Kenrick Tucker, tactics and the Malvern Star Kid

In 1982, my 5^th class Social Studies assignment was on the Brisbane Commonwealth Games. We had to choose an Australian team member, write a story about their sport and glue newspaper clippings into a project book. ‘Kenrick Tucker’, Dad said. ‘All the other kids will choose swimmers. You should learn about track cycling’. I didn’t like getting help with my homework but I didn’t know who Kenrick Tucker was, so Dad watched the races with me and answered my questions. Why are they riding so high? Why do they swing up and down? Why aren’t they going fast from the start?

‘A kilo sprint isn’t just about going fast, Kimberley,’ he said. ‘It’s a game of chess on wheels’.

I liked playing chess with Dad. I would watch his face as my fingers hovered above the board, and wait for his pantomime expressions. ‘It’s not about getting to my side of the board fastest. Think about the next move, and the one after that,’ he said. ‘That’s how you win. Tactics’. If ‘kilo’ sprinting was like chess, Kenrick had to see the next move, and the one after that. He might be the fastest, but he would be knocked out without ‘tactics’. He’ll ride on the bank, or swing up and down the track, and then he’ll go, Dad said. ‘He’s smarter and faster than those other bastards. Wait.’ Then Kenrick went, and Dad was saying go, go, get in there, yelling at Kenrick Tucker like he did at Kingston Town. I jumped up and down on the lounge when he won and Dad didn’t even notice.

I don’t remember what I got for my assignment, but I thought about what Dad said about tactics. I had a yellow bike with gold glittery handlebars, a glitter stripe on the seat and spokey dokes, but I was getting too tall for it. My Dad had a big bike, a Malvern Star. It looked like the one Kenrick Tucker used, and my gangly legs could touch the pedals if one was at the top, or they were both even, and I didn’t move when Dad helped me up on to the hard ‘saddle’. Big bikes didn’t have long seats like mine for doubling someone behind you. If Mum was at work and we were going to my grandparents’ house after school, my Pop would meet us on Collier Street near the bike racks and double my sister on the flat handlebars, my brother and me riding behind. I could have had a double off ‘Old Arch’ or sometimes with Dad, but I was too scared to sit on the handlebars and keep my legs away from the front wheel. I was always cranky at how fast Old Arch would go, because it meant my sister would get a glass of lemonade and a scone from Nan before me.

Dad always put his bike in the garage after he knocked off from work, and walked over to the club for a drink. When we came home from Nan and Pop’s, we were supposed to put on our play clothes before we raced all of the other kids to the edge of the gully above the creek. I couldn’t go as fast as the kids with BMX bikes, even my brother. That’s when I remembered what Dad said. I wasn’t the fastest, but I had a plan. I put a milk crate next to Dad’s bike, moved the right pedal until it was at the top and held onto the edge of the garage while I swung my leg over. I tapped at the pedal and rolled down the driveway.

I hit the unsealed road on the thin tyres and turned left, towards the creek instead of riding up to the start line at the top of the hill. As the pedals ticked over by themselves, the boys started yelling at me to brake. They were riding after me and I knew I had to push the pedals back to make the bike stop or I was going over the edge and all the way down the gully. I looked down for the left pedal to come up and pushed my foot down. That’s when I learnt big bikes didn’t work like mine. The back of the bike started to slide on the dirt road and down we went. While the boys rode down on their BMX bikes I lay in the dirt, my left ankle caught on the pedal, its teeth clamped into me like one of Pop’s rabbit traps. I cried as they pulled the bike and me out of our own private dust storm, ankle, knee and elbow bleeding, school uniform and a sandal strap torn. The boys wheeled the bike home while I hobbled, crying, snotty with a big, googy egg bruise starting to rise on my temple. Mum came down the drive and yelled at me to get inside.

That was when I wished I had headed straight down the gully.

Great expectations

Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence.

In other words, it is war minus the shooting.

 ~ George Orwell

I’ve written about doping in sport several times on this blog (here and here), mostly about procycling, but also what I consider the sporting crime of our times: State Plan 14:25 – the East German ‘diplomats in tracksuits’, approximately 10,000 athletes (including children) doped by the State with performance enhancing drugs (PEDs). The scale, the cruel consequences, the ‘win at all costs’ regime makes Lance Armstrong look like a kindergarten bully.

The release yesterday of the Australian Crime Commission’s Organised Crime and Drugs in Sport report – the result of a 12 month investigation, aptly code named Project Aperio (a Latin verb meaning ‘uncover’ or ‘open’), hasn’t surprised or shocked me. Not the scale of its findings, not the scope of the investigation, or that the coercive witness powers of the ACC were used – and I love sport. I love it because I can’t run out of sight on a dark night. I can swim a bit, and play tennis. That’s it. Oh, I can leg press 180 kilograms (hardly surprising; I have long, strong muscles attached to metre-long legs). I love people who are good – brilliant – at their jobs. If those jobs involve a football, a tennis racquet or swimming caps, all the better.

Orwell captures the essence of my take on the last few days in those few sentences above.

Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play: don’t give me piffle about Don Bradman, or golden ages forever tarnished by a 40-odd page report and a press conference. Sporting organisations and their products have traded on the notion of ‘fair play’ since the first Olympics. You don’t need to use elite athletes to test ‘undetectable’ drugs to make a mockery of an ideal. You can throw tacks on the road in front of cyclists racing aerodynamically down a mountain. You can use your elbows to cause your opponents to fall over in a distance race. You can punch someone below the belt. You can bowl a ball with the intention of hitting a batsmen, instead of the stumps, or roll a ball down the pitch against a valiant, disgusted foe. You can field a below par team to pick the cream of the next crop. You can employ wrestling techniques to slow play.

Serious sport is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness: You can grunt, dive for a penalty, taunt an opponent so tastelessly that they head butt you. You can threaten to rip a man’s heart out, rip his children’s hearts out, bite, gouge, brawl, engage in ultimately deadly rivalries, label yourself the greatest and another man an ‘Uncle Tom’, king hit a player for doing nothing more than marking your patch. You can smash racquets and abuse officials. You can, without proof, label someone who swims faster than and sets world records an ‘obvious’ drug cheat. You can call yourselves leaders in drug testing, and be revealed as a sham. You can lie to yourself and courts, fool millions of people and foully degrade and discredit anyone who dares stand up to you. You can choose to become part of a code of silence instead of speaking what you know to be the truth, or pursue a lead on a story. You can choose to be a cheerleader, ingratiate yourself with athletes, managers, clubs, administrators because you are so close to glory you can taste it.

Serious sport is bound up with a disregard of all rules: you can set a pathetic policy where your players, your product, aren’t subject to the laws that apply to every other citizen, where recreational drug users you catch out are rarely named or reported to police. You can surrender your place in an Olympic team to someone who hasn’t qualified, and watch them win a gold medal. You can handle a ball to score a goal instead of your feet, and win a place or a game in the ultimate exhibition of the joga bonito and blithely admit it in a post-match interview, or claim divine intervention. You can break salary caps and make dodgy deals. You can tweet garbage  because you are witless. You can bet on or against your own team or race, consort with criminals, paint a horse so it resembles another, poor performer. You can insist drivers race on unsafe tracks, and take action only when one life too many is lost.

Serious sport is bound up with sadistic pleasure in violence:  We, the stadium fillers, bay for ever-harder, brain-rattling tackles, celebrate the spilling of claret or a knockout in the boxing ring. Our games may not be violent, but they become sadistic. Rule changes push athletes to, and beyond, the limits of pain and endurance. We find intermediate stages of three-week races boring, and thrill when tour organisers announce brutal stages. Players who miss penalties never live down the ignominy. We take pleasure in hating rival teams, rival codes, rival sports, other countries. We bait rival fans and rely on other fixtures so we ‘win’ at the expense of another’s loss. We resort to racial abuse and defend those who practice it. We, the fans, have voices. We choose to silence ourselves and demand ever-greater performances. We buy pulp peddled by pundits who self-censor and allow the brave to be damned.

Sometimes, we bear witness to horror, and react with every ounce of human kindness and concern, sorrow at the loss of athletes dying young or stretchered off a ground with broken limbs or hearts which have ceased beating. We remember serious sports bear serious risks and consequences. We remember, and try to right wrongs. We can think, call, write, refuse to pay for memberships, support the outspoken against the omertà. We can accept losses with good grace, instead of crying with indignation that ‘we wuz robbed”. We can be better, act with integrity and ask the same in return.

The Big Texan’s Telenovela, Pt II

In which I delve inside the mind of The Big Texan after the airing of the first chapter of ‘Oprah’s Next Chapter’: Oprah Winfrey’s new series of interviews with people looking for publicity on a network seeking people desperate for publicity: ‘Lance Armstrong admits to doping’.

