A Sporting Chance

It would be fair to say that Australia, overall, is obsessed with sport.  The half-hour evening news program on the national broadcaster, the Australian Broadcasting Commission (the ABC) always has at least five minutes devoted to sport, and that can often extend to ten or even fifteen minutes.  While much of the focus is on sporting events within the country, a key driver is winning internationally.  Indeed, for a small country, we seem to punch well above our weight (ouch, a good sporting analogy?).  In the recent FINA (Fédération Internationale de Natation) swimming World Championships in South Korea, Australia came fourth in the medal tally (with a total of 23 medals) behind China, the USA, and Russia (with 30, 36 and 30 respectively), and second in the swimming pool events with 19 medals compared to 27 for the USA.  Not bad for a country with a much smaller population, although, to local chagrin, those other countries managed to win significantly more of the gold medals (in the swimming pool, for example, the USA dominated, with 14 gold medals to Australia’s 5!).

Sport is built into everyday life, and we constantly hear politicians, staff and even family members talking about giving someone a ‘fair go’, the local equivalent of a sporting chance, a reasonable opportunity to succeed or win.  It conjures up an image of enthusiastic competitors, trained athletes, swimmers, cricketers and footballers striving to perform at their best.  Sport in schools is a serious business.  More than that, we promote sport as an attraction for tourists, with images of lush green football ovals, golden sand traps on golf courses, and volleyball games under blue skies at the beach.  Australia and sport are close to synonymous.

To succeed at sport is demanding.  Sportsmen and sportswomen spend hours practicing, many of them doing so while holding down a full or part-time job.  Serious competitors will have devoted at least 1,000 hours a year to training (and in some cases 2,500 hours or more).  It is not just a matter of physical training, of course.  In the intense atmosphere of competition, psychology is also critical, both to sustain focus and confidence, but also to find ways to disconcert an opponent.

There is a dark side to this, too. I am not just talking about the hours coaches and managers spend watching opponents performing, sitting in on other competitions or games, trying to determine the strategies being used.  As I wrote once before, there is also the skill of learning how to nudge the rules, push right up to the edge of what is acceptable, and even subtly slip just past that point in the hope of getting away with breaking a rule without being caught.

Previously I used as an example of this the ball tampering scandal in cricket last year, when an Australian test cricketer was caught using sandpaper to roughen up one side of a cricket ball, to enhance the ‘swing’ he would obtain when bowling.  The bowler, and the team’s captain and vice-captain were all found to have been involved, and all three were suspended from playing for the national or state teams for a year (as well as banned from ever holding a leadership position in cricket at the state or national level).

My diagnosis then was that this was symptomatic of an underlying and very corrosive problem.  I suggested that from a young age, people playing sports learn two things.  First, there are rules to learn for each and every game, and you are expected to play by the rules.  Second, almost as a contradiction, you also learn that advantage comes from ‘edging’ the rules, or even ignoring them if you are able to do so without being caught.  You can win by cheating, except, of course, the word ‘cheating’ is never used:  rather the language used is about a “close call’, or something “not easy to see”, or even “an honest mistake”!

It is only a short step from there to deliberately setting out to get around the rules.  Those South Korean swimming championships proved an exciting time to see this pushed into the limelight.  Like a television drama spread over two sessions, the first part concerned Chinese and Australian male middle distance swimmers.  Australian Olympic gold-medallist Mack Horton was competing against Sun Yang (in the 400 metres freestyle event).  Sun Yang won, and Horton was second.  However, when the medals were presented, Horton chose not to stand alongside Sun on the podium.  When asked later about his behaviour, he claimed he was frustrated over the lack of action over Sun’s possible use of drugs.  Sun had been banned for three months in 2014 for taking a banned medication, and then, when tested in September prior to the championships, he smashed a vial contained his blood before it could be taken away by the drug-testers.

The drama overtook much of the successes being notched up by Australian swimmers, especially that of Ariarne Titmus who, on the same day, had beaten the great American swimmer Katie Ledecky to claim the 400m freestyle gold.  Titmus beat the five-time Olympic champion in the final lap on the opening night of the eight-day titles at Gwangju.  Her time of 3:58.76 was also a new Australian record, beating Ledecky by 1.21 seconds and denying the American a fourth straight 400m world title.  Ledecky has been dominant in women’s long-distance races of 400m, 800m and 1500m, never losing a race over the distance since 2012.  What a result, but one almost totally ignored in the Australian media as they focussed on Horton’s response to Sun (still sexist in what we focus on in sport?).

