The pretense that athletes are “role models” is impossible to maintain. It is not just that no parent tells their teenage children to model their sex lives on English Premier League players or holds up Lewis Hamilton’s flight to a tax haven as a model of good citizenship. To be a member of the sporting “elite” is to live in a state of perpetual childhood, without enjoying or even wanting the rights and responsibilities of a grown-up.
A few weeks ago Paul Scholes wrote how he was astonished that Manchester United fans expected players to behave as free adults in a free country and give their opinion about the Glazer family’s takeover of their club.
The debt-laden US raiders reduced the team from a side that might have been one of the best in the world to one that was not even the best in Manchester. Nevertheless, said Scholes: “As an elite sportsman you cannot allow yourself to be sidetracked. It was not up to me who owned the club and it would never have been appropriate for a player to have got involved in that debate.”
I am sure the over-praised Sir Alex Ferguson would have dropped any player who uttered a criticism, but Scholes is retired now and Ferguson could not have hurt him if he spoke his mind.
However, as it turned out, a career in professional sport had left Scholes with no mind to speak. The rest of the “elite” do not appear to possess one either.
This weekend marks a dismal low in the rotten history of modern sport. The Olympics movement is holding the first “European Games” in Baku, Azerbaijan. In theory, they are meant to sit alongside the All-Africa, Pan-American and Asian Games, and give Europe a continental tournament between the full Olympics.
In practice, there is no need for them. Olympic sports already have their European championships, but — and you will only understand the seedy imperative that drives a disgraceful tournament when you grasp this — the European Olympic committees do not control the rival competitions. They wanted a piece of the action and in an effort to find it, Patrick Hickey, the European Olympic Committee’s Irish president, showed how he could move from being unctuous to unscrupulous without pausing for breath as he toured the borderlands of Europe looking for any tyrant with money to spare.
First he tried to woo the dictator of Belarus. He charmed Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko and gave the murderous old brute an award for his “Outstanding Contribution to the Olympic Movement.”
His flattery was in vain. Lukashenko’s ill-governed country was too poor to afford the Games. So Hickey headed to the mafia state of Azerbaijan, whose ruling Aliyev crime family will spend whatever looted petrodollars it takes to win international prestige.
Sport for Rights, which is coordinating protests on behalf of imprisoned dissidents and journalists, has not asked for a boycott. It merely wants European governments, athletes and Olympic associations to call on Azerbaijan to release political prisoners.
As Khadija Ismayilova, a journalist jailed for exposing corruption said in a letter that Sports for Rights smuggled from her prison cell to the New York Times, the human rights crisis in Azerbaijan has never been worse. She asked visitors to her country to refuse to let the state use Games and circuses to “distract your attention from its record of corruption and abuse.”
What decent man or woman could refuse the modest request of a woman jailed for telling the truth about a kleptomaniac regime?
Just about every sportsman, woman and administrator, it transpired.
“We’re very much focused on the sport,” a spokesman for the British team said, when I asked if it would manage to stammer out a word of protest.
Interviewed by the BBC’s Today program, Nicola Adams, the boxer carrying Britain’s flag at the opening ceremony, could only say how wonderful it was to be in Baku. As tellingly, the interviewer did not press her. Perhaps the Games organizers would jump on any competitor who delivered a critical sentence. The organizers of the Baku Games have, after all, banned athletes from making any kind of demonstration or promoting political, religious or racial propaganda in any European Games venue.
Perhaps all they could say in response to an awkward question is: “I’m afraid I am not allowed to comment,” or: “I don’t like what happens in Azerbaijan, but where Games are held is not down to me.”
As it is, no athlete is put under the slightest pressure to say anything. Censorship is at its most effective when no one admits it exists.
In sport it is now a given that performers will not offer an opinion and journalists will not ask for one.
My friend and colleague, the great sports reporter Kevin Mitchell, says that no one should be surprised. Two infantilizing pressures make the sporting elite like children, but without childlike innocence.
Their managers, the national teams and perhaps most important of all the sponsors exert controlling authority over them. Like Victorian parents, they expect athletes to be seen and not heard.
Reporters on the tennis beat were astonished when Andy Murray tentatively suggested he favored an independent Scotland. It was not Murray’s views that shocked them, but that he had expressed them at all. He risks his sponsors deciding that his democratic decision politely expressed might alienate unionist fans.
Their surprise shows that far from freeing athletes, money holds them in a condition of juvenile dependence. To say they can buy anything they want understates the case. They do not have to buy when their people shop for them and companies offer them free goods in the hope they will promote their products. As they move from training grounds to hotels, everything is provided for them. How can you expect them to talk about a world they are sheltered from?
The view that sportsmen are role models runs deep and dies hard. A ghoulish Cicero thought that ancient Rome turned “debased men and foreigners” into examples of martial courage by forcing them to fight as gladiators. Today, we should accept that athletes represent the worst of us — our willingness to keep our heads down and bite our tongues for fear of offending the authorities who stand over us or employers who pay us.
As they play their Games in Baku without offering a squeak of protest about the oppression around them and the corruption that profits them, we must conclude that all the real role models in Azerbaijan are in jail.
The past few months have seen tremendous strides in India’s journey to develop a vibrant semiconductor and electronics ecosystem. The nation’s established prowess in information technology (IT) has earned it much-needed revenue and prestige across the globe. Now, through the convergence of engineering talent, supportive government policies, an expanding market and technologically adaptive entrepreneurship, India is striving to become part of global electronics and semiconductor supply chains. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Vision of “Make in India” and “Design in India” has been the guiding force behind the government’s incentive schemes that span skilling, design, fabrication, assembly, testing and packaging, and
Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s (李顯龍) decision to step down after 19 years and hand power to his deputy, Lawrence Wong (黃循財), on May 15 was expected — though, perhaps, not so soon. Most political analysts had been eyeing an end-of-year handover, to ensure more time for Wong to study and shadow the role, ahead of general elections that must be called by November next year. Wong — who is currently both deputy prime minister and minister of finance — would need a combination of fresh ideas, wisdom and experience as he writes the nation’s next chapter. The world that
As former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) wrapped up his visit to the People’s Republic of China, he received his share of attention. Certainly, the trip must be seen within the full context of Ma’s life, that is, his eight-year presidency, the Sunflower movement and his failed Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement, as well as his eight years as Taipei mayor with its posturing, accusations of money laundering, and ups and downs. Through all that, basic questions stand out: “What drives Ma? What is his end game?” Having observed and commented on Ma for decades, it is all ironically reminiscent of former US president Harry
Recently, China launched another diplomatic offensive against Taiwan, improperly linking its “one China principle” with UN General Assembly Resolution 2758 to constrain Taiwan’s diplomatic space. After Taiwan’s presidential election on Jan. 13, China persuaded Nauru to sever diplomatic ties with Taiwan. Nauru cited Resolution 2758 in its declaration of the diplomatic break. Subsequently, during the WHO Executive Board meeting that month, Beijing rallied countries including Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Belarus, Egypt, Nicaragua, Sri Lanka, Laos, Russia, Syria and Pakistan to reiterate the “one China principle” in their statements, and assert that “Resolution 2758 has settled the status of Taiwan” to hinder Taiwan’s