Lance Armstrong admits doping: well knock me down & colour me purple, Oprah. It’s why he’s there. As an aside, one of the more interesting diversions was a Twitter exchange between Leigh Sales (@leighsales), Tracy Grimshaw (@tracygrimshaw), Monica Attard (@attardmon), Jenny Brockie (@JenBrockie), Wendy Carlisle (@wendycarlisle) & Mia Freedman (@MiaFreedman – who famously ‘didn’t care’ when Cadel Evans won the TdF, but was all over Oprah like a rash) over Oprah’s interviewing technique. I highly recommend you check it out. Personally, I’d prefer Lance to be in a courtroom, but hey, I’ll take what I can get. Oprah didn’t do a ‘bad’ job, but she let him off the hook a few times. Contrary to the pre-publicity, Armstrong didn’t answer every question and when he did, his answers were pure Lance:

• it wasn’t possible to win seven Tours de France ‘in that culture’ without doping
• he’d looked in the dictionary (probably one he wrote) and checked the definition of ‘cheating’. Nup, he concluded. He hadn’t gained an advantage over his fellow competitors; “… it was a level playing field …” 
• had he failed a test? ‘Technically, yes’. Not at the time, of course. Oh, those pesky retrospective EPO tests.

So … is Lance Armstrong a sociopath or psychopath? Given Armstrong ‘looked up the definition of cheating’, I’m delving into some pop psychiatry. Firstly, the labels are often interchangeable and shorthand for personality disorders as defined in the American Psychiatric Association’s ‘Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders’ (DSM IV TR – fourth edition, text revision). What tips me toward ‘sociopath’ is Armstrong’s constant references to his childhood . ‘Mom had her back to the wall, we both had our backs to the wall,’ he told Winfrey. He has said as much throughout his career. It’s a statement of fact, not blame. In the good old days, this disorder was known as megalomania. Under the Hare Psychopathy Test, Armstrong’s behaviour fits Factors 1 (a) and (b), closely aligned with Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD).  Factors 2 (a) and (b) are more closely associated with Antisocial Behavioural Disorder, violence and criminality. NPD is indicated by five (or more) of the following:

(1) has a grandiose sense of self-importance (e.g., exaggerates achievements and talents, expects to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements)  pre-cancer, Lance is a guy in the peloton. Post-cancer, he wins the world’s biggest cycling race. He becomes ‘Lance Armstrong’. He BEAT cancer. He smashed that bastard to a pulp. He is the resurrected, ‘Cancer Jesus’, peddling yellow bracelets. Not so much. No one ‘beats’ cancer in the same way that no one has CURED cancer. You are diagnosed, you might be treated, & the still inexact science might mean you go into remission, and you celebrate anniversaries – five, 10, 30 years’ cancer free; or the cancer just gives it the big, ‘fuck you’, & spreads, & you go through the treatment cycle again & you get some more time, or you die.

Sundance Kid: “I can’t swim.” Butch Cassidy: “Are you crazy? The fall will probably kill you.”

(2) is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love … His tweet following the release of USADA’s ‘Reasoned Decision’ was classic – ‘ just kicking back enjoying life’. Kicking back, photographed lazing on the sofa below the seven mounted maillot jaune lining the wall. Living in LA LA Land, where, despite the weight of evidence pouring out, you’re still the man. Also, he wouldn’t be sitting with the Mighty Opes if he hadn’t come back to the sport. He would have gotten away with a great fraud. He was only undone by his own greatness.

(3) believes that he or she is “special” and unique and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status people (or institutions)  ’Being Lance’ was an amazing gig, despite him downplaying it to Winfrey: ‘I didn’t know how big it would be.’ Get your hand off it, mate. How many of your peers are invited to rub shoulders with Presidents? Also, his dismissal of hardcore cycling fans as ‘the people outside the bus’. The great unwashed. Ugh. Today, it was evidenced by his refusal to answer questions about others implicated in the doping scandal, particularly his trainer, Dr Michele Ferrari, who is a ‘good man, a smart man’. He wasn’t opposed to delivering the occasional backhander, such as that handed out to former team mate, Christian Vande Velde, who alleged Armstrong had the power tell his team mates to dope, or they were off the team. ‘There was never a direct order,’ Armstrong said. Duh, VdV, you idiot. You just thought there was. Because Lance.

(4) requires excessive admiration … see the second coming of Cancer Jesus. Can you imagine training for triathlons (which, to be fair, he was pretty handy at as a young man before deciding it was all about the bike) while Floyd Landis, Alberto Contador & Carlos Sastre drank champagne on the road to Paris? Come on. To Winfrey, he concedes he’s a jerk, but makes sure he slips ‘humanitarian’ in at the same time. Jerk.

(5) has a sense of entitlement, i.e., unreasonable expectations of especially favorable treatment or automatic compliance with his or her expectations see the testimony of his fellow riders in USADA’s ‘Reasoned Decision’. In LA LA Land, the USADA investigation was ‘an unconstitutional witch hunt’ and a ‘waste of taxpayers’ money’. Actually, no, Lance. The waste of taxpayers’ money was the years your cycling squad was sponsored by the US Postal Service, when you and your squad broke a contractual obligation not to dope. In today’s interview, Armstrong was asked if he felt bad, whether his actions were wrong, whether he felt like a cheat? No. Non. Nyet. ’Hey, Travis (Tygart) – soz for all the bad stuff I said about you, or had my Orcs put out, bud; we can sort this out at a truth & reconciliation meeting – I’ll be there!’

(6) is interpersonally exploitative, i.e., takes advantage of others to achieve his or her own ends Armstrong admitted to being a bully & trying to ‘control the narrative’. Fact: after the 2001 Tour de Suisse, Armstrong made out a cheque to the UCI for $25,000, pledging a further $100,000 in 2005 – to fight doping. They called it a donation. Tyler Hamilton called it hush money for Armstrong’s alleged 2001 Tour de Suisse positive test. Michael Ashenden, independent doping expert, calls it, ‘unconscionable’. Today, Armstrong said the UCI asked for a donation. The organisation was so poor it went to him & asked for money to assist its anti-doping efforts. Who knows? I think Armstrong used the words, ‘I’m no fan of the UCI,’ four or five times in the Winfrey interview. Get ready, Hein Verbruggen, Thomas Weisel, Johan Bruyneel, et al: you’re going under the bus. Lance. Does. Not. Want. To. Go. To. Prison.

(7) lacks empathy: is unwilling to recognize or identify with the feelings and needs of others see Armstrong’s treatment of anyone who stood up to him – journalists Paul Kimmage (@PaulKimmage) and David Walsh (@DavidWalshST) for a start. Armstrong called Emma O’Reilly an alcoholic prostitute & Betty Andreu a crazy bitch. Today, that dead-eye shark smirk as he refused to confirm her account of Armstrong’s admission to doctors on his cancer diagnosis that he was doping: ‘…but … I didn’t call her fat!’. Reference to cancer as ‘the disease’: ‘Cancer Jesus’ is exacting a big toll on LIVESTRONG. In its official statement after the airing of the Winfrey special, the organisation released this statement; he visited HQ on Monday and apologised for the stress he’d caused, not for lying. Stress caused because you lied, Lance. In the 2004 Tour, wearing the yellow jersey, he infamously, needlessly chased down a breakaway Simeoni was in because the Italian had testified against Ferrari. As he approaches Simeoni he gives him the sign of the omerta – seal your lips – & more. Simeoni drifts back through the pack, in his own words, ‘face wet with tears & the spit of others’. Some publicly mused on, and criticised the bizarre incident at the time; others, including then Australian professional rider, Scott Sunderland, said it was ‘stupid’ of Simeoni to speak out.

In 1999, Armstrong told Christophe Bassons – the only Festina rider cleared in the 1998 scandal – that he should leave the Tour for questioning Armstrong’s ascendency in a newspaper column. Armstrong confirmed the conversation on French television:

“His accusations aren’t good for cycling, for his team, for me, for anybody. If he thinks cycling works like that, he’s wrong and he would be better off going home.”

It worked. When Bassons transferred to Francaise des Jeux, he was persona non grata in the team, & the peloton. So he left.

(8) is often envious of others or believes that others are envious of him or her among his many feuds, one of the nastiest is with Greg LeMond, the three-time Tour de France champion, not only the first American winner, but the first non-European cyclist to win. Was it not enough to ‘win’ seven consecutive tours? Armstrong had to stomp on LeMond’s achievements & bury his bike brand?  When Armstrong announced his return to professional cycling, and joined the same team as Contador, he announced that he ranked their team mate Levi Leipheimer on the same level as the Spaniard. Or he might even win again. Christ on a bike.

(9) shows arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes see all of the above. Armstrong speaks in the royal ‘we’;  his critics are ‘haters’ – questioning or criticising Lance meant you hated the entire sport; he blacklisted journalists; he sued, or announced he was suing, everyone from his former mechanic to the Sunday Times. He sledged Landis for almost a decade, now he wants to settle his whistleblower lawsuit. Little wonder. He doesn’t have the manpower to take on the Justice Department as well in the case, which centres on the alleged defrauding of the Federal Government.

