Elitism in Sports

Honoured guests, ladies and gentlemen;

Generally speaking, during my term as President of this prestigious Club, I have asked the various speakers to forward a curriculum vitae to me in order to help me prepare a suitable introduction. In some cases this is not necessary, for example, with the Prime Minister, or Michael Wilson, or Diane Francis. These people are prominent and well known in their fields.

It's the same with Charlie Francis. The media have been full of information on him and just in case there was anything missing, Charlie has published a book on his career, especially as it has centred on the Seoul Olympics of 1988. It's called Speed Trap.

Mr. Francis certainly has both fans and detractors. In the media there are those who strongly condemn and those who see that the treatment of Charlie has been quite unfair. The powers that be at Athletics Canada have been most critical in their condemnation of both his coaching ability as well as his apparent lack of repentance.

Some of his former coaches claimed that Mr. Francis was lazy and just too temperamental for his own good, but in his book, Charlie explained how Canadian coaches during his running days, just did not have the knowledge to produce a great runner. They tended to overwork the athlete and did not allow the muscles time to recover. Subsequently, Charlie was able to apply his own methods of training and to prove their value.

At the Dubin Enquiry, Mr. Francis gave a full disclosure of both his training methods and his use of drugs in the training programme.

As a result of that disclosure, there appears to have been little change in drug use at the international level and the only one who seems to be beyond redemption, is the one who was the most open. In the final analysis, it would appear that the truth is that for Canadian athletes to compete on the international scene, something must be done to make the playing fields level.

One question continues to haunt me. Having read Mr. Francis' book and many accounts about the Seoul Olympics, I cannot understand what went wrong. With a coach who truly knew the ropes in his field and an athlete who had competed at that level for so long, how did the drugs get into Ben Johnson's system? Neither of these men were fools, but were they duped?

We welcome Charlie Francis to The Empire Club of Canada today and invite him to address us now.

Charlie Francis:

I was watching the Toronto Maple Leafs on T.V. last night. I think most of you are aware of what sort of season they've had. I was thinking of all the criticism that's been launched at them in the media. They've been basically buried under a series of statistics; goals against, you name it. I was wondering, what if the Toronto Maple Leafs' management stood up and went on a counter-offensive, and said "Sports isn't about winning, it's about personal growth." And what if some of the players stood up and said, "Winning is out, doing your best is in." I think after the public recovered from their shock, they'd storm Maple Leaf Gardens, demand ticket refunds, and then tar and feather every man in the building. So, I think everyone recognizes what an affront that would be, and yet that is precisely the line of argument being used by Sport Canada today to explain away the decline of Canada's position in international sports subsequent to 1988.

Now, of course, doing your best and personal growth are indeed fine objectives for recreational athletes, but this is not what elite sport is all about. Elite sport is now and always has been about placing at the top order in international competition. And the argument is often presented, that the Maple Leafs, for example, are professional athletes whereas our amateurs are not paid. But in fact amateurism died long ago at the elite level. Athletes today have to train incredibly hard to achieve results on the international scene. They must be full time athletes to have any hope at the highest levels. So whether they are paid poorly or well, as in the case of some of our top athletes, it is a full time job and Canada is paying $68 million a year to try and generate some results in that area. So we have to think about the reason why we're getting this sort of obfuscation and confusion in our goals.

The problem is that Sport Canada has been caught in a bind all along. It's been obvious for decades that anabolic steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs have saturated the field internationally. The vast majority of top athletes have been using these substances, but such an admission on the part of Sport Canada prior to Seoul would have implicated many of our top athletes. After all, they're beating everyone else, so must they not also be part and parcel of this process? Well, after Seoul, the Dubin Report made very clear that drugs are pervasive, inside Canada and especially on the international scene and that there's no reason to believe that this is about to change. There has been no action internationally that would indicate that there will be any reforms coming in the near future.

