Sports Factor - 16/02/01: Paralympic Suspensions

Radio National's The Sports Factor

with Amanda Smith
16/02/01

Paralympic Suspensions

Summary: And cheating in disabled sport. The International Paralympic Committee has suspended all athletes with an intellectual disability, as a result of the discovery that most of the Spanish basketball team - gold medallists at last year's Paralympics - were imposters. MARIE LITTLE, from the International Federation of Sport for People with Intellectual Disability, says this global suspension is a discriminatory over-reaction.

Plus, a new take on the Battle of the Sexes in sport. Remember when tennis champion Billie Jean King took on Bobby Riggs, back in 1973? This time round, it's a golf series, where women's number one player Karrie Webb is challenging four top male golfers. But is this sort of playing out of gender politics through sport still of public interest?

The high profile defection of Wendell Sailor from Rugby League to Rugby Union has re-ignited debate about whether the two codes should merge. MURRAY PHILLIPS, who lectures in sports studies atthe University of Queensland, discusses whether a reunion of the rugbys is feasible or desirable.
Details or Transcript:
THEME

Amanda Smith: On The Sports Factor this week, cheating at the Paralympic Games; and the rift that’s emerged in sports organisations for the disabled, since the discovery that competitors have been pretending to be intellectually disabled, when they’re not.

Plus, a new take on the 'Battle of the Sexes' in sport: women’s world Number 1 golfer, Karrie Webb, is set to take on four of the best male players in the world.

Frank Williams: I just think that’ll create an enormous amount of interest and I think every husband in every household who plays golf will say the man will win, and I think vice versa the little lady will say 'No, I think she could probably beat a couple of them'.

Amanda Smith: That’s Frank Williams, who’s the creator and promoter of this battle of the sexes golf series. More on that later.

And we’ll also debate whether it’s time for the two Rugby codes, League and Union, to get back together into the one game, after a separation in Australia of nearly a hundred years.

Before that though, to what would have to be about the lowest of dirty rotten tricks that you can get in sport. Late last year, allegations started to surface that the Spanish basketball team, which won the Gold Medal at the Paralympic Games in Sydney in the intellectual disability category, were mostly impostors. Ten of the twelve members of the team were found not to have any intellectual disability. As a result, the team was stripped of its Gold Medal and now the International Paralympic Committee has suspended all athletes with an intellectual disability from all competition. As well as suspending the sports federation that looks after these athletes.

Marie Little is an executive member of this International Federation for Intellectual Disabled Athletes. She’s also a Director of the Australian Paralympic Committee, and President of Ausrapid, the Australian Sport and Recreation Association for People with Intellectual Disabilities. According to Marie Little, the International Paralympic Committee’s decision to suspend all intellectually disabled athletes is illogical and discriminatory.

Marie Little: I think Amanda, the decision was very, very difficult to understand and very surprising because I think the focus of the investigation by the International Paralympic Committee which should have been based on the cheating by the Spanish Paralympic Committee, changed to the eligibility criteria of athletes with intellectual disability, and therefore you know the waters have been really muddied.

Amanda Smith: Are there particular difficulties with determining eligibility for athletes claiming an intellectual disability? I mean what’s the process for the classification and checking of athletes who want to compete in the Paralympics and other events in this category.

Marie Little: The criteria is endorsed by the World Health Organisation, it’s a universal criteria. Firstly the intellectual disability must have been indicated or obvious by the time the person was 18, which is considered to be the developmental period in a person’s life. The second criteria is that the IQ must fall below 70 or 75 and below, and the third criteria is that a person must have deficits in at least of the life school areas. For example, social competence, communication, educational ability, any of the facets of a person’s life which maybe they have difficulty accessing because of their intellectual disability.

Amanda Smith: And how are those things checked or ratified in terms of sport?

Marie Little: Well each national body, for example, Ausrapid, is responsible for ensuring that every athlete who’s competing at national or international level, is registered, and that registration process consists of an application form; the first part of the application form is completed by the parents of the person making the application, or their care-givers or their guardian, and that first part must indicate whether the person has been in receipt of services because of an intellectual disability. The second part of the application form consists of a report which must be endorsed by two qualified professionals, psychologists or any person able to apply a psychological test to a person to determine whether they have an intellectual disability or not. And not only do they have to endorse that application, they must give a description of the methodology used in that process.

Amanda Smith: So how did the Spanish basketballers then get through the net? What went wrong there in terms of the checking process?