I don’t think I’ll bother watching tomorrow’s ‘mesmerising’ insights. I think Lance Armstrong is mad, bad and dangerous to know. I don’t want to see his crocodile tears about being dropped by sponsors. I doubt we’ll see anything more probing, given the promo at the end of today’s show. Here are a few more highly recommended reads:

• If you missed the interview, Jane Aubrey (@janeaubrey) gives a good wrap-up on cyclingnews (@cyclingnewsfeed), & captures the reaction of WADA President, John Fahey
• Shane Stokes (@SSbike) interviews Bike Pure’s Andy Layhe for VeloNation (@Pro_Cycling)
• Everything by the New York Times’ Juliet Macur (@JulietMacur), who has consistently been ahead of the pack. Especially this
• Nice analysis in VeloNews (@velonews) by Matthew Beaudin (@matthewcbeaudin); Jake Stephens in VeloNation (@Pro_Cycling)
• .. and with so many cycling journalists & commentators in Australia for the upcoming Tour Down Under, check out these interviews (and compare the reactions): Rupert Guinness (@rupertguinness), Phil Liggett (@PhilLiggett) Paul Sherwen (@PaulSherwen) on SBS’ Cycling Central (@cyclingcentral) website
• USADA issued a two-paragraph statement. I think Trav wants to see Lance in another chair.
• … as opposed to the UCI. Pat McQuaid thought Lance did good, has the Truth & Reconciliation chair warming. Vomit.