A few days later, it was time for the second part of this story, when it was revealed that another Australian swimmer, Shayna Jack, had withdrawn on the eve of the championships.  At the time it was said to have been for personal reasons, but now, just days after the Horton-Sun episode, we were to learn this was because she had tested positive for a banned drug, Ligandrol.  Shayna Jack protested her innocence, a strategy somewhat diminished when her second test revealed the same substance.  To add to the drama, a day later journalists found she had been advertising a nutritional supplement, despite the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority making it clear it warns athletes about supplements and has pointed out that one in five of the supplements available in Australia contain a substance banned in sport.

As in any good drama, the accusers become the accused.  The ABC summarised it well: “Just as Australians have cast suspicion on others, now others are questioning every Australian performance.  This will test the resolve of Australia’s swimming community — from the governing body down to its most outspoken individual athletes.  Swimming Australia chief executive Leigh Russell described the positive test as “embarrassing” and “bitterly disappointing”.  She says Jack is now entitled to a “fair process”.  Would that be the same “fair process” that found Sun not guilty of a doping breach earlier this year and has since been torn to shreds by those who doubt the validity of the investigation or the findings?  Russell also says Swimming Australia remains committed to a zero-tolerance approach.  Yet Thomas Holmes, who competed for Australia on the final day of the World Championships, recently served a 12-month suspension for missing three drugs tests [not for using drugs].  He has not drawn any attention from his teammates, who have chosen to focus on those from other nations.” [i]  Of course, I am not claiming either Sun or Jack are guilty, although they may be.  More to the point, they are current examples of an issue central to sport today.

I covered these issues in an earlier blog, but now I want to address another point in this.  While all the drama in Seoul was being reported, another interesting event was taking place in England.  Australia and England were about play the first test match in the 2019 ‘Ashes’ in Birmingham at the beginning of August.  The Ashes are regarded by many fans as the most important international cricket series of all in the cricketing calendar.  The news?  This will be the first time the three players banned a year ago for ball tampering will be back playing for the national side.  This must be the time to give Smith, Warner and Bancroft a fair go.

Like many such topics, this is a complicated matter.  From an Australian perspective, at least amongst the sports-mad sector of the population, winning the Ashes is critical, and the return of three players seen as being among the world’s best is the best news possible.  Aussies want their team to win!  Perhaps those three had cheated (to be clear, they had!), but they have done their time, and they deserve a second chance.  In all this talk about chances, Australians would say the players need a sporting chance to win by fielding the best team possible, the very possibility that ball tampering had ruined a year ago.  As it happens, ex-captain Steve Smith was the critical player in the first test, his batting staving off the possibility of defeat and central to ensuring Australia was successful.  They won!

The use of terms, like ‘doing their time’, is important.  Suspension was under the laws of cricket, determined by a tribunal.  Following an appropriate punishment, time had been served, and the trio were free to play, welcomed back into the sporting community.  Not everyone is happy about this, of course, and English fans have been busily heckling all of them as they have appeared on the pitch.  Some of those fans may have been legitimately concerned about more than the one previous act of cheating:  wasn’t there a risk of them cheating again?  Can these players be trusted to play fair, given what happened last year?

The underlying critique appears to be that “once a cheat, always a cheat”.  If this was about people going to prison, then the key measure would be recidivism, the likelihood an offender would end up breaking the law again, following release at the end of a sentence.  In fact, recidivism among prisoners is usually measured by the rate at which released prisoners return to prison.  The figures are rather depressing.   In Australia, 44.8% of prisoners released during 2014-15 are back in jail within two years (to 2016-17). A total of 53.4% of prisoners returned to corrective services overall, including prison sentences and community orders. At 43.6%, Victoria’s rate of people returning to prison was comparable to the Australian average of 44.8%. The Northern Territory had the highest rate at 57.1%, and South Australia had the lowest rate at 36.2%. [ii]  If that seems worrying, figures from the US are even more startling:  it is claimed that repeat offending rates can be as high as 75% within five years of release.

