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dmittedly, John Amaechi’s weekend research project was something of a social media straw poll rather than an authentic scientific study, but his Twitter challenge to identify the top five issues in sport produced some interesting results. “Big, meaty sociological challenges” are what the towering figure asked his 18,000-plus followers to flag up. They responded with such concerns as safety, expense, lack of opportunities for children from disadvantaged backgrounds and disconnection between elite athletes and the grassroots. However, the list didn’t include doping, illegal betting or other forms of cheating, which should make Amaechi’s presence at SportAccord Convention thoughtprovoking and potentially explosive. Amaechi is a psychologist, organisational consultant and high-performance executive coach. He is also a New York Times bestselling author, a former NBA basketball player and a senior fellow at the Applied Centre for Emotional Literacy, Learning and Research. On Thursday he will discuss ‘The Integrity Issue’ alongside Chris Eaton, Director of Sport Integrity at the International Centre for Sport Security, Gianni Merlo, a journalist with Gazzetta dello Sport and President of Association Internationale de la Presse Sportive, and Friedrich Stickler, President of the European Lotteries. The session will tackle the scale and breadth of cheating in sport, “from doping to match-fixing to gamesmanship”. It comes a year after outgoing International
‘We should address poor leadership in sport governance’ Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge told SportAccord Convention that doping and illegal betting were two of the biggest issues in sport. “The responses I received were not even close to Rogge’s perception,” Amaechi told The Daily. “One of the reasons I sent the tweet was to find out people’s opinions. I have always been convinced that the perceptions of the major federations are entirely out of touch with what people really feel are the main problems.” Amaechi’s priority is to give kids a sporting chance with good facilities and tuition, with action to remove the barriers that prevent inclusion and with improvements to safety. “This idea that the issue is doping or gambling is just not what people really feel,” he said. “What they feel is that there are practical things in the way of their involvement in sport – things like the invisible crisis in coaching. The idea that young people are having devastating experiences with poorly-qualified, poorly-skilled and, in some cases, poorlyintuitive coaches – that’s more important than whether somebody is gambling in Singapore.”
Amaechi’s athletes of the future also need help with funding and encouragement to remove obstacles presented by race and gender. He said: “If you want to play basketball, it will cost £40 to hire a court for an hour and, even with 10 of you, how is that possible five times a week if you want to be any good at all? “There is a hidden conversation about which kids are deemed to fit into which sports. Everybody knows what type of kids play football. It’s upper-middle class white and black boys and some girls; it’s not Asian boys and girls. In cricket, white and Afro-Caribbean boys play together and Asian boys play together – but they don’t all play together.” Amaechi’s concerns on safety extend from the crashes in the intensity of the action to the crippling force of depression. “There is an unfortunate list of professional athletes and former professional athletes who have killed themselves due to those pressures not being handled well,” he said. Amaechi’s answer is a call to action aimed at sport itself, which he also blames for fuelling doping problems. “We can talk about performanceenhancing drugs, but from the perspective of sport having questions to answer because they have developed an arms race between doping and anti-doping,” he added. “Sport is complicit in the taking of performance-enhancing drugs. Sport knows that a certain level of achievement is possible without enhancement, yet it demands more than that. Did anybody really think that you could ride through the Alps for two weeks every single day without any help? Did anybody believe that? Does anybody still believe that?” Ask Amaechi about the part to be played by the media and the funders, and he gives a flavour of what to expect when representatives from those sectors join him on the panel. “The media want the sensational scoop, but they don’t want to have to go through the due diligence that highlights the issues. That’s the domain of the one-hour TV documentaries,” he said. “But I honestly don’t think the majority of people think betting in sport is the problem. That’s borne out by the UK Government’s position on betting, by the fact that every poor neighbourhood high street has two or three betting shops. “Sport talks about itself as this global entity that can change the world, creating global peace for the two weeks of the Olympics, but when it comes to its responsibility to use sport for the furtherance of human dignity, they fail again and again. We should address the poor leadership in sport governance, the hypocrisy of sport going to places and supporting regimes that kill, and that don’t use sport for the furtherance of human dignity. “I am entirely at odds with the perspective of doping and gambling being the biggest problems. I am not suggesting they are not important and in an ideal world when sport itself has taken care of its own business they would be important issues to get hold of, but not until it’s taken care of its own internal business.” John Amaechi OBE will speak on the session, ‘The Integrity Issue’, from 14.00-15.00 during the Conference Programme today.
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integrity: John Amaechi
looking at sport’s big issues
Picture courtesy of Amaechi Performance Systems
the big interview