POSTED: November 17th 2011
NewsUpdate
JOHN GOODBODY: Lord Moynihan flies the flag
THE JOHN GOODBODY COLUMN / An authoritative and exclusive series from Sports Features Communications
LONDON: Lord Colin Moynihan, the Chairman of the British Olympic Association, has had a busy week, as befits someone, who was once a Government Minister for Energy.
Last week, he began by leading a delegation to Ypres in Belgium for a unique event, a commemoration service on November 11 for the dead of the First World War. The service was attended by Dr. Jacques Rogge, the President of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and also the representatives of the Belgian, French and German NOCs, together with several Olympic medallists from those countries.
As moving as the Service was beneath the Menin Gate, where the names of some of the millions who died are carved into the stone, so was a smaller one a few hours later in the Brandhoek New Military Ceremony to commemorate Captain Noel Chavasse, who ran for Britain in the 400 metres in the 1908 Olympics. He is one of only three people to have been awarded the Victoria Cross (VC) twice, the highest military decoration in Britain.
Lord Moynihan read extracts from The London Gazette, which describe how Captain Chavasse, a member of the Royal Army Medical Corps, had repeatedly rescued wounded soldiers from no-man’s land and brought them back for treatment.
In 1916, in the Battle of the Somme, he was wounded with shell splinters in his back and, at one stage, was recovering men not more than 25 metres from the German lines. He was awarded the VC for this action.
A year later, he was given a bar to his VC in the third Battle of Ypres (Passchendaele), where once again he rescued men despite being under constant bombardment with shells and bullets. He was repeatedly hit, including suffering the effects of a savage abdominal wound, and died on August 4, 1917.
After travelling back to London, Lord Moynihan flew the next day to Toronto to address a conference of Canadian sport, returned after 24 hours and then on Tuesday went to Lausanne, where he criticised the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) telling a meeting of the International Federations:”Never have the sanctions against the hardline cheats been so weak since the end of the Cold War.”
Moynihan asked:”Marion Jones and countless others have flourished during the Wada era –isn’t that enough to prompt an independent audit of the organisation, tasked with policing sport ?”
David Howman, the Wada director-general, had earlier accepted that the rate of detection was “pathetic”, pointing to the fact that out of the 258,267 tests worldwide last year, only 36 disclosed the presence of EPO, the drug which makes such a contribution to the stamina of competitors.
Although the IOC has lost its case at the Court of Arbitration for Sport over its stance that barred a competitor from taking part in the next Games if that individual had been banned for a serious drugs offence of at least six months, the BOA is maintaining its bye-law that such a competitor is ineligible ever again to compete for Britain in the Games. The prime active figures here are cyclist David Millar and sprinter Dwain Chambers, both of whom were given lengthy bans for cheating.
Lord Moynihan flew back from Lausanne to attend a BOA Board meeting on Wednesday, when it has agreed to go to CAS to get a ruling whether it was non-compliant with the Wada code by maintaining this bye-law. Thanks to Lord Moynihan, the BOA has at least taken the moral high ground in this debate so embarrassing many other countries and organisations.
One body that certainly should be embarrassed is United Kingdom Anti-Doping, which has lacked forceful and intelligent leadership since it was formed ostensibly to lead the campaign for the elimination of doping in sport. However, the agency, funded with tax-payers’ money, has been failing in its task. This is a particularly depressing thought given that London is hosting the 2012 Olympics and Britain therefore should be setting an example to the rest of the world.
** JOHN GOODBODY covered the 2008 Olympics for The Sunday Times, his 11th successive Summer Games and is the author of the audio book A History of the Olympics, read by Barry Davies, the BBC commentator. He was Sports News Correspondent of The Times 1986-2007, for whom he received journalistic awards in all three decades on the paper, including Sports Reporter of The Year in 2001.
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Keywords · British Olympic Association · BOA · John Goodbody · Colin Moynihan · Jacques Rogge
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