Claims of Corruption Chip Away at Trust in Sports
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Version 0 of 1. LONDON — In Britain, they call them the “blazers” for the jackets they are supposed to wear as a kind of uniform — sports administrators of a svelte and secretive breed who, increasingly, seem remote from the passions of those who play the games at which they prosper. The term has been much used here in recent days since a bombshell report by the World Anti-Doping Agency into allegations of doping, corruption and a cover-up among Russian athletes and their regulators ignited the latest accusations of malfeasance. Just as ominously, the questions have spread to those in high office at the International Association of Athletics Federations, or I.A.A.F. — particularly its former president, Lamine Diack of Senegal, who is under investigation in France and suspected of corruption. His successor, Sebastian Coe, a former runner who won an Olympic gold medal for Britain and served for many years as Mr. Diack’s vice president, has promised to confront the claims of corruption and doping “without fear or favor.” The question, though, is whether those who belong to what the columnist Owen Gibson in The Guardian newspaper called “this self-satisfied club of sporting blazers,” whether at the I.A.A.F. or at its equivalent in soccer, FIFA, are so entrenched as to hinder reform. “The most significant question for Coe is whether someone who is fundamentally a product of that world has the ability to completely overhaul its culture and make its practices fit for the modern world,” Mr. Gibson wrote. The timing of this latest erosion of public trust in Big Sport seems particularly poignant. Just weeks ago, at the conclusion of the Rugby World Cup — the most recent of the international sporting spectaculars — Sonny Bill Williams, a player for the victorious New Zealand team, gave his winner’s medal to a British teenager who had managed to sprint onto the pitch after the final game. Mr. Williams’s grand gesture fused a donor’s generosity, a recipient’s unalloyed delight and a spontaneity predating the spin and packaging of modern sport. “For a kid 2 have that will and take that risk, you deserve a medal,” Mr. Williams wrote on Twitter. “Enjoy bro.” Rugby Union has been a professional sport in England for only two decades, but organizers of the World Cup forecast profits of over $200 million. That was far less than a comparable soccer tournament might generate, but the amounts changing hands in broadcast rights, advertising, sponsorships, online gambling and gate receipts showed the extent to which the game has joined a global sporting industry in which the individual impulse for excellence has been leveraged many times over into commercial profit. Big contests in any sport evoke many passions — the striving for national prestige, the yearning for personal triumph. The huge sums in play also invite temptation and a corruption of competition itself. After the latest disclosures, defeated runners now ask bitterly how clean their victorious rivals were. Since his own athletic triumphs in the 1980s, Mr. Coe, 59, has amassed a string of other achievements. He served as a British lawmaker and won a peerage and other honors. He oversaw the 2012 London Olympics and is listed on the I.A.A.F. website as the executive chairman of a big sports agency, CSM Sport & Entertainment. CSM, in turn, boasts that he is a global ambassador for Nike, the sporting apparel giant. Mr. Coe says his business interests do not conflict with his position in track and field, but his accomplishments have inspired their own challenges. “If athletics is going to have a new clean image,” said Damian Collins, a Conservative lawmaker, “it can’t be right for the president of the I.A.A.F. to be sponsored by Nike.” In many ways, though, the malaise is much wider. Fans are entitled to trust their chosen sports. The playing fields should be level. The question is whether the current crop of so-called blazers is best placed to strive for that particular goal. |