The Big Texan’s Telenovela

DISCLAIMER: I started writing this post on 6 January (including the part about a brain-dump confession). I became distracted with other things before posting it. More to come (obviously) now a confession of sorts is coming …

~~~

A few sketchy thoughts on the latest episode in the telenovela that is the Big Texan, something I have covered previously in this post. Sticking to the ‘Five Ws’ …

Who? Lance Armstrong, the greatest sociopath never to win a Tour de France.

What? Armstrong is reported to be considering admitting to using PEDs (performance-enhancing drugs) and blood transfusions during his cycling career. ‘Considering admitting’. Is that even a thing? Yes. Think of the number of times you’ve seen expendable politician muse publicly on party leadership / policy. Create a shitstorm. See where the chips fall.

When? Armstrong’s camp launched the first salvo in the NYT on January 5, with a great tease: after denying that he had doped during his cycling career (in sworn testimony as well as to the media, the people ‘outside the bus’, himself), viciously denigrating anyone who said otherwise, and deploying an army of Armstrong Orcs (including athletes, authorities and Matthew McConaughey) against the ‘haters and cynics’, Lance is, according to people with direct knowledge of what goes on in his head (most likely Lance), thinking of telling the world & its mother that he’s been a cheatin’ & a lyin’.

Where? First reported in the New York Times, the ‘maybe, baby’ yarn tore through the media cycle (mainstream, sporting and social) faster than a barbed wire fence through lycra (apologies to Johnny Hoogerland).

Why? As I tweeted when the story broke, nothing this man does would surprise me, but here are a few motives, either reported (and my take on them) or invented by me (I’ll make those clear).

NYT:

“… he wants to persuade antidoping officials to restore his eligibility so he can resume his athletic career.” (Me: I don’t doubt this. Armstrong needs to compete. It’s his raison d’etre. Fake Twitter accounts won’t keep Juan Pelota happy for much longer).

“Wealthy supporters of Livestrong, the charity he founded after surviving testicular cancer, have been trying to persuade him to come forward so he could clear his conscience and save the organization from further damage, one person with knowledge of the situation said.” (Me: see below, under ‘Cancer Jesus’).

My theories:

Cash. Cash not here: In retirement, Armstrong relied on the continuing support of personal sponsorship from firms including Nike, Trek, SRAM & Oakley; lucrative ‘cycling with Lance Armstrong’ rides, and generally ‘Being Lance’ (South Australia, your tax dollars hard at work paying Armstrong’s Tour Down Under appearance fee). The sponsors have pulled the pin; dissatisfaction with his ‘riding for hire’ is being aired and ‘Being Lance’ isn’t what it was this time last year. Armstrong faces losing approximately $12.5 million in prizemoney, lawsuits and an estimated $30 million from endorsements alone. Despite a rumoured $100 million fortune, a tell-all book, complete with exclusive excerpt and interview deals, on the shelves in time for Father’s Day in the US (Sunday, 16 June … a nice tie-in with the cycling calendar, as well) will help a man ‘raising five children’. Mark the date in your diaries. Floral tributes gratefully accepted if I’m right. I’ll tweet, ‘I was wrong’ if I’m wrong.

Cancer Jesus: Apologies if you are offended by this sobriquet; I find it fitting. Armstrong has inspired many people (whether they have cancer, know someone with cancer, or just want to improve their lifestyle) to think positively, change, get healthy, but HE IS NOT THE BLOODY MESSIAH. He has not done more than anyone else to ‘fight cancer’ (copyright: Phil Liggett). Raising $500 million through LIVESTRONG is amazing; amazingly, the bulk of that money is not spent ‘fighting cancer’ at the frontline – in research labs, on nursing or palliative care, for example. It is spent ‘raising awareness’ of cancer and employing lobbyists to lobby governments for research funding and ‘cancer awareness’. Are you aware of cancer? Yes? Let’s move on.

Despite resigning as Chairman, The LIVESTRONG Foundation was, until recently,  ’The Lance Armstrong Foundation’. Not to be confused (although in all likelihood, very easily confused with http://www.lancearmstrong.com). Every day, its work is still associated with him. A confession may be the only thing that will guarantee its long-term credibility (see above paragraph from NYT). I doubt Lance will be getting many invitations to the Clinton Global Initiative or appear before state legislatures to ‘fight cancer’. Who still wears one of the formerly ubiquitous yellow bracelets or, more importantly, would buy one?

The Big House:

If the Justice Department joins Floyd Landis’ lawsuit, Lance is in trouble.

If the Justice Department decides the senior team (including Armstrong) which ran the US Postal squad defrauded the Federal Government by breaking the terms of its contract, Lance is in more trouble.

Facing time in the Big House is a very unappetising prospect. WWLD? (What Would Lance Do?). Throw everyone else under the bus. If I was Johan Bruyneel, I would be bricking it & moving to a country without an extradition treaty to the US.

Living in LA LA Land

“Anyone who imagines they can work alone winds up surrounded by nothing but rivals, without companions. The fact is, no one ascends alone.”

Lance Armstrong, It’s Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life

Lance Armstrong knew all about teamwork.

For every grimace in the face of an outrageous mountain gradient; for every second split in a bunch sprint; for every sinew straining in the race of truth … Lance Armstrong climbed to the top of the Tour de France podium seven times as part of a team.

Sportspeople rarely claim their spoils as individuals. Tennis players thank everyone in ‘their corner’, just as boxers do; some athletes have an annoying tendency to speak of themselves in the third person. Cyclists have their team on the road, and off it. Everyone from the soigneurs to the directeurs sportif is part of the team.

Last week, the world learnt just how far Lance Armstrong’s ‘team’ went to ensure their companion’s ascent, and what happened to those people who didn’t play by Armstrong’s rules.

On 10 October 2012, the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) released this statement and its 202-page ‘Reasoned Decision’ on the Disqualification and Ineligibility of Lance Armstrong and supporting information to the Union Cycliste International (UCI), the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), and the World Triathlon Corporation (WTC).

Some of the language is hyperbolic:

The evidence shows beyond any doubt that the US Postal Service Pro Cycling Team ran the most sophisticated, professionalized and successful doping program that sport has ever seen.

I disagree. For me, that title will forever belong to State Plan 14:25, the systemic, state-controlled, barbaric doping of approximately 10,000 East German athletes. US Postal may have been more sophisticated in its methods, more professional at hiding the truth and staying ahead of the testing regime, but even seven Tour de France victories pale in comparison to the image built for the DDR by their ‘ambassadors in tracksuits’. Those in charge of the programme poisoned children; their experiments and drugs leaving wounds that have long-outlasted the Cold War.

That said, the statement from USADA Chief Executive, Travis Tygart, provides in one paragraph a great summary of the key issues and defences Armstrong, his cronies in the press and the peloton have used, repeatedly, to damn those who came forward before USADA built its case:

The evidence of the US Postal Service Pro Cycling Team-run scheme is overwhelming and is in excess of 1000 pages, and includes sworn testimony from 26 people, including 15 riders with knowledge of the US Postal Service Team (USPS Team) and its participants’ doping activities. The evidence also includes direct documentary evidence including financial payments, emails, scientific data and laboratory test results that further prove the use, possession and distribution of performance enhancing drugs by Lance Armstrong and confirm the disappointing truth about the deceptive activities of the USPS Team, a team that received tens of millions of American taxpayer dollars in funding.

Firstly, anyone who reads even the 202-page version is living on the Planet Ignorant or the Planet Stupid if they can dismiss the evidence USADA has collected. A lot of it has been heard before, because people like Frankie and Betsy Andreu, Emma O’Reilly and Filippo Simeoni had the guts to take a stand against Armstrong very early on. They paid a hefty price for breaking the silence against Dr Michele Ferrari or alleging Superman was a Supercheat. Ostracised from the peloton, careers crippled, businesses and reputations destroyed. I urge you to go further, and read the affidavits of all 26 witnesses. It was easy for Armstrong to take pot shots at Floyd Landis and Tyler Hamilton. They were ‘known drug cheats’ and ‘liars’. It becomes more problematic when the list of witnesses includes names such as Michael Barry, Levi Leipheimer, Jonathan Vaughters, Dave Zabriskie, Tom Danielson, Christian Vande Velde, and the granddaddy of them all … Armstrong’s most loyal lieutenant, his ‘bro’, George Hincapie. Danielson, Leipheimer, Vande Velde and Zabriskie are still part of the peloton. It was Hincapie’s recent retirement which made me believe USADA had more than a couple of ‘disgraced’ riders and some ‘bitter ex-employees’ giving sworn evidence against Armstrong. Some of the stories are painful to read. Hincapie’s cold detail; I cried when I read Simeoni’s story – even though I knew it – of Armstrong bullying his way around the 18^th stage of the 2004 Tour de France peloton to catch Simeoni in a breakaway, with the now infamous ‘zip your lips’ gesture (see 18 second mark, and between the 40 – 1 minute 40 second mark for the agitated encounter), a sign that Simeoni should not have testified in 2000 to doping under the guidance of Ferrari. Of Simeoni dropping back through the pack, crying and being spat upon by the group. Zabriskie’s affidavit is plain sad. A man who had grown up the son of a drug-addicted father, turned to cycling as a clean release, refused to dope and had his wages slashed in return, and then crossed the threshold to doper … some of them will make you white-hot with anger. No one covers themselves in glory by staying silent for all of these years, especially giants of the sport who could have made a difference, such as George Hincapie. The ‘omerta’ or Code of Silence was strong in these ones; yet none of them leaves me with any doubts that these events happened, and that Lance Armstrong was Doper-in-Chief. As pages 6-7 of the Reasoned Decision state:

“It was not enough that his teammates give maximum effort on the bike, he also required that they adhere to the doping program outlined for them or be replaced. He was not just a part of the doping culture on his team, he enforced and re-enforced it.” (for more, see pp. 16-87)

The financial records – especially the payments to the good doctor – make me think I went into the wrong business. A million or so Euros? A lazy 25,000 Euros in cash? Give me strength. The emails between Armstrong and Stefano Ferrari (Dr Ferrari’s son) detail the financial transactions, and offer an insight into Armstrong’s attitude to his teammates and rivals and confirm he was in close contact with Dr Ferrari during a period he has previously denied.

