Ian O’Riordan: Jogging is seen as safe, but the tackling debate will run and run

It must be 40 years since my dad was running up Dundrum Road when someone shouted out their car window that he’d already passed the mental hospital. It was definitely this time of year, the sleeting rain lashing against his face, the mean wind hurling derision at his efforts.

Not many people went running back then. At least not without a good excuse.

Medical experts were strangely mixed but some felt running around suburban roads could damage the hips and knees and possibly even the heart.

The general population certainly questioned the sanity of it all. No wonder my dad was treated with such mocking curiosity, as if suffering from some early form of dementia.

Some of this spilled over into my early running years. There was definitely a curiosity about me heading out the gates of De La Salle Churchtown every afternoon, some of my classmates smirking as they went off to play rugby, as if running was some sort of crippling exercise. None of the teachers thought much differently.

Well, my dad is still running 40 years on, if only down the garden to fetch a basket of turf.

Meanwhile, some of my old classmates are so crippled from playing rugby they can hardly walk, and yet occasionally ring me up looking for advice on how to start running – sounding as if they may be suffering from an early form of dementia.

Indeed, medical experts are now falling over each other in the race to trumpet the latest benefits of running.

According to this month's Journal of Physiology, researchers at the University of Jyvaskyla in Finland have identified running as the most beneficial exercise to augment adult neurogenesis, the creation of new brain cells in an already mature brain. According to the biomedical journal Cell Metabolism, running has been shown to prevent and cure five forms of cancer in tumour-bearing mice.

Opposite

And instead of damaging the knees and hips, and possibly even the heart, running has since been proven to do the exact opposite. As long as it’s done correctly.

It’s hard for me sometimes not to shout out my car window when seeing people running on their legs, rather than with them, or for not keeping their hips forward as if in the moment of deepest sexual penetration. Still, it beats shouting at people to stop running completely.

This it seems is the same sort of strangely-mixed medical expertise now debating the subject of tackling in schools rugby, particularly given the associated risks of traumatic brain injury. Or, indeed, some early form of dementia.

This week’s open letter signed by 70 doctors and sports academics calling for the removal of the collision elements of the school game was certainly greeted with both extremes of opinion – described by some as a “complete non-starter”, and others as a “no-brainer”.

It’s hard not to agree with World Rugby’s view that subjecting teenagers to tackling rugby after years of non-contact would be hazardous.

Or, indeed, the IRFU’s belief that the lifelong health and personal benefits of rugby, and other contact sports, far outweigh the risks.

What is important here is that the debate isn’t treated with mocking curiosity but rather properly presented research and conclusions. And ideally not another 40 years from now.

Tackling, as long as it’s done correctly, doesn’t need to be in any way damaging; as in running, like when landing on the ball of the foot, not the heel.

A similarly important debate was lost behind some of the punches being thrown around rugby this week when the International Olympic Committee (IOC) reversed over 30 years of its medical experts' opinion and agreed that headgear was no longer mandatory or indeed allowed for its amateur boxing competitions, starting with this summer's Rio Olympics.

The AIBA, the governing body of world amateur boxing, had already reversed its decision to make headgear mandatory after two studies published in 2013 found that instead of decreasing the chance of concussions and lasting brain trauma in boxers, the headgear actually increased it.

Part of the problem is that the headgear’s protective padding can cause extra jarring to boxers’ heads, giving them a false sense of security. Or making it more difficult to see punches coming. All of which can lead to increased brain damage.

Curious

Why it took the IOC 30 years to reverse this decision is more than a little curious.

Headgear was first introduced in amateur boxing for the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, after the sport was going through a particularly brutal period. Two years earlier American Ray “Boom Boom” Mancini beat Duk Koo Kim from South Korea for the world lightweight title. Only four days later Kim died from brain injuries sustained in the fight.

“They made hypocrite judgments after the fact,” wrote Warren Zevon, in his song about Mancini, “but the name of the game is be hit and hit back.”

The headgear, in other words, was a mostly cosmetic exercise, and worse still heightened the very dangers it was meant to protect against.

Even more curious, then, is the fact the IOC has not yet extended the ban on headgear to women’s amateur boxing – the AIBA agreeing its research doesn’t necessarily apply to women.

So it’s okay for men to be punched in the face without headgear, because they’ll actually be better off; it’s just not okay yet for women.

It’s perhaps another reminder that what we want and what we need from sport are often two different things. We want to protect our children and encourage a safe sporting environment at all levels while still seeing the need for someone who by his own admission is “now praised and rewarded for my ability to kill another man with my bare hands”.

There are exhibitions of both on show this weekend; Conor McGregor willingly satisfying the latter, the Irish Schools Cross Country Championships at Sligo racecourse accommodating the former. At only one event can the lifelong health and personal benefits far outweigh the risks.