Toxic sports culture is poisoning society

Mens sana in corpore sano.The idea of healthy minds in healthy bodies is perennial. It has been enshrined in that pithy classical form for two millennia since the Latin poet Juvenal. The Greeks and Romans were great ones for games that were often formalised into competitive sports, most famously the original Olympic games. 

Nobody thinks sport is a bad thing. Billions of people enjoy it either as participants or spectators. In advanced societies, it keeps people fit and helps in the battle against obesity.

Competing seems wired into the human psyche. An individual athlete’s struggle to be the best in their sport can be an inspiration for many — even when they fail like Eddie the Eagle. 

Yet something seems to be going wrong at the pinnacle of excellence. Elite professional sports, which are followed by millions of fans worldwide, are ceasing to be an inspiration. Instead, they are constantly in the headlines for the wrong reasons exposing a toxic wasteland of money, politics, corruption and hypocrisy. 

Football pundits argue that the Premier League has transformed the standard of football played in England — although only a minority of players and managers are British. Maybe so. I am not one to judge; I am not a sports fan. That’s my choice. But what I can’t escape is the way that big money sport is warping our society. 

Bad people with wads of cash want to own teams as trophy assets. Their spending buys the fans’ admiration, as evidenced by the squealing of Chelsea supporters and players when the Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich was sanctioned, and the Newcastle United fans donning Arab headdresses when blood-stained Saudi millions bailed out their club. 

Since the rival managers, Arsene Wenger and Alex Ferguson, introduced compulsory social responsibility for their highly paid squads, the behaviour of sporting “idols” has improved. Yet, for every admirable Raheem Sterling or Marcus Rashford, there is still a tawdry tale of abused young women. In our celebrity culture, sporting heroes are inevitably role models but not always of a positive kind. 

The old joke is that three sports matter in the UK — football, football, and football. Last year’s delayed 2020 Euros, spread between countries and using existing facilities, provided an alternative model to the facilities excess of the Olympics and World Cup. 

According to Baroness Casey’s report, the England Team even got to the final in Wembley, only for supporters’ behaviour to turn it into “a day of national shame”.

The England team is also performing poorly in the other mainstream spectator sports. But another loss of the Ashes is insignificant compared to the ingrained racism and failure to cultivate grassroots cricket exposed at Yorkshire by Azeem Rafiq. 

Meanwhile, authorities for Rugby (and football and, naturally, boxing) are doing their best to ignore the mounting evidence of brain damage caused by contact sports. Statistics that members of the England Rugby squad are on average three stone heavier than those a generation ago makes one wonder about the use of steroids at the top of the game.

International corruption in sport spreads much more widely than FIFA. The football world cup may be heading to Qatar straight from its Putin boasting tournament in Russia but the Olympics have been to Beijing twice recently and to Sochi, Putin’s personal playground. 

According to The Sun, Putin is now bidding to host the 2028 Euros. It would be abhorrent if this became a grubby side deal to a Ukrainian peace settlement. 

The premium placed on winning at all costs has undermined the notion of sporting excellence. Russia and former Soviet nations have led this race to the bottom, aided by sports governing bodies going into contortions to accommodate bent nations. 

Russia may not be allowed to compete under its own flag but its team was still at the recent Winter Olympics in China. There, grotesquely for the reputation of the sport and her own mental state, fifteen-year-old Kamila Valieva was allowed to claim gold in spite of testing positive for a banned substance. This weekend Valieva is ice-skating again competing for the Channel One Trophy in Saransk, Russia. 

Russia is by no means the only country tainted by drugs in sport. Team GB recently had to give up one of their medals from Tokyo because of a positive test. The American cyclist Lance Armstrong is still the most notorious cheat, stripped of his seven Tour de France titles. 

Sports governing bodies are floundering in their efforts to deal with doping. Their best efforts fall victim to pressures from powerful nations and sponsors. The ruling priority, as demonstrated by last year’s pointless Covid-delayed Olympiad, is that the highly lucrative TV show must go on, however much it has been devalued. 

The issue of transwomen in women’s sport is the latest area where the regulators are failing to get a grip. Faced with the physiologically male self-identifier Lia Thomas taking a women’s NCAA title “Mr Sport”, Sebastian Coe, the president of the International Association of Athletics Federations, could only bleat “that the integrity of women’s sport — if we don’t get this right — and actually the future of women’s sport, is very fragile.”

At the last Prime Minister’s questions, Boris Johnson was asked if it was fit and proper that “Russian kleptocrats and people who are wanted for human rights abuses” should run football clubs. He replied by agreeing with the recent report from the Conservative MP Tracey Crouch that “we should indeed have an independent regulator for football.” 

The establishment of “Offoot” of “OfSoc” might go some way to regulate ownership of clubs, but it is difficult to see how it could really control what is now a globalized business. There would, for example, be little point in capping salaries and transfer fees unless Italy, Spain and France and other countries sign up as well. 

Sport commands so much money and political influence that these are now what it is about at an international level rather than the performances of the players. 

International sporting federations are no better than the United Nations Security Council which is stymied because of the opposing interests of its members. 

Sport should be included in the many rueful second thoughts now being entertained about free-market globalisation. As in other spheres, it was tolerable to flatter bad actors when all sides seemed to be benefiting but in the scramble for bigger and better decent values have been unwittingly traduced. 

Elite sport is now unhealthy for our societies and increasingly for the physical and mental health of the people who play it. The decision by the women’s world tennis number one Ash Barty to get out now, aged 25 and at the peak of her career, is just the latest flashing light.  

Less money, smaller and local or doing it yourself however much of a duffer you are rather than spectating would be better for the mental and physical health of all.