Marie Little: From what I can gather, Amanda, the eligibility process was never applied. All they’d done was to do some sit-ups and have a blood test. Now that’s not part of the eligibility criteria, nor part of the process that’s applied.

Amanda Smith: The International Paralympic Committee has attempted to justify their suspension decision by suggesting that the suspension has become necessary because it’s become evident that this issue of fraud isn’t just to do with the Spanish basketball team, but is a global issue to do with fraud in Paralympic sport. Do you believe that to be the case?

Marie Little: No. I think wherever there’s a process which has to be applied, it always leaves itself open for people trying to bend the rules or people trying to gain an edge and it’s not only applicable to athletes with an intellectual disability.

Amanda Smith: Marie, in Australia, have you been faced with athletes who’ve tried to, wanted to compete as intellectually disabled when they’re not?

Marie Little: I certainly have. I’m responsible for meticulous checking of every application for registration as an athlete with an intellectual disability and in that role I’ve endorsed maybe 750 athletes, and there have been maybe 20, 30 who’ve not been eligible. And the reason for their ineligibility has been given to them. Quite a few who’ve wanted to compete against people with an intellectual disability, because it gave them an edge. The answer to your question is 'Yes'.

Amanda Smith: In the case of the Spanish basketballers who were pretending to have an intellectual disability, I am curious as to what honour in doing this. I mean for those who genuinely have to deal with the disadvantages of having an intellectual disability, then competing in sport at world championships and the Paralympics is a powerful and positive thing to do. But it seems a strange and low act to pretend to have this kind of disability when you don’t.

Marie Little: Well it’s just quite amazing that people would want to do that, but I think also there needs to be some dwelling on the fact that the relevant national body was less than vigilant also. But you’re quite right, I couldn’t see why people would want to pretend that they’re something that they’re not, and certainly to, I suppose, blot and distort the dignity of people who genuinely have an intellectual disability.

Amanda Smith: Are you challenging the suspension of the International Paralympic Committee?

Marie Little: We certainly are. We’ve asked the President a number of questions and hopefully he will reply to those. We also last weekend, the European Committee of the International Federation of Sport for Athletes with Intellectual Disability met in the Netherlands and the plan is now to hold, or conduct an urgent executive committee meeting of the same federation in the Netherlands in three weeks’ time, and we will be taking every action to ensure firstly that there are some answers to the questions that have been asked, not only by Australia but throughout the world, and that we also get on with managing the Federation in a positive and effective way so that the relationship with the IPC is strengthened and we don’t have another situation where athletes are exposed to such blatant discrimination.

Amanda Smith: And things have got to be 'pretty crook in Tullarook' when the International Paralympic Committee is accused of discriminating against athletes with disabilities.

I was speaking there with Marie Little, who’s the President of Ausrapid, the Australian Association for Athletes with Intellectual Disabilities, and an executive member of the International Federation for the same.

Now just for moment, cast your mind back to 1973. Think tennis, and a match that captured world-wide interest, and the spirit of the times.

Reporter: She arrived on a feathered throne, and he arrived in a carriage carrying a pig, given him in honour of his being a male chauvinist pig. The crowd, all 30,000 of them, packed into the Houston Astrodome, went mad.

CROWD CHEERING

Amanda Smith: When Billie met Bobby. And women’s tennis champion Billie Jean King defeated the veteran of the men’s circuit, Bobby Riggs in straight sets. In a latter day version of this battle of the sexes in sport, the number one female golfer in the world, Karrie Webb, is set to attempt something similar later this year. Golf promoter Frank Williams is the man behind the idea.

Frank Williams: Well the concept really started when Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs in the ‘70s challenged each other to a game of tennis, and the outcome was that Billie Jean King proved that she was pretty good. So I got to thinking about how dominant Karrie Webb is, and that she didn’t really get the kudos and the accolades of, say, a Tiger Woods, and in her own way and in her own field, and in women’s golf, she is just as dominant as Tiger. And I thought now why don’t we issue a challenge where she takes on the men who are 20% stronger, according to statistics, and who should beat her. So I thought why don’t I issue a challenge to a few golfers and see what comes of it?

Amanda Smith: And who are the male golfers?

