In athletics, it’s still just a man's world

HOLD THE BACK PAGE:SONIA O'SULLIVAN may miss the cut and thrust of competition but her name is still a draw as she shapes up to take part in her first marathon for three years in Cork this year.

As one of our elite athletes who was denied medals or podium finishes by runners about whom subsequent questions were raised, she may welcome the IAAF’s recent recommendations on measuring the levels of hormones in female athletes. Then again she may not.

There are those who think it is quite a hoot that the IAAF, on May 1st this year, is about to create a third category of competitor. In a few weeks we will have male, female and those required to take female hormones once they undergo the odiously named “Gender Verification Test”.

This is not something dreamed up by a latter day Stasi but a coldly pragmatic attempt by athletics to stop another controversy like the one that engulfed the talented South African teenager, Caster Semenya, who was roundly castigated as a man after winning the World Championships 800 metres in 2009.

The IAAF may also have missed the irony of forcing females suffering from hyperandrogenism – those with too much testosterone – to consume androgen resistance drugs in order for them to qualify as a woman. On the whole it’s an utterly fantastic concept, one in which some women may be asked to take drugs in order to be, well, female.

This all comes with the backing of the IOC, otherwise it wouldn’t happen and it will require women to be given medical clearance before they can compete. It seems that in the world of elitism, one in which the reward system favours only the outstanding athletes of their generation, the IAAF propose to level the playing field to include only “normal” female athletes.

It also poses interesting questions. If you have the blemish of extraordinarily long legs should they be trimmed to regular dimensions? If you have defective lungs twice the regular size, perhaps one should be collapsed by Pneumothorax? Or maybe for a uniquely inhuman metabolic system that’s twice as efficient as any other competitor, maybe a virus could be found to shake it up and run it down a little?

However, if your female body has elevated levels of testosterone, if you are hormonally flawed, among the one or two per cent of the population out you go and – as in Semenya’s case – expose yourself to world ridicule and opprobrium.

In the great question of sex that has consumed sports scientists for many years, the IAAF is now gunning to weed out those women, disfiguring the concept of what is a “normal” female. Hallelujah.

It is far from our station to question the lab guys over in the IAAF or IOC, who are as canny as you will meet. Perhaps they never heard of the genetic variation which goes something like XYY (the population majority are males XY, females XX) and produces higher levels of testosterone than other men.

In the olden days they used call it the criminal, aggressive gene, which is a sense is perfect for sport. So, the unfair physical advantage over the other poor sap in the running lane or the athlete firing the steel ball or javelin high across the infield is just fine. More manly than men couldn’t be illegal, could it?

Who is insisting that they lower their testosterone levels to the “normal” male levels? As the IAAF implements a mortification policy against their female members, we’re reminded that out there it’s a man’s world.

White, red, blue, green and gold are the new black

TRADITION in football likes to keep footwear black. Alas these days the boot is on the other foot and the culture of the black in soccer’s kicking department is all but dead as players such as Cristiano Ronaldo and Wayne Rooney clamour for stand out colour schemes.

While some English professional clubs’ academy players are still given black boots, an industry survey in the UK among seven to 12-year-olds showed that 74 per cent wore non-black boots.

White, favoured by Alan Ball all those years ago, was second most popular and claimed 24 per cent of the vote. That was followed by red, blue, green and gold.

Those figures compare with 100 per cent of the same age group in 1996 who said that they all wore black. Some are concerned about this but perhaps they should feel safe that as sport merges fully with entertainment, fashion statements will arrive in various colours. Next season, darling, black will be the new red.

Some lachrymose tumbrel rides

IN SPORT we like two things. We like our drama and our overwrought prose. In that respect we have all witnessed the lachrymose tumbrel ride to Armageddon.

When Rory saw his chances disappear in three nightmare holes – a triple bogey at 10, bogey at 11 and double bogey at 12, there was the tumbrel. And what about Newcastle Utd letting a 12-point lead slip in the 1995-1996 Premiership race? Manchester United nipped in that year. Kevin Keegan would have loved it if he had beaten them, loved it.

