Drugs in World Athletics – An Orwellian Solution?

It’s summer 1984 and the Los Angeles Olympics is underway.  Doping has already started to saturate the international sporting world but for now this is a Games free of the global scepticism that is about to dominate public perception for more than a generation.  But as the closing ceremony concludes the storm clouds are gathering.  Within just a few years words like steroid, nandrolone and stanozolol become as synonymous with athletes as sneaker, spikes and vest.



As someone who was raised in a very sporting family I know well that few subjects are guaranteed to be as explosive or as divisive as performance enhancing drugs. In fact, I most likely had a very early introduction to the subject.  Throughout the late 70s and early 1980s the exceptional performance of the famed East German system was a hot topic in my family home.  Little did any of us know how systemic Erich Honecker’s programme of doping called ‘State Plan 14.25’ really was. The very deep scars of which are still felt today.  The compulsion of athletes to cheat and the consequences both they, and we, face has been something of an obsession ever since. 

A decade later the doping story was given new life in The West with the saga of Ben Johnson and the 100 metre finals at the 1988 Seoul Olympics (brilliantly covered by Richard Moore in his book The Dirtiest Race in History) and by the virtual absence of “clean” cycling in the professional peloton during the Lance Armstrong era (check out books by David Walsh, Tyler Hamilton or David Millar for the skinny on this). More recently the exclusion of Putin’s Russian athletics team from international competition and the scandals surrounding Kenya and Jamaica are further painful indication that the problem remains as endemic as ever. 

Now it is 1984 all over again but this time in the Orwellian sense. In a bold reinterpretation of Orwell’s quote ‘Who Controls the Past Controls the Future’ the sporting world has been rocked by a declaration from European Athletics. They are to propose to the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) that all World Records set prior to 2005 should be scrapped.  The thinking behind the proposal appears to be that there is no way to confirm which records set in the period prior to 2005 were achieved clean.  In their view, therefore, overall validation of any historic world records is impossible.  The European Athletics Task Force has further proposed that the records of anyone caught doping, even if the record was set outside the time period in which they were proven to be cheating should be annulled. 

Pierce O’Callaghan, Chair of the European Athletics Task Force is quoted as saying “Desperate times call for desperate measures and we want to re-gain the trust of the public” after which he cites the 1980s, the Soviet Union and East Germany saying this era needs to be put to bed.  I’ll leave it to the individual reader as to whether performances in 1980s Eastern Europe were high on your list of current concerns around world athletics.

Under these proposals countless Olympic and World champions could lose their World Records. Global stars including, Michael Johnson, Hicham El Guerrouj (who would lose claim to just the 5 WRs!) and Jonathan Edwards will fall off the world record list on to a confusingly parallel list called the 'all-time list'.  As a result countless athletes who have competed since 2005 could now find themselves as proud new owners of the coveted initials ‘WR’ after their name once the sport's record achievements are - in the words of IAAF chief Lord Coe - "recalibrated".  Although how they might feel if they take this record from an athlete (and maybe even a good friend) who has never even been under suspicion of cheating is anybody’s guess. 

According to Coe and O’Callaghan the objective is “to restore credibility to athletics.” Former GB sprinter Darren Campbell, himself collateral damage in the Dwain Chambers doping scandal, laudably echoes this by adding "I will sacrifice whatever it takes to save the sport and give its credibility back."

So far so good in terms of soundbites.  But soundbites are not policy, and I cannot help but look at these solutions from the perspective of a Root Cause Analysis expert and specifically through the prism of cause and effect.  When I go further and attempt to introduce an element of evidence-based decision making into my assessment of these proposals things really start to unravel.

First off, from the perspective of a Sologic RCA Practitioner the EA Task Force appears to be struggling with isolating precisely what their problem is, what we call an RCA ‘The Problem Statement’.  In RCA we spend what can seem to an outsider to be an inordinate amount of time on defining and refining our problem.  This is simply because without doing so we know our solutions are likely to be “hit and miss” at best.  So in this instance, if European Athletics and the IAAF insist in defining their Problem as one of ‘Improving Credibility’ they are going to struggle to create any truly targeted solutions. Why? Because failing credibility is less of a problem per se and more of a ‘consequence’ of pre-existing problems.  This in itself may go some way to explaining why this proposed solution feels so vague and ill-fitting. Or as GB Olympic middle-distance medallist Steve Cram more bluntly described it ‘Heavy handed and clumsy…somewhat disrespectful’

It will surprise no one that for many modern athletes their reputation, income and often their sense of self-worth will be built on the foundations of these World Records. It certainly isn’t hard to imagine the sense of bereavement that would occur if they were taken away in this manner.  Furthermore, athletics is not a highly remunerated career, even for successful athletes.  Indeed, we know well that possession of a World Record is a major influence on present and future income for many athletes. 

These comments made on The BBC World Service by former US long jumper Mike Powel illustrate this well.  Plans to rewrite world records set before 2005 are "disrespectful, an injustice and a slap in the face", says Powell, who stands to lose his own world record. "I've already contacted my attorney," said the American, whose mark of 8.95 metres set in August 1991 has never been bettered. "There are some records out there that are kind of questionable, I can see that, but mine is the real deal. It's a story of human heart and guts, one of the greatest moments in the sport's history”. If loss aversion theory teaches us anything it’s that athletes will fight like wild animals to protect it.

At Sologic when we work with our clients on their decision making skills we frequently return to the relationship between ‘Cause and Effect’. Cause and effect is integral to all effective problem solving and resides at the very heart of our RCA.   With this in mind it’s hard to see how a policy of wholesale removal of all pre-2005 records will address present or future credibility in any meaningful way. Will it solve future problems in any organisation if we draw an arbitrary line today, or whitewash past mistakes?  What will we do if (or, rather, when) a further cluster of institutionalised failure occurs.  Do we simply wipe a second time, or a third?

It’s at this stage of the discussion we also begin to wander into the territory of ‘Discipline Culture’ and the impact of intended and unintended effects. O’Callaghan, the Chair of the governing body implied that the ‘pain is worth the gain’.  But take a moment to consider your own experiences of when you, the innocent party, were forced to share in the punishment of the guilty. Did it make you more or less likely to behave in your previously honest manner?  Indeed, multiple studies conducted over many decades confirm that a major consequence of punishing the innocent alongside the guilty is that the guilty feel more, not less empowered to cheat.  After all, there is now clear evidence that you’ll get punished if you don’t cheat, as well as if you do!  In other words, the ‘risk versus reward equation’ is dragged even further in the favour of the outlaw.

All of this delivers us to the classic RCA solution matrix, where we compare solutions on the grounds of their effectiveness, ease of implementation; return on investment and on their potential negative impacts.  It would certainly appear from our observations that this proposal from European Athletics runs the risk of failing badly on all four of these key metrics.  

So this begs the question of how did this proposal escape the board room and reach the public domain in the first place?  Well, assuming it’s not a PR stunt to generate the illusion of action it could well be a result of that most pernicious of solution generators: Groupthink.  Now that the idea has left the incubator of the board room and is having to exist in the brutality of the outside world it seems to be considerably less robust than the original Task Force members had hoped for. The methodical and collaborative nature of the RCA process simply does not allow groupthink to take over.  

Perhaps it’s appropriate that the last words should be given to Lord Coe, president of athletics' governing body the IAAF, who is perhaps already sounding a little less dedicated to the plan and is now calling for a "global debate" around the issue.  He told the media: "These proposals will come back to the council and I look forward to maybe counter proposals and maybe changes, maybe thoughts around it. We have to start somewhere. This is a debate the athletes have prompted the administrators to have for far too long."