It’s easy to make light of some of the ways Armstrong distributed performance enhancing drugs, especially “Motoman” (pp 30-35 of the Reasoned Decision), but the way Lance Armstrong and USPS avoided being caught (pp 129-139) is dark. The scientific data and laboratory tests (pp 139-144), stopped exaggerating the number of doping tests he’s been through, or claim (falsely) that he’s never failed one.

Together, the evidence – which USADA is at pains to stress was not provided by US law enforcement – making a bigger mockery of Phil Liggett’s bizarre old-man rant Skype interview with Ballz Radio and his fellow commentator and Armstrong-booster, Paul Sherwen’s tweet that he was, ‘not sure if (it was) Al Capone or Alien (he was) reading’. I truly hope SBS dumps them both from commentating on cycling next year. Firstly, because we just don’t need them anymore – we have our own talent; secondly, I can’t see either of them admitting they’ve been very wrong, for many years (NB: Liggett has finally tonight said on Australia’s ‘4Corners’ programme that ‘everyone was doing it … so I can’t see how Lance wasn’t doing it’. This investigation is no witch hunt, nor was it a waste of taxpayers’ money, as Armstrong claimed, somewhat despicably in light of the fact that US Postal took tens of millions of American taxpayer dollars in funding.

There are people who, despite all of the evidence presented by USADA, the personal testimonies of 26 people, the emails, the positive samples, the relationship and payments to the disgraced Dr Michele Ferrari, this weekend’s ‘parting of the ways’ between Armstrong’s US Postal Team manager, Johan Bruyneel, and his employer, Radioshack-Nissan Trek (for more on Bruyneel, see pp. 107-115) will continue to support Armstrong. Those people who read his books and are inspired by the ‘Big Texan’. It’s a compelling story – the comeback from cancer and the ‘unparalleled’ record in the grande dame of grand tours. Millions of people around the world to whom Lance remains a hero, the person who drew them into the Euro-centric world of men’s road racing, or insist that it doesn’t matter if he doped because the Lance Armstrong Foundation (or LIVESTRONG) ‘fights cancer’ (for the record, I don’t believe that raising $470 million and spending it largely on awareness campaigns helps ‘fight cancer’). I disagree with those who say you can separate the work of LIVESTRONG from Lance Armstrong. LIVESTRONG would not exist without Lance Armstrong. It may be a false equivalence, but do you think people would give money to the Floyd Landis Foundation? When you are so closely associated with good deeds, does it give you carte blanche to do so much wrong?

People are flawed. I am a huge hypocrite when it comes to doping in cycling. I love the sport. I still shout my support for many riders who have been caught doping. Unlike some, who demand apologies from dopers, I don’t want them to self-flagellate for my benefit. Anyone who follows my cycling tweets knows I am a huge fan of Alberto Contador. His ‘it was the steak what done it’ excuse for testing positive to clenbuterol may be pathetic, but I’ve never heard him blame anyone – not even the team cook. I like the irrepressible Alexandre ‘Vino’ Vinokourov. I get tingly over ‘Tommeke’ (Tom Boonen). I believe that as the size of the English-speaking contingent in the peloton has increased, a certain amount of prejudice has grown among cycling fans toward non-English speaking dopers, especially those who express no remorse for what they did, such as Alejandro Valverde; that unless you publish mea culpa after mea culpa a la David Millar, you’re forever a filthy drug cheat instead of a reformed drug cheat. Do I think there are riders who continue to dope, teams which find new ways of beating the system? Yes. Do I think there are riders who do it clean? Yes. Are there certain riders I would be devastated to learn had doped? Yes. The rumour mill in the cycling fraternity never stops whirling. Perhaps I would even admire Armstrong if he just copped the ban. I don’t want him to say ‘sorry’. If people want to keep buying plastic wristbands to ‘fight cancer’, in much the same way as you can stop child soldiering by buying a Kony 2012 pack for $39.99, then that’s their call. Just stop bullshit like this:

“To all the cynics, I’m sorry for you … I’m sorry you can’t believe in miracles. This is a great sporting event and hard work wins it.”

The Tour de France is a great sporting event. Hard work wins it; but the only miracle Lance Armstrong was involved with was the one that kept his myth alive for so long.

To bastardise his own words, Armstrong has chosen to descend alone.

L’ensorceleuse

Sport strips away personality, letting the white bone of character shine through.

~ Rita Mae Brown

“I just wanted to sing the song one more time.”

My fellow Sydney Swans’ member and friend, Marc, is guilty of one of sport’s seven deadly sins (see p82 of my self-published ‘Almanac for all Sporting Fans’), in that he barracks for two AFL clubs. Guyanan-born, English-raised, Marc first lived in Melbourne when he moved here, and the Tottenham Hotspur man had fallen in love with the Australian football code … and a club named Hawthorn.

He stood there, singing their club song on our home ground. All game I resisted the urge to give him a good pinch as he cheered them. As he cheered when Shaun Burgoyne cleared the ball from the centre and the Swans lost, 102-95.

He stood, looking at me, waiting for me to grab my bag and go. Fuck him. I stayed seated, chin resting on arms folded atop the railing in front of my seat in the O’Reilly Stand.

“I just wanted to sing the song one more time.”

Round 22 of the 2012 AFL home and away season. Our last game at the Sydney Cricket Ground. All week I read the various permutations of where we would finish going into the finals. The Swans, forever ‘flying under the radar’ as they stood aloft the ladder, could drop to third, or fourth … or was it even fifth? I headed for the consolation of the lost, and sank bottomless schooners of Old at The Cricketer’s Arms.

—

Round 23: away to Geelong. The Melbourne pundits, salivating over the prospect of a Cats-Hawks Grand Final, didn’t rate our chances. Having been to Kardinia Park when it was Skilled Stadium (but before it became Simonds), I was nervous … and this is watching the game on television, kitted out as usual in full match-day gear, including lucky underwear (NB: there is more than one set). We lost, the commentators all but crowned the Cats as Premiers, and we would have to travel to Adelaide for the first week of the finals.

—

Father’s Day: “How are you?” Mum said as she picked me up from the train station. “Really well,” I replied, and for once, meaning it. ”Except for the Swannies, though?” Mum replied.

I don’t know what was written on my face. I have so much other shit, real life total bullshit facing my family, & was a bloody game of football all that I was showing emotion about?

Mum: “What does that mean for the finals … do you still get a final?”

Me: “Not next week. They (not we) have to travel to Adelaide.”

Mum: “Are you going?”

Me: “Nah, can’t afford it.”

Mum: “I’ll lend you the money.”

—-

AAMI Stadium, Week One: the bizarro choir greeting the squad at  Adelaide Airport; the allergy of Crows’ fans to queuing to get a beer; the, ‘oh, jesus … this was supposed to be the AWAY supporters bay, right on the arc of the back pocket’; the constant booing at every Swan taking a set shot or refereeing decision which went against the home side; the everything. It all disappeared in the beauty of the Swans’ 29-point win. We replaced them. I couldn’t see the tears of the man I call Mighty Mouse, Ben McGlynn, as he was subbed out of the game with a hamstring injury that would probably end his season. The unexpected text message. The missed telephone message from my Dad, a proud rugby league man converted to this game. There was only one person to call. From the glamour of the queue for the ladies’ bathroom, I phoned the number.

“Mummy, Mummy … WE DID IT! Thank you so much, Mummy! I love you for making this possible. It’s mad here but … Mummy, Mummy … we did it.”

NB: I wasn’t speaking to Shane Mumford. I call my Mother, ‘Mummy’ when I am  drunk (tick), child-like with joy (tick), or very ill (not at the time).

I had to get back to the airport. Again, the Adelaide allergy to queuing came to the fore. As I had done on the way to AAMI Stadium, I asked the Swans’ supporters around me if they could fit one more into their cab. Sure thing.

Walking toward the terminal, a man asked who had won the game.

“We did! Are you a Port supporter?” It seemed like a fair ask. He wasn’t wearing any team colours.

“No,” the man replied. “How was it?”

Me: “We were magnificent. We stood up to everything. We stopped them … and we ran and we carried and we kicked straight and we were magnificent.”

Man: “Any one stand out?”

Me: “Oh, our defensive structure was outstanding and the midfield we killed them in the mids, and Mitch Morton kicked two – MITCH MORTON?!? I’ll tell you something: no one rates us a chance. No one thought we would win. I believe in these fellas. Goodesy’s coming on, and Teddy Richards, what a star. Bloody hell, my, ‘oh jesus ker-ist on crutches’ player, LRT, was strong … but you know the bloke who’s come into a rich vein of form in the last few weeks? Jarrad McVeigh. Goodesy gets all the attention, and I love him, he’s a bloody star, but McVeigh … he’s building each week.”

Man, stops, props: “Yeh, he was all right.”

Me: “So are you a Swans man? Or a Collingwood spy?”

Man: “I’m Jarrad McVeigh’s Dad.”

Me, stopped: “Really?”

Man: “Really.”

Me: (babble, ZOMG I thought it was amazing when I met Nic Fosdike’s aunt today, wow, can I shake hands, congratulations on fathering the freshly-retired Essendon player, Mark McVeigh; then the genuine but irritating tears of a drunken stranger sucked in hard as I try to put into words how we all shared his family’s happiness at the safe delivery of Jarrad & Clementine’s daughter Lolita, and mourned the loss of Luella).

The whole time our hands are clasped.

—

Made the flight. Made it? Slayed it. The flight was delayed. Then I saw Brett Kirk, dressed impeccably, accompanied by some Channel 7 commentator whose name still escapes me. It had to be done.

Me: “Brett? Look I’m really sorry to bother you but I just had to say hello and thank you for everything you’ve done for the Swans,” … more babble as from the corner of my eye I can see the prick from Channel 7 drop back, thinking, ‘poor Kirky’.

Kirky: (DISTINCTLY UNIMPRESSED) “Yeh, they were good today. Thanks.”

Me: (dying on the inside) “OK, thanks for everything you’ve done for the club. Sorry for bothering you.”

Me: (unsaid) “WHAT THE FUCK WAS WITH THE, ‘KIRKY’S BANNED FROM THE SWANS’ ROOMS’ BULLSHIT 7 PUT OUT THERE?”

I had a little money left, so into the Cooper’s Alehouse for a bevvy it was. About 25 Swans fans watching the first quarter of the elimination final between Freo and Geelong. Or, to be more accurate, slack-jawed by what we were seeing and pretty bloody happy that the AFL media pack would be shitting themselves without more Geelong / Hawthorn yarns to write.

And then, a stream of men in red and white. Bags and beers abandoned, the still-standing stragglers bolted from the bar and cheered each player by name. We cheered the support staff, and we sang the song through an empty Adelaide airport. I looked at Ben McGlynn and the crutches and my heart sank. The players smiled and waved, Mitch Morton lapping up the love and enjoying the limelight at last after a year in the Ressies.

