Integrity gives meaning to sports

Integrity gives meaning to sports

Pistols at dawn. Sabres in the morning.

In ancient times, a questioning of honour was often settled with violence. Make an accusation of cheating, prepare to fight a duel.

It was barbaric, yet cheating can never be a casual accusation, never be a label affixed without proof or deliberation. Of all indictments of the sporting character, this leaves the most indelible stain.

Thus a blogger's assertion recently that runners at the Standard Chartered Marathon were guilty of chicanery and had not truly completed the race was a powerful allegation. He loaded pictures of the suspects, yet he was wrong for these slower runners had been diverted by organisers through no fault of their own.

The blogger - whose name is known but I'd rather not mention it again for we live in a dismal culture of flaming - swiftly apologised. Many accusers do not, and Internet vigilantes who accuse without adequate investigation have become quick-fingered, over-zealous Sherlocks of the modern culture. We are living in the electronic reign of the righteous.

We skewer strangers without considering damage, we troll on Twitter without reflecting on the consequences of our own malice.

If a man hypothetically left his car in a disabled parking lot at a hospital he would, these days, be rapidly classified as a jerk, his number plate displayed and his address and family photos leaked.

Perhaps his young child was dying, he was late, the carpark full, his mind elsewhere. But we imagine only the worst of people.

Cultures are incredibly hard to change, even in marathoning itself.

A race of tradition and torment, of self-examination and self-flagellation, cannot ever be reduced to idle pursuit.

 

A colleague talks of a fellow who last Sunday seemed to leave one road and appeared to rejoin the race on another. This is cheating of the self, which defies the purpose of the race. It is done by very few, yet must be done by none.

In a grand running city, the marathon must not ever become a gimmick, a pastime, a mere business, but a challenge rigorously trained for.

Don't finish, don't be downhearted, but - and I am not referring to the blogger's victims - don't take the T-shirt which says Finisher.

People sell race medals on websites and that is their choice. But who would buy a medal they don't deserve? Only those who misunderstand sport and the painful pleasure of accomplishment. The medal, after all, is a piece of meaningless metal if it is worn without the user having actually experienced the marathon.

Steve Cram, the legendary middle-distance runner, recently told me that as a teenager, while helping to clean out fellow runner Brendan Foster's garage, he found some trophies discarded in an old box.

Real athletes don't always require the medal as proof of achievement: the memory of it, the satisfaction of it, is the reward.

We tend to look to great athletes to do everything, to even determine the standard of behaviour, but running belongs to every runner.

The ethics of running is every runner's responsibility. The etiquette within a race is every runner's obligation. The culture is built, and enforced, by the multitudes. And not just by those in sneakers.

As races multiply, culture is also the organisers' burden.

Most do a laudable job, like at the Standard Chartered run, but they must keep fine-tuning.

 

Running is fun, but the marathon is a test; it cannot only be a carnival, it is also a race. Diverting slower runners, as occurred last Sunday when they reportedly went from the 13km mark straight to roughly the 30km mark, is clumsy footwork.

To return to a race, after skipping a part, demeans the runner and the race.

Furthermore, says Ben Tan, a veteran marathoner, "they may block the faster runners who are going for speed. And this may also confuse the runners, who will think, Hey I stuck to my race plan, why are these people ahead of me?"

Giving T-shirts and medals to these runners of an amputated race - some, to be fair, were deeply reluctant to receive them - is also awkward practice.

To say, as organisers Spectrum Worldwide did, that they were given "in the spirit of appreciating the runners' participation" is noble but flawed.

They were trying to be inclusive, yet the marathoner is an exclusive band. In a race, you must cover a determined distance, you cannot make deals. Either the T-shirt means something or nothing. To offer it as a gift to some is to devalue it for others who earn it.

Every day, sport offers us the shortcut and the option to bend the rules.

Take a free-kick from five yards closer in a weekend game. Claim a cricket catch when it is clearly off the pad, not bat. Insist a tennis shot is clean when you know it bounced twice.

In the competitive environment, integrity is constantly questioned. And this integrity isn't a badge, it comes with no prize, it is in fact a choice which eventually gives sport meaning.

Integrity is taught to me every month by a lawyer named Edwin whom I play tennis with.

He wrote me an e-mail once, we met, we became tennis partners. If even 1 per cent of a ball seems to have kissed the line, he calls my shots "in".

By being his best self, he demands it from me. Integrity is discovered on the competitive field and it's why school sport matters. It is where cheating and choices are first confronted.

Tan, also the president of Singapore Sailing, says that the regular debriefs coaches hold with young sailors include a a fortnightly conversation on sportsmanship.

Athletes make mistakes, he explains, and education is the fix.

He has a lovely word for it: he says integrity has to be "engineered", or systematically inculcated. Not everyone is familiar with sports' unwritten codes: to mock them serves no purpose, to teach is to refine a culture.

Integrity brings respect, which is what sport craves.

Respect for runners from an errant and misguided blogger, who ironically was trying to protect the marathon's integrity. Respect from organisers for the purity of this race's purpose. Respect for a distance which has to be sweated for and planned for.

A colleague's running coach told him not to run the marathon: you're not ready, he was told. You can't cheat your way, in any form, to 42.195km. For to do that would be to disrespect the struggle which is the marathon.


This article was first published on December 14, 2014.
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