Does this prove that the saying is correct, that most cheats will continue to cheat?  Research on recidivism in the criminal justice system has pointed to a somewhat different conclusion.  Significant factors affecting the likelihood of further offences are poverty, poor education, homelessness, drug addiction, chronic health problems, and mental health disorders.  Many groups have sought to address these problems, with better education, skills training, as well as substance abuse treatment programs, and support for finding employment, accommodation and similar issues.  A vexed problem has been that many former prisoners who do find employment discover they will be paid at a lower rate than other employees. [iii]

That last issue points to another element of recidivism, and this is how the treatment of prisoners affects how they see themselves.  In most prisons, rehabilitation is secondary to punishment.  One US corrections officer put it well “When I first started working in the jail 22 years ago, painted on the wall adjacent to the entrance to the staff area was something like the words, “Treat a person as they are and they will stay that way. Treat them as they could be, and they will become that person.” It only took me a couple months working the floor to understand why most corrections staff wanted to paint over those idealistic words and replace them with, “if you don’t want to be treated like an inmate, stay out of jail.”” [iv]  His comments seem indicative of an important underlying issue:  treated as irretrievably bad, prisoners’ negative self-image is reinforced daily during incarceration.  Back outside, the stigma, and the reinforcement, continues:  ex-prisoners need special programs, only some employers will take them on given their past, and income, housing and security are all subject to penalties and threats.  It is only in recent years that new approaches, like cognitive-behavioural therapy are being utilised, attempting to help these ex-prisoners rethink how they see themselves.

How does all this apply to our errant sportspersons?  In many ways, their background could not be further away from that associated with many law-breakers.  They are educated, successful, with relatively high incomes, living well and healthily.  They do work hard, very hard.  Despite that commitment, they accept their rewards are more likely to be in terms of sporting records, achievements and recognition than in actual monetary returns.

Going back to the research I quoted, the risks of repeat offending seem likely to be found in the prisoners’ concept of self.  If criminals see themselves as successful in stealing, in identity fraud or even murder until they are caught, ending up in in prison is unlikely to change their underlying character.  Many go back to doing what they did before, in the belief they can learn from their mistakes, and do what they did better, better at thieving, better at hurting others for reward.  Is a successful athlete who cheats going to return vowing to stick to the rules the second time around?  I have my doubts.  Rather, I suspect many have an ingrained view of how to succeed, whether it is a disguised and incapacitating kick at an opponent while the umpire isn’t looking, sneaking a ball back over the line when it had gone off the pitch, moving a golf ball unobserved, or claiming a catch that was really a bounced ball.  All minor infractions, nothing really: after all, everyone does it sometimes.  If you’re good at getting away with it, you’re helping the team to victory: winning trumps petty and over-enforced trite or trivial rules.  Do golfers still admit their ball was slightly moved, when unseen in the process of clearing away debris?  When that footballer fell down, stunned, it wasn’t a deliberate hit, just an unlucky, unintentional contact made in the melée.

A sporting chance or a second chance?  Ban over, three cricketers returned to play.  Steve Smith playing in his first test since suspension scored 144 runs in one innings and 142 in the second, buoying Australia in the process, with commentators running out of grandiloquent purple praise for his efforts.  But what was the message conveyed to young players?  He is a truly gifted cricketer, but he also condoned cheating.  A slap on the wrist on his way to the halls of fame: those youngsters may have concluded a little rule breaking is nothing much.  Will Australians cheat again?  Quite possibly.  Did England have a ‘sporting chance’ when Smith was given a ‘second chance’?  Possibly not.  To me it’s another step down a slippery slope: you cheat if you can get away with it.  Do honest people still have a sporting chance?

[i]  https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-07-28/shayna-jack-doping-scandal-tests-resolve-of-swimming-australia/11354678

[ii] https://www.sentencingcouncil.vic.gov.au/statistics/sentencing-statistics/released-prisoners-returning-to-prison

[iii] https://phys.org/news/2017-05-strategies-recidivism-prison-inmates-transition.html

[iv] https://www.correctionsone.com/re-entry-and-recidivism/articles/2030030-6-evidence-based-practices-proven-to-lower-recidivism/

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