—

A week off. Home to Newcastle again for my friends’ joint 40th at a Newcastle pub … no AFL. Nervously checking the scores on my phone. West Coast couldn’t do it. We’d play Collingwood at ANZ in the preliminary final. Here we go …

—

The clichés tumble easily on the various football shows. Hoodoo. Ah, Collingwood. They were well beaten by the Hawks, but they’ll knock Sydney off the same way they did the Eagles. The unbeaten streak. Collingwood. Bloody hell. The Markgrook panel (except for Shelley and Leila) and the Footy Show panel: Crawf, Push Ups King, Milney, Garry Lyon … all backing the Pies; James Brayshaw, ‘The Swans have been chronically underrated since Round One’ … YA THINK?’, I tweeted. I re-watch the 2005 semi-finals. My favourite game – the night Nick Davis came to save us. The commentary as useful now: “That Davis goal, that was the freak of the night … you just can’t see it happening a lot more.” So tiresome. Still a team of grinders and grafters who had played uglier than everyone else to win a flag in 2005. I watch the world road racing championships. I refuse to see one of my oldest mates, a Pies fan, before the match because I knew I would be driven to boxing his ears. He’d never known what it was like to lose against us at ANZ.

I met up with fellow Swans and we board an Olympic Park train packed with red and white. There’s a big travelling Collingwood contingent, of course. As it became real, that this time we would catch that treno back to town victorious, I turned as feral as I’d ever been to the Pies fans leaving the stadium early:

“GO ON, YOU WEAK BASTARDS! LEAVE YOUR BOYS OUT THERE, ALONE … WHAT KIND OF PEOPLE DO THAT?”

We laughed at the sight of a miserable Joffa flashing up on the big screen, & jumped, wildly into the night as Jude Bolton kicked truly in his 300th game. Yes, Jude … 301 was going to be closer.

WE FUCKING DID IT! WE’RE IN THE GRAND FINAL!

I met up with Andrew, who’s become a great friend, a true Collingwood person but always first to acknowledge a better team and analyse the game, not dispassionately, but with care and honour. The kind of person who should be a pundit.

“No, congratulations Kimbo, well done, you’re going to come down for the Granny aren’t you? Your boys were too good, they deserve it, it’s not our year.”

At a pub in the city, three renditions (possibly more) of the Swans’ club song, a bastardised version of the Notre Dame Fighting Irish song, he’d reached peak tolerance. I’d reached peak adrenaline-induced exhaustion. Time for home. Time to sort things out. After Adelaide, I’d booked flights and accommodation in Melbourne for Grand Final weekend, not because of some magic tingling in my toes (OK, maybe a little … it is called the big dance, after all) but because I thought, ‘well, I have a guaranteed ticket, I might as well, I can always cancel if we don’t make it … but we will’.

—

Everything is ready to go. I’m nervous and distracted on Monday, Tuesday & Wednesday. People at work are driving to Melbourne on Friday night. I think of Richard Hinds’ dismissive tweet, “You’re a Swans fan. There’s a difference.” I smile. “Yes, I am. And we’re going to prove you wrong. Although we shouldn’t have to prove anything.” By Thursday, I feel calm. There’s nothing I can do, with all my lucky charms and blood-red pedicure. I can’t kick the bloody goals for them, or make the decision to handball. I can’t stop almost everyone saying we cannot win the flag, or that it wasn’t fair that Hawthorn had one less day to recover, or that Lewis Jetta hadn’t bounced the bloody ball often enough in a 90 metre dash to the goal. I can’t sleep so I do my tax and watch the footy shows and pack eight outfits for a two-day trip, and smile at the Facebook messages from a friend in Ulan Bator asking if I could get help get his boss a ticket, the good luck tweets and the texts.

—

Friday, 28 September: arrive in Melbourne. Freezing cold, pissing down with rain and I’m essentially broke. Drop bag at hotel, head out to watch the Grand Final parade. Run into Erin, who cried real tears at last week’s win. Trying to get good photos is impossible as the players are (sensibly) riding inside the vehicles. Weave my way up to Treasury Place, listen to the speeches, back to the hotel. I want to write this blog post, but the words won’t come. I’m still calm; beyond excited at being here, but not worried about the match. Meet up with some tweeps I’d been dying to discover in real life at The Corner Hotel, Richmond. Comes in handy that I learn to catch a tram as I’m due back there at 11.30am tomorrow. After a night of being shouted pints on an empty stomach, the better angels tell me to leave. I arrive back at the hotel just after midnight. It’s Grand Final day.

—

Saturday, 29 September: I really should have eaten something. I haven’t eaten since Qantas gave me a muffin and passionfruit yoghurt yesterday morning. I shake off the dust. It’s 9am. It’s Grand Final Day. The iPod goes on & I start bouncing off the walls like the 27 year-old disco-biscuit machine I once was. I’ve made up essential mixes, everything from Jamelia’s ‘Superstar’ for Lewis Jetta to Mr Stevie Wonder’s “Master Blaster (Jammin’)”, my Adam Goodes anthem. General jumping around and answering tweets. Then, oh gaaaah what am I going to wear goddamn it, Melbourne. Fuck it. Shower, dress & lucky t-shirt underneath. Lucky underwear, natch. I manage not to ladder my tights. Remember that I have short hair, & can spend a few more minutes dorking around to The Jacksons. Shoes. Hair. Stop dorking around. Ticket, ticket, ticket. Pack all of my lucky charms. My 2012 membership card. Redback Club pin. Got my scarf, time for the final secret weapon in my list of superstitions: my favourite perfume, handcrafted in the south of France & still safe in its beautiful bottle & original stopper. I bought it in Avignon in 2005. It’s called, ‘L’ensorceleuse’. I’m not nervous. My heart is singing.

It’s not raining as I head down to catch the number 70. There’s an older man in Swans colours standing next to me at the tram stop.

Me: “Up the Swannies! Are you down from Sydney?”

Man: “No, I came up from Tasmania.”

Me: “That’s fantastic! So much for the Hawks Tasmanian supporter base! Are you a South Melbourne man?”

Man: “Well, yes. I’m Roy Cazaly’s nephew.”

Me: “Can I shake your hand?” (not said, but tweeted) BEST OMEN EVER: I JUST MET ROY CAZALY’S NEPHEW

Tram approaches. “Up the Swannies,” we say in unison. Unlike every sign on Swan Street, Richmond, which some admittedly clever buggers have changed to ‘Hawks Street’, the tram reads Swan Street when I jump on, advertising the Basil Sellers Art Prize. The Swans’ Sydney office is in the Basil Sellers Centre at the SCG. Another omen.

Arrive at The Corner. A sea of brown and gold. A few people in Swans colours. My fellas are running late, so I have a pint. Should have eaten. One by one they arrive and ply me with more pints, with the generous-to-a-fault Andrew making sure that I eat something. The boys start talking about the game and I start to get nervous. Please, don’t talk about Hawthorn getting a three goal start and it being all over. There is only so much I can take. I’m buzzing, I don’t want to think about the game. My brain will explode. The special one makes his way up. Everything’s Turning to White: I’m reminded I want to see Paul Kelly. There’s no awkwardness. Thank god for that. We head to the ‘G, all in different areas, saying let’s meet here at half-time. I pass Molly Meldrum on my way to Gate 5. “Love you, Molly,” I shout (wearing Hawks’ colours … seriously?). Make my way up to N12 and run into Rhys Muldoon – I’d tweeted him on Thursday that if the moon and stars aligned we’d see each other. The omens were buzzing around in my head. Realised that for $390, I was sitting in an area with no public bars, only corporate entertainment rooms. Gave Michael O’Loughlin a big wave as he stood safely inside the glassed wall between the lucky ones and the so-called ‘platinum’ ticketed seats WITH NO BLOODY PUBLIC BARS. Rhys & I sang along to Paul Kelly and then it was too late to get downstairs for a drink. “Let’s meet here at quarter time and go and get a drink,” Rhys said … never to be spotted again.

—

It’s time to take it all in. I make my way to my seat. A lady behind me proffers a Swans cardboard clapper. “Oh, I didn’t think they had them here, thank you so much,” I reply. “They don’t. I brought them from home.” If I thought my head was going to explode, that was the moment my heart gives in to the emotion. I grip her hand. “Thank you. Thank you so much.” The countdown to the first bounce begins, and then the siren.

The game is surreal. A few shaky moments from both teams early on, but no absolute shockers. The Hawks kick four and all I can think of is the boys’ dire prediction. We go into the first break trailing by 19 and more than a little lucky.

Second quarter goes BOOM! I think I spent more time leaping out of my seat than in it. The jitters have gone. The structures are right. The kicking is accurate and the effort is outstanding. I know the heart attack kings too well to think this will go on, but it is sweetness itself to watch six straight majors sail through, and your opponent at a one-point standstill. We’ve not only staunched the bleeding, we’ve hit the front.

Half-time: Downstairs for drinks. The rest is redacted.

Third quarter … goes even more BOOM? Hawthorn start spreading the ball with disturbing ease. It’s a nightmare. Not because I thought they’d ever lie down, but because this part was also written in the stars. We kick 3.1 … Hawthorn kick 5.4. They’re inaccurate. I go back to my three keys to winning: effort, intensity and accuracy. We’re winning. We have a one point lead thanks to a Captain’s goal from the man who had run into a rich vein of form. I smile & think of his Dad.

Three-quarter time: I’m in my own head. I look towards the threatening skies. I close my eyes. Shake down the thunder, I pray, silently as the siren sounds …

Fourth quarter: you probably remember it more clearly. I haven’t seen the replay. I remember my badly injured co-captain kicking, just enough, a ball that sent the red and white sections of the crowd into a, ‘please, please, blow the bloody siren’ frenzy. I had dreamt it would be the final goal of the match. I’m glad to say it wasn’t.

—

I’m hugging people and practically mugging former club champions, and 300-gamer Paul Williams, softly says to me, ‘we’re a great club’.

We are a great club. It is our L’ensorceleuse (The Shining Hour). I sing the song, one more time.

Quiet, please …

As <insert commercial TV station’s name here> draws the net cord on another summer of tennis, I’ve let the 60,000 tweets coalesce into some sentences with too many adjectives to run through a few of my favourite moments of one of my favourite times of year:

1/. You say goodbye, I say hello: two Australian men reached the fourth round of the Open for the first time since 1976, when Mark Edmonson invented tennis (NB: I am inventing this. It is not true. I think.); one a ‘wretched child’ (copyright Bernard Keane) the other, Bernard Tomic. No, switcheroo. After giving many of us joy with his on court calm and the realisation that at 19, he has that something else that leaves you a little slack-jawed in awe, Tomic has reverted to being another Gold Coast dickhead taking road etiquette lessons from Shane Warne. The much-maligned (well, by me, for his entire Sorbent-endorsing career) Little Lley Lley bundled himself into the commentary bunker without so much as a, ‘jeez, my career’s almost over, what should I do?’. He’s a natural. He knows the nuances of the current crop’s game and adds value to the viewing experience. Do yourself a favour, son: announce your retirement and sew up a contract. Which brings me to …