Frank Williams: Well the hardest ones to get, believe it or not, are the Australians. I’ve asked a few Australians but as of today I think Aaron Baddeley will accept. So what it’s going to be is Aaron Baddeley or another in Australia playing at Hope Island Resort, one of the toughest golf courses up in Queensland, one of the best resort courses in Australia. Then we go over to Kauri Cliffs in New Zealand, where Michael Campbell takes on Karrie, at his golf club, and then we go down from there, we go across to England in the middle of next year where we play Nick Faldo at a new course to everybody, not many people have heard of a place called Swinley Forest, which is England’s most exclusive golf club. And then we go across from there to the States at any time in the year, where I can tie John Daley and Karrie Webb down to a time that suits both of them, and that’ll be the final match in the series of four.

Amanda Smith: Now with the US leg, you’ve mentioned John Daley is to be the competitor, what about Tiger Woods, have you approached him, or is that of interest?

Frank Williams: No I haven’t approached Tiger Woods. He’s on record as saying that he doesn’t like that type of match, and I think the costs would be fairly prohibitive. And let’s keep Tiger Woods till next year, let’s see if Karrie wins a cup, well then perhaps Tiger Woods will come out punching, you know.

Amanda Smith: And what about with these matches being played around the world? Have you secured international television?

Frank Williams: What you do is you do it with probably your own production company and then you sell it off to all the stations. But I’m sure it’s right up Fox’s street, Channel 7 in Australia are the dominant golf channel, I think they’ll probably do it here. I think television will be the easiest thing to get.

Amanda Smith: What are you going to call the series?

Frank Williams: I’d love people to ring and let me know what they should call it. I don’t like ‘Battle of the Sexes’ and nor does Karrie. Karrie thinks it’s a bit crass, but I think it sums it all up when you come to think about it, but I don’t like that title. But I’ve got a few working titles that I’m trying to get around, I mean to do with gender of whatever, but hey, I just think that it’ll create an enormous amount of interest and I think that every husband in every household who plays golf will say the man will win, and I think vice versa, the little lady will say 'No, I think this is a girl with such rare talent and such strength and skill that I think she could probably beat a couple of them'.

Amanda Smith: Well is it going to be an entirely equal contest? Will Karrie Webb play off the same tees as the men?

Frank Williams: She will play off the men’s tees, which is the normal members tees. The guys will play off the championship tees, except on the par threes where they both hit off from exactly the same tees. So that just about evens it up, and I think from 180 down, 180 metres out, I think Karrie Webb’s as good as any man on the planet, I really do. And I think that’s where it will be, I think chipping and putting will be the name of the game at the end of the day.

Amanda Smith: Well who’s got the most to gain or to lose from playing this mixed competition? Is it Webb or is it the chaps?

Frank Williams: Well the difficulty I’ve had in Australia would seem to lend to the suggestion that it’s the guys that have got the most to lose, and if I was still managing Greg Norman, which I used to do, I’d be saying ‘Don’t do it’. Because quite honestly, they’re in a lose-lose situation. But Michael Campbell summed it up very well; he said, ‘Look, what the hell, it’s a bit of fun, there is no way the competitive juices will not be flowing when we’re out there. I believe I can beat anybody, and I’m blowed if I’m going to let a woman beat me.’ And so he’s approaching it with the right attitude and I think it will be very, very confrontational, I think it will be very competitive, but I think at the end of the day it’ll be a great match to watch, and the whole series should do very well.

Amanda Smith: Frank Williams, who’s organising and promoting golf’s battle of the sexes.

And Frank would love to hear from any of you who can come up with a good name, or a better name for the series. Let us know here at The Sports Factor, and we’ll pass your suggestions on.

Now obviously, Frank Williams thinks that this series will be a terrific event. But will it do anything to lift the profile and status of women’s golf?

Maisie Mooney is the Chief Executive Officer for Women’s Golf Australia.

Maisie Mooney: I have to be very frank here and say that I really don’t know what I feel about it and the so-called battle of the sexes. I think when we look at sport as entertainment, promoters are always looking for a new angle, and whilst this has been put forward before as a possibility, made-for-television golf game, I think it’s got lots of potential if it’s treated as fun. But if it’s set up to compare male golfers with female golfers, I think I’d be rather dubious about the outcomes.

Amanda Smith: Is this good for women’s golf?

Maisie Mooney: I think it can have some value, but frankly Karrie has enjoyed the sort of status that very few female athletes have, in that she has enjoyed very favourable comparison with the major golf star of his day, Tiger Woods. She hasn’t had to go onto the golf course to do that, it’s accepted I think by the sports public and by the media that men play men’s golf on golf courses set up to their strengths, and women do likewise. And in being at the top of the tree and dominating the tour, her tour as he has his tour, I think the comparisons have been fantastic for women’s golf and women’s sport generally. I think she’s got a lot to lose actually if she lost one of those matches.