Well, if that is true, Sport Canada feared that if they acknowledged these performance-enhancing drugs, then they would be admitting that it's highly unlikely that we will ever have athletes at the level of Ben Johnson again, so they chose to ignore this issue. That creates a problem for the athletes, because if you deny the importance of these substances in international sport, you basically deny the Canadian athletes an excuse. If they are expected to remain drug-free, you give them no excuse as to why they shouldn't beat everyone else in the world. So people basically say, well they're not really trying anyway, they're just out there to go sight-seeing. We really have to look at the whole issue of elitism. I think it's worth reviewing the history of drugs in sport in the first place.

Performance-enhancing substances are not a short-cut to the top, and never have been. They in fact allow athletes to do very much more work than was possible in the past so that they can achieve the incredible levels that are being achieved in international sport today. And no less a publication than the LAM Quarterly, (that is the International Amateur Athletic Federation that runs track and field), published an article stating that upon review of the training programs of the top athletes, it is clear that it would be impossible to carry out the training that they do and the high level results that they field, without the use of performance-enhancing drugs. This is quite an admission from that particular group. I don't know how it got past their editors, but it is in print.

So, once the performance standards were set, the sport itself attempted to come to terms with it. These drugs were in common currency by the 1950s. By 1975 a rule was passed to ban them. So they decided they would introduce drug testing at major competitions. Now of course, coaches, athletes and officials were looking to see what would happen when these tests were introduced. The first competition that had this testing was the European Junior Championship held in 1975. And to and behold, the world's leading junior athlete Marleis Gohr tested positive in her A sample, her anabolics. Well, this was quite a worry to the officials at the LAM. So they asked the East German officials to mail in her B sample for analysis. Not surprisingly the sample arrived broken. So she stayed in the sport for another 13 years, broke a dozen world records and the whole world was laughing at the system. When questioned on this, the former president of the IAAF, Adrian Paulin, responded, 'Well, why should we take action against the Europeans when the Americans are the biggest offenders and they don't test at all?" So, the next step was the European Championships in 1978 held in Prague, Czechoslovakia. They generated 26 positives, so the word is. But, after meetings and trade-offs and so forth east to west, it ended up that there were six athletes from the east and no more from the west to trade against, and those six athletes were suspended, including three Russians and one of the East Germans. So, this rather bizarre solution raised a lot of eyebrows again. Why would you not let everyone off if you have a question about the testing? Why would you pick six and let 20 others off?

The Russians have long memories. In 1985 the World Cup of Track and Field was held in Moscow. The two top athletes from Czechoslovakia tested positive and were removed. So we know that the system has been very flawed, and the athletes are looking for direction from the officials. If you were an athlete and you wished not to use drugs, then you were reliant on the authorities to protect you from those that would. Well the analogy I like to draw is to Tombstone Territory in 1880. The townsfolk are relying on the sheriff to keep the cattle rustlers under control. But every night the sheriff is in the local saloon getting drunk and falling face first into the spittoon. Pretty quickly the townsfolk begin to lose faith and they strap on a Colt 45 and decide they'll take care of business for themselves. And this is basically the situation we have faced in all these years. It was certainly the situation as I found it when I entered the coaching arena.

Now our goal, my goal, as clearly stated in my job description, was to produce athletes at the highest level in the world. So being a bottom-line guy, I looked into the situation. I knew what it took, and so I went out and did it. And we did generate the athletes. Of course there was a lot of controversy in Canada among the coaching fraternity. There were discussions constantly. Charlie's athletes are using drugs. Why was this? We didn't wear badges on our uniforms saying, drugs here. But the fact is, they knew what we were doing because we were the world record holders. Officials are not stupid. They know precisely what it takes to get to the top. And they knew we must be doing it or we wouldn't be there. Now, we also had two august groups, Sport Canada which is the parent organization that runs sport, and the Coaching Association of Canada. They were charged with the goal of finding out how high-performance is generated throughout the world. So they travelled the world for many years, for 15 or 20 years, to the Sports Institute in East Germany, to the Soviet Institute of Physical Culture in Moscow, and elsewhere. And they came back and reported, "There are no drugs being used in the Eastern Block, it's all good coaching."

Well I wonder how it is that these individuals could go throughout the world for 15 years and, in all this time, not find out what I could find out in 15 minutes with a carton of cigarettes and a bottle of scotch, sitting down with a couple of East German coaches. There was no question what they were doing. And they never made any bones about it. They just wanted to find out what we were doing to see if we knew anything they didn't or vice versa. And this was true throughout this coaching fraternity. Discussions were widespread and well known.

