia. Australia and New Zealand were battling for supremacy. Playing at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, the two teams were at the end of the final match, and the New Zealanders could tie the series if they won the game. Trevor Chappell is about to bowl the last ball of the match: if the New Zealand batsman hits a six, they win and the series is a tie; anything less, Australia wins. The Australian cricket captain, Greg Chappell, Trevor’s older brother, walks over to give him instructions and, to everyone’s amazement, Trevor bowls underarm, rolling the ball along the pitch like a bowling ball, making it impossible for the New Zealand batsman to score the needed runs for victory. Unable to score, the frustrated batsman threw his bat away and Australia won the match.
At the time, like many on both sides of the Tasman, I considered this was cheating. It was only later I discovered that bowling underarm was within the laws of cricket at the time, even though it was generally considered a historic leftover, unsportsmanlike and certainly not to be used regularly at any level (except, possibly, in very junior games). I was also surprised to learn both umpires had been advised that the final ball would be delivered underarm.
Much has been written about what took place. At the time, one of the Australian players had not walked to his place on the field, and the delivery should have been declared a no-ball. No matter. Then, as now, umpires’ decisions are final. Others argued it was against the spirit of the game. Ian Chappell, older brother to Greg and Trevor, and a former Australian captain, was said to have called out “No, Greg, no, you can’t do that”, while another former Australian captain, Richie Benaud, then a television commentator, described the incident as “one of the worst things I have ever seen done on a cricket field”. Yet another pundit suggested “One-Day cricket died yesterday. Greg Chappell should be buried with it.” Even Prime Ministers got in on the act. New Zealand’s leader, Robert Muldoon, stated it was “the most disgusting incident I can recall in the history of cricket … an act of true cowardice and I consider it appropriate that the Australian team were wearing yellow”. Rather more mildly, Australia’s PM, Malcolm Fraser observed it was “contrary to the traditions of the game”.
Back in 1981, like many others I thought this was a signal moment in sport. Here was behaviour that brought the venerable game of cricket, the Australian team, and Greg Chappell into disrepute. It wasn’t cheating, but it was against the ‘spirit’ of the game. Living in Australia, I felt bad. It wasn’t just that incident, but it was as if sport had crossed a threshold, and winning had become more important playing by the rules and standards of the game.
Surely, the next few decades were to prove me right. What examples would you like? The year before Rosie Ruiz had won the 1980 Boston Marathon for women, cutting 20 minutes off her previous best time. However, doing so raised questions, and enquiries revealed she had left the race, and taken a subway to a point much further along the race, several miles later, where she had re-joined the runners! She was disqualified and stripped of her title. Easily found out, but Ruiz denies cheating to this day. Not a compelling example? Let’s move on to a more familiar topic, the use of banned performance enhancing drugs.
Among so many examples, possibly one of the most disappointing was Lance Armstrong. A professional cyclist, Armstrong had contracted testicular cancer in 1995, still at an early phase of his career. Since his cancer was discovered at a relatively late stage in its progress, the prognosis had been poor. However, after been treated with a cocktail of drugs, by 1997 he was declared cancer free, and in 1998 he was back racing. The following year he won the Tour De France, a remarkable result, which he was to repeat for six successive years. An extraordinary achievement, but to do so as a cancer survivor made him a popular hero, and an inspiration to countless thousands of young people. Over the course of his seven wins, he became a national figure, even known as a friend of former President George W Bush.
For much of his career, Armstrong had faced persistent allegations of doping. In 2004, two reporters had published L.A. Confidential, a book alleging Armstrong had used performance-enhancing drugs since 1995 while a member of the Motorola team, a claim denied by the other team members. It also printed allegations about how he had avoided a positive test for corticosteroid use. He denied the claims. In August 2005 L’Équipe, a French daily sports newspaper, reported urine samples taken from the cyclist during the 1999 Tour de France had tested positive for erythropoietin (EPO). While it is a naturally occurring human substance, testing was able to discriminate if the samples were artificial. Armstrong immediately issued a denial: “I will simply restate what I have said many times: I have never taken performance enhancing drugs.” By 2012, the flood of information about his drug use was overwhelming, and the US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) formally charged him with taking part in a massive doping ring. He didn’t appeal the findings and was stripped of all his achievements from August 1998 onward, including his seven Tour de France titles. Fans were heartbroken, and many were not convinced, but next, in a January 2013 Oprah Winfrey interview, he reversed course and made a ‘limited confession’ to doping. Astonishingly, in a 2015 interview he said if it was still 1995, he would “probably do it again”.
