RUNNING

Zhang Yingying of China won the Xiamen Marathon last weekend in a world junior record time of 2 hours, 22 minutes and 38 seconds. Her previous personal best of 2:27:20 was set three months before in only her second marathon, an improvement of almost five minutes.

Given the climate of rampant drug abuse in professional sport globally, all significant improvement in athletic performance at the elite level is greeted nowadays with skepticism. While you want to fervently hope and believe that all gold medallists are deserving winners, the sight of former Nike athlete and poster girl Marion Jones with the megawatt smile admitting drug use last year on television reminds us not to be naive, especially since there are probably new drugs created everyday that are undetectable.

So why bring this up? I bring it up to remind us that as we brace ourselves for the inevitable hype that will come our way when all the sponsors start selling us credit cards, fast food or cars linked to the Olympics, sport wasn’t always so crassly commercialised. The extreme commercialisation of sport has resulted in incredible incentives to cheat because the difference between winning and losing gold is a huge income gap. The winner is fabulously wealthy. The loser scrapes along. Global sport has become mostly about money. It is our loss and we are the lesser for it.

The Science of Sport