Can horses choke? The late Queen Mother-owned Devon Loch seemed to come as close as any. Striding five lengths clear in the 1956 Grand National and with less than 50 yards to run, it inexplicably leapt over a “phantom fence” and landed on its belly.

Jockey and sleuth novelist Dick Francis learned there and then the worth of a surprise ending before E.S.B. galloped through.

There were more tears at Aintree that day than at a women’s final at Wimbledon and that takes us to the Duchess of Kent’s shoulder taking a royal drenching from Jana Novotna, who reached the final in 1993, lost the first set to Steffi Graf on a tie break, won the second 6-1 and was cruising one point off leading 5-1 in the third set when her game combusted into flames, losing the set, match and her composure.

As we are cricket literate, the Surrey match against Lancashire in an unmentionable cigarette company competition in 1993 brought Surrey to the brink of victory at 212 for 1 at the Oval. They were chasing 237. When Alec Stewart fell for 95 the team did too and nine wickets fell for 18 runs. Lancashire won by six. That was gas.

Then there is Jean Van de Velde standing in the water with his trousers rolled near the 18th green at Carnoustie. He needed a double bogey six for victory but alas shot a triple bogey. Paul Lawrie, who started the day 10 shots behind won the four hole play-off. No lachrymose tumbrel ride to Armageddon for the Frenchman. Following the robust thinking of his long dead comrades Sartre and Voltaire: “There are,” said Van de Velde “worse things in life.”

That’s just it.

McCloskey and Khan settle for Primetime

THESE days you have to take the positives where you find them. Ireland’s Paul McCloskey is tonight in Manchester preparing to fight Britain’s Amir Khan for the WBA light welterweight title. One of the problematic issues is half of Manchester is in London today for the FA Cup semi-final in Wembley between United and City. McCloskey and Khan have already been bumped off the Sky pay-for-view, then Khan pulled out of a Sky Sports 3 deal and the fight is now with cable network Primetime, which according to McCloskey’s camp, will attract 5,000 or 6,000 viewers. Primetime are saying it will be more like 35,000, which they claim they achieved for a Carl Froch fight.

Khan, who has reputedly lost €1.5 million in the unfolding shambles, is saying that the MEN Arena, with 15,000 tickets sold as of Thursday is expected to be full to its 21,000 capacity, which could throw up a modern day sporting phenomenon. There could be as many or more people watching the man from Dungiven fight against the Bolton champion live in the MEN Arena as there will be watching it on cable television.

Beer reaches the parts other sponsors just can't

WHILE THE GAA threaten to take a drill to the Sam Maguire and the Liam MacCarthy Cups to prevent teams from drinking alcohol from them, other countries are thinking of broader measures to curb drinking by young people and in New Zealand the days of sports sponsorship by alcohol companies may very well be numbered.

Steve Stannard of the New Zealand School of Sport and Exercise believes a ban is on the horizon but to do it before this year’s September Rugby World Cup is highly unlikely. The argument put forward is that when the costs of unhealthy drinking are balanced against what sport gains from alcohol sponsorship, there is a pretty strong case for the ban.

Scientists from a number of Universities in Australia, New Zealand and Britain provide evidence that alcohol industry sponsorship is associated with significantly higher and more hazardous drinking in sportspeople and that sponsorship from other industries had a much weaker or no association.

In other words, alcohol sponsorship in sport is related to higher drinking levels, while sponsorship by a bank is not. So beer sponsorship works.

So Heineken has been confirmed as the official supplier to the London Olympic Games, a deal rumoured to be worth €15 million. Heineken’s chief commercial officer, Alexis Nasard, says his company’s involvement offers a wonderful platform “for the promotion of responsible drinking” and goes on to promise that they will celebrate the Olympics with the world in a way “that only Heineken can”. Could we have reached promotions’ nirvana where as the GAA reach for the power tools, tinnies as well as energy drinks will be available as refreshments during the Olympic marathon?