2/. Seven’s commentary team: in the history of sport, has there ever assembled a more annoying, sexist, Captain Obvious bunch than this lot? OK, Channel 9’s cricket team has that trophy in perpetuity, and Versus’ coverage of the Tour de France, where they use on-screen markers to point out Lance Armstrong, is certainly the most brain embolism-inducing; but Seven’s whacky ability to combine cross-promos, ad breaks during games, the pointless Megawalls and crowd-o-meters, with new bullshit, such as ‘Get Jimbo to ask an open mic question’ writes itself. As Fairfax’s chief sports columnist, Richard Hinds, tweeted last night, ‘is it Marry My Kitchen or My Boy Rules?’ Enough with the South Australian princess, the endless shots of the WAGs, the fairly disgraceful promotion of gambling, Todd Woodbridge for being Todd Woodbridge, and the question on everyone’s lips (well, mine): why was Henri Leconte banished to the back courts this year? I love him. He brings the crazy, the passion, the ‘YES!’ courtside. Who cares that he’s biased toward French players? He’s French. It’s a given. My, ‘bring back Henri’ campaign starts Monday, 30 January 2012.

3/. The Twitspats: not so much a fight as my good friend, Melbourne journalist and friend of the game, Neil McMahon, retweeting obnoxious comments made by Bernard Keane. Bernard, you misanthropic old prick, if you can’t grasp the basics (i.e. Rafael Nadal is among the world’s most humble athletes, not a prick), and want to act like a giant ‘wretched child’, be my guest. Tennis is generally a game where even if you love a player who loses, you can say, ‘tennis was the winner on the day’ after a match the quality of the Nadal-Federer semi. It was, as the kids say, amazeballs, and a joy to watch.

4/. The Twitspats Mark II or ‘it’s all about me’: it began in Bris Vegas, where my tendency (ok, constant) references to yesterday’s Great British Hope and today’s Scotsman, Andy Murray, as ‘Andy Pandy Have a Fuckin’ Shandy’ drew the ire of the Andy Murray Fanclub of Buttfuck, Idaho in an exchange which went something like this:

Me: “Oh, fer fuck’s sake, Andy Pandy Have a Fuckin Shandy is on course for a title, if only because he doesn’t want to have a meltdown in front of Lendl.”

Andy Pandy Have a Fuckin’ Shandy Fan: “You’re just JEALOUS because Andy Murray is the second coming of Christ. You are PATHETIC.”

Me: ‘Have you never heard of The Thick of It? Oh wait, you’re from Buttfuck Idaho. That would be a no.” BLOCKED.

The bestest, everest, tennis twitspat of my summer was the advent of Bernard Tomic’s Twitter account. I am a Tomic fangirl, so I started following. My suspicions (and those of a fair few others) that this wasn’t Our Kid but a fake account set up by a 17 year old whose Twitter bio reads, ‘dancing in his garage’ started when he thanked said garage dancer for helping set up his account. When challenged to prove his Tomic-ness, he asked his followers to help verify the account. Um, yeh, right. Night after night of exhausting four-or five set matches, Our Kid was tweeting well into the early hours, not insights into his day, but RTs of people who asked for RTs. When asked to post a pic to settle the matter once and for all, he announced he was quitting twitter and went deep quiet faster than a South Korean submarine. The sad fact of the matter is he wasn’t a good fake. He failed to bring the funny; if done properly, say in the Fake Shane Watson league, it was the time and place to do it. I do like that he accused me of trying to make him feel worthless; a tweet that went around the true believers and earned me so much gold it was multi-platinum.

5/. The derp-domination of summer came to an end: the great twitter war of ancient Greek words for womb faded away. The King’s Tribune got a well-deserved write up in The Age, and I discovered that Juzzy and Jane have a child. Oh, there was also the great reveal of Paula Matthewson’s sekrit identity and the even greater reveal that Twitter has a ‘cool kids’ clique. I think it’s all a crock of shit, so ner, ner, ne, ner, ner, go and have a shandy the fucking lot of you. Mine’s an Old, because that’s what Newcastle Under 8s drink after a hard 7am training session on grass courts (it was the 70s) before taking it to the Merewether under 12s (and their poxy bitumen excuse for a competition court) and going down, bravely, 6-0 6-0.

6/. The derp-domination of summer did not come to an end: shrieking is not a feminist issue. The decibel-defying play of Maria Sharapova and Victoria Azarenka drew Agnieszka Radwanska out of the locker room to say it did put her off her game. Things I do not agree with: tonight’s final being labelled the showdown of the grunters. Plenty of players, male and female, grunt on and off during matches. I put that down to sheer exertion. Sharapova and Azarenka shriek on almost every point. It’s not grunting, it’s screaming, and to me, pure gamesmanship. What I loathe is the idea that the on-court shrieking gives open slather to denigrate these athletes with the cheap Neanderthal crap of, ‘jeez, how would they go in bed?!?’ (yes, professional sports commentator for ABC Grandstand, Glenn Mitchell, I’m looking at you, you tool of monumental proportion). As we’ve seen throughout the Australian Open, gamesmanship exists in some really shiteous ways: Rafael Nadal’s 800 ball bounces before serve; Novak Djokovic wandering around court in second sets like he’s been shot and about to throw in the towel; players looking to their boxes for confirmation that they should take a challenge – but the shrieking takes the cake. Sadly, it detracts from the fact that they are in the final because they’ve played better tennis.

7/. Controversy Corner with Margaret Court: The Guardian reported that British teenager, Laura Robson, ‘walked unwittingly into a political row’ by wearing a rainbow hairband as part of the protest against Court’s abhorrent homophobia. I shit you not, this made The Guardian. Margaret Court’s hate-filled fundie fucktardedness is mind-boggling in its intensity, but she got a platform at this time of year because she is the greatest female tennis player Australia has produced and has a fourth court named after her. The Rainbow Protest to get the arena named after her changed fizzled, so we were left with a progressive newspaper arguing that a teenaged British player with a multi-coloured hairband was leading the anti-homophobic charge. In a sport where, arguably, homosexual women have said, ‘bring it on, we’re gay’, for a lot longer than any other pursuit, sporting or otherwise, I find it difficult to say that her king-size ker-azy deserves stripping changing the name of the arena. Court has been denounced for her reprehensible statements by former players and almost everyone with a brain. She’s a patently bat-shit crazy woman who invented her own church. Still, her record as a player is mind-boggling and unlikely to be repeated: she won more than half of the Grand Slam singles tournaments she played (24 of 47) She won 192 singles titles before and after the Open Era - an all time record. Her career singles win-loss record was 1,177-106, for a winning percentage of 91.74 percent on all surfaces (hard, clay, grass, carpet); also an all time record. She won at least 100 singles matches in 1965 (113-8), 1968 (107-12), 1970 (113-6), and 1973 (100-5). She won more than 80 percent of her singles matches against top 10 players (297-73) and was the year-end top ranked player seven times. (Source: Wikifuckingpedia). She is, statistically, the Don Bradman of women’s tennis. If we’re going to honour an Australian woman, may I suggest the Evonne Goolagong Arena; Goolagong’s achievements are right up there with the best (14 Slams in the Open era); may I also suggest a name change would give Court and her ilk a greater platform for their nutbag platforms, and a generation of people who laud her tennis achievements a reason to hate teh gays. I’ve never seen Margaret Court given the same respect the men hold for Rod Laver– a lesson for all of us? The locker room has spoken. Let the record stand, but shun the descent of a great into raving crank.

8/. #tweetlikeToddWoodbridge #tweetlikeaChannel7commentator #AustralianOpenfashiontweets … if it wasn’t a free three-minute ad for Nike in the guise of an exclusive behind-the-scenes interview with Serena Williams, we’ve been treated day-in, day-out, to the unnecessary commentary on what female players are wearing on court, down to the colour of the strapping on their lithe legs. Love the shoes, love the skirt, love the bag, love it all. Belongs in the front row of a Milan catwalk, not courtside or commentary box in a Grand Slam. The perfect comeback? …

9/. The Calippo Curse: it started with Fernando Verdasco. Retina-scorching clothing the colour of an 80s iceblock. Having never eaten a Calippo, I struggled for the name, and then it came to me, courtesy of a pointer from my mate, @iamtheoracle to the amusing twitter stream of a Collingwood player. As players fell – Tsonga, Dolgopolov, all of them decked out in #Calippo, it seemed appropriate to take on my nemesis, Todd Woodbridge, and play a few games of piss-taking fashion tweetage between score checks. #Calippo caught on between a few tweeps. I’ll get Woodbridge in the end.

10/. Finally, quiet please. It’s the most basic of rules: if you are in the crowd, you do not call out between serves. End of; no correspondence shall be entered into. For all of the gamesmanship, this is a game of etiquette and deserves to be treated as such. Tomas Berdych learnt a very harsh lesson when he refused to shake hands with Nicolas Almagro after defeating the Spaniard in the fourth round. He broke the code. In other matches, I’ve seen the victor not only pay lip service to the vanquished, but applaud the gladiator. I love that today’s top players are in touch with the history of the game; that Rafael Nadal treats a practice court visit from Rod Laver as a privilege, the iPhone cameras out to record the moment; these amazing young men childlike in his company; the great Roger Federer in tears on accepting the 2006 trophy from his hands. Does this happen at any other Grand Slam? I don’t know; but it melted me when I heard, ‘Mr Laver’ from Novak Djokovic after his win last night. It sums up why I love this sport. So, quiet please; acknowledge the mastery, the guile, the on-court IQ and the physical and mental will that prevails in the end. Thank you, Vika and Maria, Nole and Rafa for giving it everything. Let the finals of the 2012 Australian Open commence. My tips? Azarenka and Djokovic.

The fighter

“I always turn to the sports pages first, which records people’s accomplishments.

The front page has nothing but man’s failures.”

Earl Warren, 14^th Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States of America

This post is dedicated to the memory of Joe Frazier, the Olympic and world champion boxer, who died this week, the first man to defeat Muhammad Ali in ‘the fight of the century’ in the year of my birth. It will come as no surprise to anyone who follows me on Twitter, or reads this blog, or has ever had a conversation with me, that I love sport. My interest in some has diminished over time, while others have grown into obsessions. Some loves, however, are constants: cricket and the round ball game, soccer, football, call it what you will.