Amanda Smith: But if Webb beats any or all of these male opponents, will it have any impact on things like the relative prize money available for women as opposed to men in major tournaments?

Maisie Mooney: It might stimulate further debate, but it shouldn’t take a match like this to actually bring that point to the fore. Now some of the media started to question the difference in prizemoney between men’s and women’s golf, not just here but overseas. The two major tours, the men’s tour in the United States and the women’s tour, the women’s tour is about 50%. The women do it exactly the same as the men do it, there’s no difference, there’s no argument about three sets versus five sets, they play 72 holes in all of the same sort of conditions and under the same sort of mental pressures as men do, and I think there’s a huge argument for comparative pay packets.

Amanda Smith: What’s your sense of whether this golf series is likely to attract the same sort of public fascination that the Bobby Riggs/Billy Jean King match-up in tennis did back in 1973, which did at the time attract a record television audience of some 50-million viewers, and it was billed as the Male Chauvinist versus the Women’s Libber. Is that sort of playing out of gender politics through sport still of public interest in the 21st century?

Maisie Mooney: I don’t think so. I really don’t. And I think that back in the ‘70s the women’s tour in the US used that particular match and promotion absolutely to its advantage, and then very quickly stepped away from allowing women’s tennis to be compared with men’s tennis ever again, and that was a fairly wise move. But I think that they got what they wanted from that match at the time. I don’t think that stands up in, as you say, in the 21st century any more. I know that it’s been billed here as the battle of the sexes but I certainly don’t think it would be promoted in that way, or that any of that sort of gender politics that abounded in the ‘70s would influence a fun golf match, and I think that’s what it’ll be.

Amanda Smith: So you don’t really see it as much more than a gimmick?

Maisie Mooney: Frankly, no.

Amanda Smith: Well we’ll still forward with some interest.

Maisie Mooney: Oh look I think there’ll be a huge amount of interest. I’m interested. You’re interested. It’s how it’s promoted, I think, that’s really going to be critical as to whether Karrie comes out looking like the hero of women’s golf, which she has been for the last five years.

Amanda Smith: Maisie Mooney, who’s the Chief Executive Officer of Women’s Golf Australia. And the Australian Open Tournament is on at the Yarra Yarra course, in Melbourne, from the 8th of next month, with Karrie Webb and just about all the top female golfers in the world competing.

The National Rugby League season 2001 gets under way this weekend. In the lead-up to the season though, the biggest news in Rugby League is Rugby Union, and the defection of the high-profile Brisbane Broncos player, Wendell Sailor, from League to Union. Ever since Rugby Union went professional, in 1995, it’s been on the cards that the League game would start losing its top players to the Union game, and ever since then there’s also been talk of the two codes merging, or reuniting, to be more accurate, since they were originally the one game. Wendell Sailor’s defection has re-ignited the debate. But is it feasible for the two to become one again? Murray Phillips is a lecturer in sports studies at the University of Queensland.

Murray Phillips: Well from where I’m sitting I don’t think so at all, Amanda, I think in essence you have two games which are still radically different; they come from different cultures, one originated from working class cultures and one came from essentially middle class cultures. And while at one level, at the elite level, you certainly have similar sorts of traits going on in the games, in the sense they both want to be large commodities purchased by television stations and multinational companies and so forth and raise revenue from those major sources, they’re still radically different games attracting different populations and have different histories and different cultures.

Amanda Smith: Well as with the Rugby split of 1907 as you say into the professional Rugby League and the amateur Rugby Union that created the two distinct games with distinct constituencies along class lines, political affiliations, sporting ethos I suppose, there was a clear reason for the two forms of the one game to exist. But with Rugby Union going professional in 1995, surely those distinctions and differences have lost any relevance. I mean the players are now interchangeable, there’s no longer any reason for them to continue as distinct games and competitions, is there?