You must be aware the list of sports stars using illegal drugs is enormous. While Lance Armstrong is one of the most notorious, in the 1988 Olympics sprinter Ben Johnson set a new world record in the 100-meter dash with a time of 9.79 seconds. 24 hours later, he was stripped of his title after failing a drug test. In 2000, at the Sydney Olympics, Marion Jones won three gold medals and two bronze medals, only to lose them all when she was found to have used steroids (she was also sentenced to six months in jail for lying to federal agents). Jones was one of the users of a previously undetectable designer steroid, terahydrogestrinone (THG). Once a test was developed, some 550 existing urine samples from athletes were tested and 20 tested positive, of which was one from Marion Jones.
Yes, I could see that around the beginning of the 1980s, cheating in sport had emerged. Except, of course, I was wrong. Enhancing performance by any possible means has a long history. After a little research I discovered by the third century BC, Greek Olympic athletes were using such stimulants as brandy, wine, hallucinogenic mushrooms, and sesame seeds. Roman gladiators also took stimulants to overcome fatigue and injury. The organs of animals and humans were ingested to improve strength, vitality, and bravery. While cheating was severely punished in the early Olympics (one penalty was enslavement), back then enhancing performance by consuming various substances was not considered cheating.
It took modern medicine to increase the range of additives to improve ‘natural’ performance. Taking stimulants to enhance energy use, application and recovery in sporting competition grew in popularity, and experiments with the effects of hormones also began to identify new ways to cheat. Charles-Édouard Brown-Sequard’s “Elixir of Life”, which consisted of testosterone drained from the gonads of dogs, rabbits, sheep, guinea pigs, and other animals, is claimed to be the earliest known performance-enhancing drug in American professional sports, made famous when Jim ‘Pud’ Galvin, a Pittsburgh Allegheny’s baseball pitcher, downed it before a game in 1889. He won the game, proof of the elixir’s efficacy!
The flood gates were now wide open. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, swimmers, distance runners, sprinters, and others began using various “doping recipes” to gain a competitive edge. Some were risky. Boxers of the day swallowed strychnine tablets and mixtures of brandy and cocaine. In the 1904 Olympic marathon, when Thomas Hicks was beginning to show signs of failing, he was administered two injections of sulphate of strychnine by his trainer, chased down by large glasses of brandy. He won gold but nearly died. He was lucky; many others weren’t. Various mixtures of strychnine, heroin, cocaine, and caffeine were in use by the 1920s, but no attempt was made to conceal these practices, as they still weren’t considered cheating, although the drug recipes were closely guarded secrets.
By World War II, a new source of advantage appeared. Many soldiers, from both the Allies and the Axis sides, had begun using amphetamines. Once they returned from the war, these and other drugs quickly became ingested in many types of sport. In the 1950s, the Soviet Olympic team experimented with testosterone supplements to increase strength and power. Notoriously, from 1974, the German Democratic Republic (GDR) sports federation had a mandatory state doping policy for athletes as young as 10, often without their knowledge, and by 1978, East German athletes in every sport except sailing were receiving anabolic steroids. Lance Armstrong had been late to the practice, as cycling had been drug-ridden since the 19th century and played a key role in the explosion of stimulant use after World War II. In the 1950s, British cyclist Jock Andrews joked, “You need never go off-course chasing the peloton in a big race. Just follow the trail of empty syringes and dope wrappers.” [i] .
It wasn’t all about drugs. Other forms of cheating have been practiced as long as there have been competitions. Bowling underarm in cricket is only one, late contender. One of my favourites was to read about a German competitor, Dora Ratjen, who finished fourth in the women’s high jump at the 1936 Olympics. Nothing remarkable – except soon after competing it was discovered Ratjen was male! He lived the rest of his life as Heinrich Ratjen. Men performing as women in sport has a long history, too.