Well, now we enter the current situation. In Canada, they're attempting to introduce tough new sanctions against steroid users and steroids in general. They are attempting to see to it that our athletes will not use drugs and have indeed introduced random testing which should act as a relatively effective deterrent, at least to those athletes who can't skip out of the country from time to time. Now, the situation is, what will our athletes face when they compete against the international scene? Well, subsequent to Seoul, an agreement was formed between East Germany, the United States and the Soviet Union, this was a 'just say no' campaign where they decided that they would test each other to see to it that drugs were not used. Well this is like the five Mafia families of New York deciding that they'll police each other to eliminate crime. I wouldn't abolish the police force in anticipation of any great results. I made charges against the Soviet Union, that they had a doping ship in Montreal that was testing their athletes in advance, that they had doping ship in Seoul, that all their athletes were on drugs and so forth. I was called a damned Gar by the head of the Soviet Institute, who stated he would come to the Dubin Inquiry and testify. Within a week, the official communist youth magazine published an article reiterating all of my charges and then adding to them, stating that in 1986 in Stuttgart at the European Championship, 30 percent of their team could not pass the test and the team was changed at the last minute in track and field. But two athletes they considered essential were sent forward to the competition, even knowing that they were still positive, in the hopes that they could somehow clean out before the competition. So every night that they were in Stuttgart, samples were collected, sent by overnight courier to the lab in Moscow, tested, and then coded messages were sent back to the Embassy telling them what to do. These athletes competed through all the preliminary rounds at the European championships until the final, but before the final they were still positive and they were told to fake injuries and get out.

In East Germany we had another situation. The head of the Eastern Olympic Committee defected to the West, Dr. Noscinski, and he stated that every single athlete who competes for the GDR is doped, every one. Well the International Amateur Athletic Federation was approached on these two issues, the Soviet Union and East Germany. We've got clear admissions now. What in fact are you going to do about it? Well the charges were dismissed as rumour and innuendo, which is tantamount to a police officer refusing to investigate a murder because he didn't see it himself. So, in the case of East Germany, British Broadcasting went to the General Secretary at the IAAF and asked how he intended to proceed with the charges made by Dr. Noscinski. And he said, well we've contacted our member federation, the GDR, and they've assured us that it's not true. So they asked the East Germans to investigate themselves. Not surprisingly a verdict of not guilty was returned.

Stern magazine took a different tack. They went to the LAM representative in East Germany, Dr. Manfred Hoeppner, who's run their sports medicine program since the country's inception and offered him a quarter of a million dollars and he spilled his guts. He provided documented proof on 362 of their athletes, the cream of the crop, all the top athletes. Kirsten Otto with seven or eight gold medals. Of course all the athletes denied it. Kirsten Otto stood up and said, "Well this is nonsense, it's not true." Then Dr. Klausnitzner who runs the Kreuscha Testing Lab says, "Of course it's true and not only that, I tested her in my lab recently and she had an 18 to 1 testosterone limit, three times the natural limit for testosterone." So we know there's no doubt there.

The IAAF has responded by taking no action whatever. In fact the only action taken to date is to remove the world records of Ben Johnson and Angela Isajenko and give them to others, because the only grounds upon which records can be removed is telling the truth. Ironically, the 50 metre world records for the two athletes were taken from the Canadians and given to the East Germans. And it's quite interesting, that the women's record holder, Marita Koch, named among the 362, denied it so she could keep it. The men's record holder, Eugen Ray, he's in no position to admit anything. He "died" in the line of duty in East Germany. In actual fact he was a border guard and he got shot going over the wall about 10 years ago.