Murray Phillips: Well there is still great differences between the games. I mean the cataclysmic event was the professionalisation of Rugby Union, that meant that at the elite level the players are paid equal, similar amounts to what exists in Rugby League, so at the elite level we now have this flow, this athletic migration between Rugby League and Rugby Union, which once was unthinkable. If you went to Rugby League from Rugby Union, you literally crossed the Rubicon, and you never came back, and you were disenfranchised from the Rugby Union community. Now that’s radically changed and in a sense I’m sure there’s a wry smile from the Rugby Union administrators when they can pinch people like Wendell Sailor after 90 years of seeing their players being lost to Rugby League. So at that level, yes, we certainly have a similar sort of football culture, in the sense that it’s a commodity sold to spectators around the world in the case of Rugby Union, and to a lesser extent Rugby League. But below that level, Rugby Union is still a radically different game. At club level it is still essentially an amateur game, whereas Rugby League is still a professional game below the elite level. So we still have these two different views, and competing views. At one level club Rugby still sees itself embodying the old traits of amateurism, that you play the game for the game’s sake, and it was about team loyalty and team bonding and so forth. Whereas Rugby League culture at all levels, it was a professional game played essentially by working class men and that still exists.

Amanda Smith: Nevertheless in a crowded sports calendar, as we have now where everyone’s vying for crowds, for TV audiences, for broadcast deals, for sponsorships, and with the continuing threat from Australian Football in this country, and from Soccer internationally, is there still room for Rugby Union and Rugby League for two such similar codes of play, to both continue to exist as major sports. Wouldn’t the whole be greater than the sum of the parts, if they did reunify?

Murray Phillips: Well that certainly is one of the key central issues in the globalisation debate. One side of the coin argues well sports are expanding, so the sports that have a global appeal now or the very powerful and strong sports are going to expand. So you’ll get some sports developing franchises in a whole range of countries, and attracting, as you said, the large media support, the corporate support and so forth. The other side of the coin suggests that the local sports, sports like Australian Football and certainly Rugby League and Rugby Union, which have distinct cultures and followings within the Australian context, will actually not only survive but be boosted as a result of a reaction to that globalisation effect. So the local in the global will become very important. So the local sports, with their own distinct cultures will actually continue to be important and continue to be followed by large groups of peoples and television and sponsorship and so forth, because essentially they are local.

Amanda Smith: Well from 1907 Rugby League did gain ascendancy in Australia over Rugby Union as the more dominant and popular of those two codes, and held on to that position for years. Is that seriously under threat now that Rugby Union can lure Rugby League’s brightest and best?

Murray Phillips: I think in many ways Rugby Union is in the ascendancy, for a number of reasons. Firstly it is a more global game. It’s not in the context that you would put Soccer for example, but it certainly has a World Cup which attracts a large number of countries, and there are a serious number of countries that play at the elite level. In contrast, Rugby League has really suffered over the last five years. The Superleague wars were an actual disaster for the game at so many different levels, at a world level, at a local level and so on. And it also suffers from the fact that in terms of global sport, it really has a small market. There are only really three or four countries that play the game. So you have one sport which has more global appeal and one which has a far more local appeal. So that seems to be the two key issues. But the only way I could perceive that these two sports would get together in any context is if only a major media player says I want these two sports to be combined at one. Because there is no mileage for each one of those sports to get together, absolutely nothing. There is antipathy. There could never be a merger because the merger would suggest that they would be equal partners; that would never be the case. So you’re not surprised that Rugby Union is talking up its future, in a sense, because it would see that it would be the dominant player and Rugby League would never accept that. So it would only be the case of a media mogul, someone like Rupert Murdoch who saw a global value for his media corporations in promoting one single code that that would ever occur. And for many years you would never think that would happen, but then when you reflect on what happened in the Superleague and how essentially Murdoch bought one sport throughout the world and half of it in Australia, then possibly this could happen, but only from a major corporate player, it wouldn’t come from internal cohesion, that’s for sure.

Amanda Smith: Murray Phillips, from the School of Human Movement Studies at the University of Queensland, and reminding us of where the power really lies in big time sport nowadays.

And that’s The Sports Factor for now. I’m Amanda Smith, Michael Shirrefs is the producer.

Guests on this program:

Marie Little
President of Ausrapid, the Australian Association for Athletes with Intellectual Disabilities, as well as an executive member of the International Federation for Athletes with Intellectual Disabilities.

Frank Williams
Golf promoter and organiser of the upcoming series of challenges between Karrie Webb and 4 male golfers.

Maisie Mooney
Chief Executive Officer for Women's Golf Australia.

Murray Phillips
Sports Historian who lectures in Sports Studies in the School of Human Movement at the University of Queensland.