Alpe73 said:
Ooops! Sorry .... missed this until now, seriously.
First, may I suggest that your question is loaded with bias. Some of your assertions may be untrue. Anyway ...
Let me preface my response a bit. I'm an older dude ... but still deep into fitness ... still training and racing hard (road races and tri's). Great thrill to (age grouper) win/podium, but can laugh it off in a second (back to the drawing/training board) if I suck. So ... of course ...I follow the pros ... in many sports.
First, I see and respect the overlaps, if you will, of sport/entertainment/business ... athlete/entertainer/worker ... and for me, at least, my relationship is at (a long) arm's length to teams and athletes.I honestly don't have any favorites any more ... at this stage. I appreciate good performances from ANYONE! My main goal is to be entertained ... learn technique. I hold a team or its participants to no standards. Not my job. If I was truly repulsed by it all ... I'd just stop watching. To get closer ... to dig deeper ... is an "ill advised curiosity."
BTW, it is a show (no pejorative) ... enjoyed by MILLIONS of fans around the world. I tip my hat to ALL riders for the epic sports entertainment they provide.
If you want to be closer to it all ... embedded, so to speak, go for it. But that comes at a cost. (BTW, straight up question ... is this more of a "class/status/regional-political" issue rather than doping? (Emperors New Clothes 'n all?) Serious question.
Which brings up a politically incorrect topic ... probably best left for a separate thread sometime ... (My oldest son and I tossed this around yesterday.)
"Is there a geographical/historical/cultural link to sports passion and the (sometimes) deleterious effects/actions of that passion."? Roughly ... are the sports fans of some countries more emotionally engaged (to [sometimes] bad effect) than the fans of other countries?
It's a matter of record that Brailsford tells lies, and makes nice-sounding statements and pledges that he has zero intention of following up. I'll accept that my question was a little loaded, laying it on a bit thick if you will, but it's not biased to observe 8 years of consistent behaviour and draw pretty basic conclusions from it.
I'll start with your last question - I'm Australian. It's utterly
inconceivable to me, and to most Aussies, that you can be too emotionally engaged and vested in sport. It's a way of life, it's how we're brought up here. To be passionate, to be critically engaged in and observant of sport, is just how we are. But there are limits, even here. We (mostly) don't do violence or tribes - fans from different clubs can go to games together, sit together, watch in the same pub, etc. It's support, not personal. And like all countries we're biased in our support of our own athletes, but we try, sometimes unsuccessfully, not to be blind about it - we generally respect good performances by others, and fair competition, even if it comes from the English, and some of us at least know we have been no angels when it comes to doping either. That 'critical engagement' is important. For example a lot of the Australian cricket team's conduct and attitude in the last 20 years has disgusted me. I still support them, but that support is qualified. I'm also 99% sure, to give one example, that the Aussie swimming teams of the 1990s were doping, quite a lot (as an aside, that's why informed Aussies found it so funny when Sky employed Kerrison as a 'clean' coach, which is absurd).
Across the board, there are obvious downsides to over nationalistic, naive following of sport, some of which I've already mentioned. But I don't think you can say any one country or region is more prone to it than others. There are realistic and 'hardcore' fans in all countries. Some probably have more problems with violence and racism than others, but that's a different issue.
On the class/status/region question, personally it's the doping, and the narratives and behaviours around it, that bothers me, simple as. For me, the Aus/Eng rivalry and the status of Sky as the richest, most prominent, influential team, don't come into it. I don't care where they're from (although I find Sky/BC's cute little 'Brits do it right' story mildly amusing/xenophobic) or how many resources they have relative to the opposition. Sky came into a sport struggling with the emerging fall-out of the last team to dominate the field and construct a grandiose, nonsense narrative around their activities, and then went and did exactly the same thing, just a slightly different way. The sport had finally got to a point where it might just begin to take some little steps in the right direction re the attitude towards and use of doping, and then Sky came in and turned the amps up to 11 again, all while pledging the complete opposite as the new 'white knights' of the sport. I find that behaviour reprehensible. Don't get me wrong, if Sky had never existed we would still have doping in the sport now - someone else may have taken their place, and even failing that, there would still a long road to a truly clean(ish) sport. But any hope of even a few steps down that path, outside of the bio-passport and slightly better testing, was ruined by Sky. Other teams are complicit and maybe even cowardly for too often just going along with it, but Sky have lead the way. There's no point saying, well someone would have done it, because that doesn't change the fact that Sky didn't have to - they chose to. They have maintained the reality in the sport, both for the current generation and the next, that doping is necessary to succeed. Every team bears responsibility for this, but Sky most of all.
And they have done it while creating a narrative and making statements that are simply insulting, that either take advantage of people's ignorance, assume them to be stupid, or smacks the informed fan in the face with their ridiculousness or implausibility. Sky have had
zero interest in engaging honestly with the long-term, informed fans of the sport, the ones who have stuck with it through thick and think. Zero. It's all hollow garbage and calculated PR, nothing more. It's a dreadful shame, compounded by their incredibly smugness and 'who, me?' attitude whenever they get called out on it. Other teams - Astana, Movistar - aren't much better in saying nothing at all really, but even that is slightly preferable to straight lies and bright lights.
I can well appreciate the sport/entertainment/business dynamic. Almost all pro sports are now so far from pure, fair competition that it's impossible, and unrealistic, to ever expect them to return to simpler times. In cycling the competition is a construct, within certain parameters, with certain inbuilt inequalities and commercial realities. It is made to entertain, to be marketable, to make money and to keep sponsors happy. Doping is one of the parameters - there must be efforts to combat it, it must be
seen to be punished, but its tacitly accepted as part of the fabric, as almost necessary, so it can't be fought too hard. To expect too much in the way of ethics or 'fair play' within this construct is to be continually disappointed.
And yet...I do still expect something, to a point. There are still standards that I measure by, still certain types of conduct within the sport that I consider to be right and wrong, still actions that shape what I think of certain athletes, teams and officials, still a desire to understand what it is I am actually watching, beyond simply what is happening on the road. I can't watch it and just take and enjoy it for what it is - it's just not me. If people choose to view it that way that's fine, but it's not for me. I work in an industry where ethics are
everything, where to ignore or lose them is catastrophic. Perhaps that colours how I view other things too, including sport. So the character and actions of each athlete are relevant to how I view and follow cycling. Yes, I want to be entertained to, to marvel at the exceptional performances, to sometimes chuckle a little at the absurd, other-worldly ones, but I need more than that. I want to see fair-ish fights, good characters, honourable conduct, people I feel I can respect and who go about things in a decent way. I want to know how it all works, to be informed. I accept that what I'm seeing is at least partly artificial, and that it will usually involve doping and is therefore tainted right from the start, but I still care about the integrity, allowing for those drawbacks, of what I am seeing. It's not about hating on anybody, frothing at the mouth at the 'bad guys' - it's not worth that, nor are we in the realms of any truly reprehensible, meaningful conduct. It's just about critical, 'eyes-open' viewing.
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