To cheat, to seek advantage in any possible way, whether this is by performance enhancing drugs, twisting the rules, or simply lying, all this has been going on for a long time. Why were the cricket commentators so outraged in 1981, let alone the politicians? After all, back in 1932, cricket had witnessed another legal but unsportsmanlike tactic. In the ‘bodyline’ controversy, the ball was delivered as fast as possible at the batsman, rather than the wicket, hoping that in defending himself, the batsman might deflect the ball with his bat and be caught out. Intimidating and physically threatening, it was considered unacceptable in the ‘gentleman’s game’, and the controversy even threatened diplomatic relations between the UK and Australia. Now, bowling ‘bouncers’ is considered a normal tactic!
Perhaps the key word here is ‘unfair’. It takes us to an interesting phrase: a sporting chance. What is a sporting chance? Its synonyms are a good chance, a fair chance, a fighting chance, all other things being equal then it could happen. Without the unfair advantage of drugs or trickery, then then everyone has a sporting chance to win. Except they don’t! In reality, competitors in a road race, a cricket match, a football match or in the high jump all face the same problem: each competitor is naturally different and may have an inherent advantage over others. If that’s the case, if some are already more likely to win, why not increase that likelihood by any means you can, or alternatively, try to eliminate such differences?
An example of an attempt to reduce advantages is the Stawell Gift, Australia’s oldest and richest short distance running race. Held at Easter in Australia’s western Victoria, the 120 metres race is run on grass up a slight gradient. Competitors are handicapped, placed between 0 metres and 10 metres or more from the starting line so that, in theory, each should reach the finish line at the same time. On this basis, the winner will be the runner who can ‘rise to the occasion’ and perform better than their previous form, as shown in the heats.
Sounds good? The trouble is race winners are often those that are best able to beat (or trick?) the handicapper. To do that they need to perform well enough to qualify in the heats for the finals but do so below the best speed of which they are capable, thereby obtaining a handicap that gives an increasing chance of victory. Despite the fact the race can be ‘gamed’, it takes real skill to do so, and the handicapping system often ends up pitting local runners against international professionals in the final. At many races the former have been the eventual winners, as they understand the handicapping system better than the outsiders. Do those international competitors have a ‘sporting chance’? Maybe, but only marginally so.
On the other hand, what about people who try to enhance their chances of success legally? The swimmer who spends hours in the pool every day. The runner out lap after lap. The soccer player constantly practicing shots. They are all seeking additional advantage, to be better than those with similar natural abilities. Good for them, but even practice is unequally available. If your income is marginal, your work hours long, you simply don’t have the time to devote to improving. Excellence is differentially biased to the affluent, the sponsored, and those with easy access to needed resources. This is an old story. We all know about differential access to higher education, where the occasional stories about underprivileged students making it to the top mask the reality: even educational achievement is biased to the rich and fortunate, who are able to make use of every form of support to do better.
If you don’t have a sporting chance, lacking money, equipment and access to all the other factors that will improve your performance, then why not get some other kinds of help? Performance enhancing drugs, slightly bending the rules, cheating where you can. Almost everyone appears to seek advantage in one way or another, and there is no easy way to declare which approaches are unacceptable, except at the extremes. Kill or injure an opponent: that’s morally and ethically wrong. Practice hard at the necessary skills: that has to be alright. Only eat organic food? Pay for a coach, a fitness assistant, and a game strategy consultant? These are choices only open to a few. Take a drug to reduce sleep before an exam? Drink Brown-Sequard’s Elixir of Life, or today’s equivalent, secure in the belief that it has no detectable and banned performance enhancing content?
The sad truth is that, to use another sporting analogy, there has never been a ‘level playing field’. Greg Chappell knew that out on the cricket pitch. Competition is inherently selfish; you are out to win. In a world of winners and losers, you’ll use whatever you can to gain advantage, and continue to use it for as long as you can get away with it. Having a sporting chance was always a rather vain hope, as elusive as hoping for morality in any competition.
[i] This and most of the preceding examples come from Neil Chesanow’s excellent study ‘Faster, Higher, Stronger: A History of Doping in Sports (in Medscape, 28 July 2016)