Let me be clear: I am an armchair sports fan par excellence. I cannot run out of sight on a dark night, as my Dad would say; and my body attests. In a family where generations of sporting trophies were displayed throughout homes, my contribution is a small silver-plated medal: dux of my primary school, 1983. I readily admit to envying the seeming ease with which my father played tennis ambidextrously and went to the beach every morning to run and swim, big night before regardless; my brother competing at state and national level in multiple individual sports; a sister who rowed surfboats.

I may not have won the dust-gathering trophies, but I love that as a gangly girl who could bowl overarm, I was always picked to play Joel Garner in caravan park cricket. It was the ultimate icebreaker with kids I met across India in 2007. I love a day at the races, wearing hats and watching horse and jockey round the straight; I cherish the many nights spent stalking angles on the pool table of my local in East Dulwich, London. My hands clasped together, involuntarily as a Sydney Swan lines up for a shot at goal, the involuntary ‘YEEEES!’ as I leap and cheer from the O’Reilly Stand; the joy of watching a perfectly-delivered cross headed past the keeper (unless the keeper is Mark Schwarzer); the tension, ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’ of a long rally in a Grand Slam final.

Whenever an Arts Minister trots out the statistic that more Australians attend a ‘cultural’ institution each year than a sporting match, I wince. Who decreed sport is not cultural? Is it not a slight twist in our colonial kowtowing to label as philistines those Australians visiting Mother England who choose the Theatre of Dreams over the Old Vic? I don’t believe sport has to be an either / or – even an ‘and’; love it, loathe it, let one, another or all leave you cold. It doesn’t have to be The Ashes versus Ashkenazy; Cadel winning the Tour de France or a tour de force by Cate. Why are people confounded by others’ enjoyment of some, or all of these things, and more? People who watch the boxing documentary, When We Were Kings may also think of the detritus of a State left by an unhinged dictator; those who read For Whom The Bell Tolls might learn more about the complex rivalry between Barcelona and Real Madrid (it’s not all Republican vs Nationalist); we can mourn Ayrton Senna, not only for his brilliance on the F1 track, but for his philanthropy; we remember the image of St Kilda’s Nicky Winmar lifting his guernsey, pointing to his brown skin, defiant in the face of overt racism, just as we celebrate Charles Perkins and the Freedom Riders for returning to Moree, unbowed, after being denied entry to its public swimming pool, forcing council to lift the 40-year-old ban.

… so I reach, in a not-so-neat segue, back to Joe Frazier, and his great rival, Ali. Then Cassius Clay, Ali threw his Olympic gold medal in the Ohio River after being refused service in a restaurant and seemed to throw his career away when he refused induction into the United States army. Reviled and admired for his overt protest, Ali symbolised the ‘Black Power’ zeitgeist. Less loquacious than Ali, Frazier lobbied for his right to box to be reinstated; and refused to contest Ali’s championship belt after it was stripped from him for saying no to Uncle Sam in 1967. Imagine the hatred, the hurt burnished into ‘Smokin Joe’s’ heart when ‘The Greatest’ called him an ‘Uncle Tom’, at a press conference before their ‘Thrilla in Manilla’ fight. Ali, whose words were as powerful as his punch, wanted Frazier to be seen as the ‘white man’s boxer’. It was a low point in a personal enmity between two men raised in the segregated South and a deeply political one, more impactful than the inanity passed off as political comment today.

One final tribute. On learning of Frazier’s passing, another of his great fighting foes, George Foreman, simply tweeted:

Good night, Joe Frazier. I love you dear friend.

Poetry, in less than 140 characters, from a man who was integral to the, ‘apex of pedigree fighting in which each man would not give an inch until they were dead.’ ~ Mike Tyson.

Move your bloomin’ arse!

My flexi trifecta is probably a bit dodgy this year, here are the six, no order:

No. 2: Jukebox Jury

No.6 Manighar

No.9 Lucas Cranach

No.12 Red Cadeaux

No.22 Tullamore

No.23 Niwot

Happy punting.

 

 

I Sent a Message to Mia – Part Deux

Over the past few days, media identity Mia Freedman has been subjected to some vicious, bordering on imbecilic abuse for her comments regarding Cadel Evans’ Tour de France victory on The Today Show. I posted two comments on her blog & sent her some tweets. Critical, but not abusive; in fact I despair at the use of the words ‘courageous’ & ‘brave’ to describe on-field endeavours – so in one sense, I agree with part of Mia’s argument – but I would flip part of it and say, ‘hey, sports commentators, don’t abuse the English language’.

I have three main objections to what Mia Freedman said on Monday. Firstly, you can’t call yourself a journalist and have a regular gig on a high-rating TV programme commenting on the news without doing the barest bit of research. Cadel Evans was in the news. Read an article. Look at Wikipedia if you must. Pick up something about the race, about his life (other than he lives in Switzerland). No one was asking you to feign interest in the sport, but it’s surely irresponsible to display wilful ignorance on ‘the news’ when that is why you have a platform on the programme. I didn’t see what Karl Stefanovic did or said before the segment, so I can’t comment on his behaviour, but from Mia’s account on the Mamamia blog, the only news Karl was interested in discussing during her regular segment on The Today Show was Cadel Evans’ victory. I checked Karl’s Twitter feed, and he genuinely was right into the Tour. That said, I think Karl trolled Mia big-time, she took the bait and the frenzy has rebounded on her, not him, or the show. I mean, the camera crew booed her. That’s going to set people off. Apparently Cadel did a phoner with them on Tuesday, so maybe The Today Show scored a ratings bump from the whole thing. I wouldn’t know; even Cadel wouldn’t make me watch the programme. I am all for people jumping on the Cadel bandwagon if it gets kids on the handlebars of an old pushy and off the controls of a bloody video game. I am not for people jumping on the Cadel bandwagon to use it as an excuse for jingoism and I am fully aware that plenty of people have.

Like I said, I don’t watch The Today Show, I don’t know what attention it has paid to things that I consider news: drought and famine in the Horn of Africa; the murder of children in Norway or dissecting the Government and Opposition’s climate change positions or the Malaysian refugee swap deal being struck that day (the former now approaching a ‘Carry On’ movie; the latter, in my opinion, just state-sanctioned human trafficking that will create a two-tiered level of human misery – but that’s a subject for an upcoming post). That leads me to my second objection to what happened on Monday. For once, a professional cyclist made the front page of some major newspapers. Anyone who watches a news or current affairs programme in Australia must realise that as soon as a press release announcing a scientific breakthrough is issued, it is covered by TV news, complete with a news director’s dream package: white coats, vision of laboratories and victims of XY disease hailing a new discovery – even if five, 10 years later, we fail to go back and see if the breakthrough had moved beyond the lab and saved any lives. The discovery is still hailed by the media. True, other ‘heroic’ professions receive much less attention or praise. The only time we’re likely to read about social work is if a child dies, for example – and then it is their fault; not ours as a society for watching on as violent relationships continue. We rightly mourn soldiers killed in action; but are any of us familiar with the needs of the returned, and whether they and their families receive adequate support? It took me several weeks of watching the excellent Baker Boys: Inside The Surge documentary to learn that more US soldiers have taken their own lives since the Iraq and Afghanistan wars started than have been killed in action. All the while, Congress continues to cut Veterans’ Affair’s budget. It’s horrific. I don’t know if there is a way of finding that information in Australia; it’s a challenge I’ll set myself – because I certainly haven’t seen or read anything on it. To me, that’s a story. I am not a journalist. I tweet & I have this crappy blog to rant on. Mia Freedman has built her entire career flogging celebrity tittle-tat in magazines. She has a money-making blog. TV appearances. Books. Staff. Put one of them out there and sniff out a story on those people you say are ignored, or not celebrated. You have the platforms, the resources and the fan base. Use it, please, or cut the hypocrisy.

Finally, and an argument expressed far better by Dr Bridie O’Donnell, is the notion that we have to choose between what achievements garner news attention, and the people we consider heroes. As Dr O’Donnell wrote, you can save lives and be bloody miserable, or suffer themselves at the mercy of other ‘lifesavers’ who are egotistical pricks. As the sister of a ‘lifesaver’, it’s an argument I am deeply familiar with. My brother is a hero to many people, including me, but he chose his profession. No one forced him to say ‘no’ to university; instead he worked in pubs for years, volunteered, worked part-time and now full-time on a rescue chopper. His motivation may be to save lives, and on a very good day, he does exactly that. Sadly, a lot of his work involves scraping the remains of car accident victims off our roads. He works with cops & fireys and they can tell pretty quickly whether an accident was caused by speed – & if it is, his response is always the same. He doesn’t care about the floral tributes and the pain. To him – to the cops, doctors, nurses, whoever has to pick up the pieces and try and fix broken bodies or record the time of death – they’re bloody dickheads. They may only say it to each other, or to their families, but to them, it’s another day at the office. It’s not something I could do, but he made a choice to do it. He made a choice was not to become a teacher – the profession I admire most because I see education as the greatest gift we can pass on to the next generation. My Mum taught, unassumingly, for a pretty average salary, for 40 years. She spent the last decade teaching at one of the most disadvantaged primary schools in NSW. I will never forget the day I went shopping with her & a woman in her early 20s stopped us. Mum knew her name instantly and asked what she was doing. “I’ve got a scholarship to Harvard, just home for the holidays,” she replied. Similarly, I made a choice not to teach, but study communications. As inspired as I was by my Mum and by the brilliant teachers I had throughout high school, I thought I could do better things by becoming a journalist and reporting ‘the news’. If you read this you’ll know how easily I let that choice go. I am not the most admirable person on the planet, but I studied hard, went to university, built a career, travelled the world, and went back to university in my late 30s. I did this while battling the scar tissue of trauma I wouldn’t wish on anyone. In my own way, I am my own hero when I climb a mental mountain and go outside when panic and anxiety make the sunshine hurt. I’ve also learnt that you don’t have to be a ‘lifesaver’ to be a hero; sometimes it’s just about giving a damn about what you do – with your life & the impact you have on others.