Anyway, that's the situation as we find it. Now if this is so, and obviously it is, what are we going to do about it? Well the random testing program may help. The Americans introduced a random testing program as well, and a lot of athletes in the U.S. began to get scared. Between 1988 and the winter of 1989, results began to plummet in America. But then they passed what they call the Mary Decker rule. Mary did a lot of complaining so they decided that it would be too inconvenient for any athlete to travel more than 75 miles to have a urine test. So they exempted anyone who lives more than 75 miles away from a doping lab from testing in America. And there are only two labs in America, one in Los Angeles, one in Indianapolis. So I think you can well imagine where the dope-using athletes will live. Since it's hard to move out of Los Angeles, a lot of athletes got post office boxes in Nevada and Arizona and elsewhere in order to take care of this inconvenience. Now we have the situation in Britain. This is the number one country held up as the bastion of clean sport. They've had random testing going back into the '70s. But they haven't caught anybody. The Americans, with all of the flaws, with a random testing program, with the burial of positive tests and all the things that have happened there, have caught 19 people in the last year and a half. But between 1975 and 1987 the Brits have never caught anyone. Not one. Of course the public became so sceptical they finally scooped up a second rate pole vaulter named Jeff Guttridge and banned him for life and moved on, business as usual.

Now in Canada we do have what appears to be a serious testing program. Our athletes will be disadvantaged internationally, but if so, what can we do to help those athletes? The Dubin Report outlined a number of steps. One was a made-in-Canada support system. In other words, our athletes would be judged by Canadians to decide what their performances should be. But this flies in the face of Sport Canada's position. Sport Canada is the parent group that runs all sport in this country. The other groups such as track and field or swimming or boxing and so on, all answer to this group above them. But the group on top has created all of the standards that the athletes must meet, based on international standards, which we know are drug4nflated. They're caught in a bind where they don't know how to adjust the standards downwards. It's been so long that they don't know what a drug-free performance is. So, we've got a huge structure now, at Sport Canada, where we have 900 federal employees working to administer the needs of 832 supported athletes in this country. Nine Hundred. This was in testimony, 900 officials, 832 carded or financially-assisted athletes. Well the obvious answer to this is that Sport Canada's function could be taken care of by an auditor and four secretaries because the $68 million a year that we spend on sport, should be apportioned among the individual sport bodies.

I'm going to make a case here for Athletics Canada which may surprise you. Athletics Canada is the parent group that runs track and field. Now I remember in 1985, Wilf Wedman took over as President, and he had to file a 400 page report to Sport Canada, telling them how he intended to run the sport over the next four years. But they adjusted his budget every six months. How can you have a four-year plan where you don't know what your funding is? So, my solution would be very simple. The funds should be taken on a ranking system based on current rankings across the board and apportioned to the various sports, at all levels. They must indeed police the spending of the money. Now, in sport over the years, Sport Canada has played a police function. They have kept an eye on all those sports to make sure that they are run properly. But clearly that is not a function for the government. That is a function for the athletes themselves, who are in fact the consumers of this supposed product. If an athlete's advisory committee were appointed in every sport, or elected from among the athletes, they could keep an eye on how the sport is being run and ensure the funding system is fair.

Now the carding system, which is to provide financial assistance to athletes, could be run straight from the sports associations themselves, such as track and field. They could decide who within their organization needs funding support. But since it comes out of general revenues they know that every cent they spend there, they don't have available for other projects. They can select who they want to go to the Olympic Games. But they know that for every athlete they select who doesn't really belong, they could perhaps better spend that same money on a development program. It becomes self-policing. And with the kind of revenue we're talking about here, that money could do a lot of good in sport. Many of you run your own businesses. You know what it would cost to put 900 employees in the field. If you assume an average salary of $30,000 which is fairly low, and take administration and other office expenses, you're looking at at least $50 to $54 million of that $68 million right there. So that's a pretty large bite out of any money available. You could double or triple the money available to athletes at the performing level, professionalize the coaching staff in this country, and create a decent income to a lot of the athletes who are trying to do well and judge them by a standard made in Canada among themselves. If we truly do want to change the system, we don't want to be involved in performance-enhancing drugs, then we have to assume that the solution comes from home, and I think that's really the only way to do it. I appreciate your attention for this and hopefully something will happen in the near future. Thanks very much.

The appreciation of the meeting was expressed by Peter Hermant, President, Imperial Optical Canada Limited, and a Past President, The Empire Club of Canada.