QUT Staff Vote to Strike

The Photos:

1. I hate that I have to say this but under ABSOLUTELY

NO CIRCUMSTANCES should you include any photos of dead fish in your profile. It doesn’t show you’re adventurous, it's not cool, and there is no cute outfit to wear when fishing. Just please don’t. 2. Same goes with photos of your car. You have a finite number of photos to upload, why are you including one that is not you? Would you like to see a photo of my worm farms or high heel collection? No? Well, that’s how I feel about seeing a photo of your car.

All it says is “when we’re talking in person and I hear a car engine pass, I will immediately stop listening to what you’re saying and watch that car until I can no longer hear it anymore and not think that is rude in any way”. Also, it just screams that you never outgrew the little boy phase of wondering how wheels go round and are somehow still fascinated by that magic (can you tell my ex was into cars??)

3. If all your photos are group photos, I don’t know who you are. I don’t want to do a puzzle. Your profile shouldn’t feel like I’m playing Where’s Wally?. Your first photo should be you (no sunglasses, hats, and

I’m going to say it again, ABSOLUTELY NO FISH).

Also have at least two group photos to break it up in between.

4. If you want a girl to instantly swipe on you, include a photo of your dog with the bonus of an instant talking point. Nothing is cuter than dogs (and guys by proximity who happen to be in the photo).

To sum up, men please stop with the fish photos. And to the girls, gays, and theys I highly recommend moving over to Bumble or Hinge. Don’t get me wrong, there’s the occasional man with a fish, but they’re fewer and further between.

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In Defence of Sun Yang

TOM LOUDON

On February 28th 2020, the Court of Arbitration for Sport handed down a guilty verdict and eight-year ban to Chinese swimmer Sun Yang. This outcome was the result of nearly four months of hearings, deliberations, and tantrums in the Swiss town of Montreux, and formally designated Sun as a drug cheat. Two years on, the ripple-effect of this decision carves a problematic precedent when it comes to drug use in sport.

As the COVID-belated 2022 FINA World Championships begin in Budapest this weekend, the best swimmers in the world will either descend in competition or take a deserved break after last year’s Olympic Games – with one notable exception.

Australian swimmer Mack Horton faced the wrath of the Chinese media during the 2016 Summer Olympics, when he publicly labelled Sun Yang a drug cheat. Since then, the Australian media has collectively demonised the 30-yearold Chinese, freestyle swimmer out of public favour. And on the surface, what’s wrong with that? Sun Yang is, by any definition, a drug cheat. But the case of Sun Yang resists simplicity, and it’s time the culture of drug vilification in sports is properly examined. Because not only is it unhealthy – it’s deadly.

Though not widely known, FINA (the global body governing aquatic sports including swimming, diving, and water polo) has until recently been one of the most successful sporting organisations in the field of doping prevention. In fact, the body has come under fire for the strictness of its rules, notably the 2017 twelve-month ban issued to Australian swimmer Thomas Fraser-Holmes, who missed three drug tests in a year – tests that are by their nature random and unannounced, only allowing a single hour for an athlete to provide a sample.

But from the get-go, FINA has been soft on Sun Yang.

Sun returned a positive test for the banned substance Trimetazidine in 2014, and was handed a back-dated three month ban by the Chinese Swimming Association (the Chinese FINA affiliate body) that didn’t restrict his entry to any international events. This is incredibly inconsistent when compared to Fraser-Holmes' twelve-month ban, received without a single positive test.

Pertinently however, the drug was prescribed to Sun by a doctor six years prior to treat heart palpitations. The drug had only been banned a few months before Sun’s positive test; a fact Sun maintains he was not alerted to. To this day, Sun continues to use the drug with a medical exemption, as it is not considered by sporting authorities to be performance-enhancing when used outside of competition.

The Culture of Drug Prohibition in Sport

The prohibition of medically prescribed drugs from competition does not, in any material sense, level the playing field. Instead, it puts athletes at risk. Australian-Hong Kong swimmer Kenneth To suffered similar symptoms to Sun Yang. In 2019, To felt unwell after a practice session in Florida. The issue – To’s heart had not slowed down to a regular rhythm after exercising. After being taken to hospital, To died of Sudden Cardiac Arrest aged 26. While one can’t speculate about To’s access to medication, his death serves as a reminder that even elite athletes can die suddenly from a heart condition.

In this context, the hostility shown towards Sun by swimmers like Horton and the Australian media looks much less like courage, and more like aggression.

In any practical sense, most sports analysts and journalists tend to agree that the goal of cleaning up sport is not attainable. Widespread, unregulated use of performance enhancing drugs has been a concern for sporting governing bodies for decades, and has not gone away.

But while the discussion over the legalisation of sports doping is ongoing and complex, performance-enhancing drugs remain prohibited by the World Anti-Doping Agency, which views doping violations as breeches of ‘the spirit of sport’.

But Australian academic and analyst Julian Savulescu wonders how legal and freely available drugs in sport would violate this ‘spirit’, which includes pillars like excellence in performance, community and solidarity, and teamwork.

‘For many athletes, sport is not safe enough without drugs,’ Savulescu argues in his 2004 paper, Why we should allow ‘If [an athlete] suffer[s] from asthma, high blood pressure, or cardiac arrhythmia, sport places their bodies under unique stresses, which raises the likelihood of chronic or catastrophic harm.

‘For example, between 1985 and 1995, at least 121 US athletes collapsed and died directly after or during a training session or competition—most often because they had hypertrophic cardiomyopathy or heart malformations.

‘The relatively high incidence of sudden cardiac death in young athletes has prompted the American Heart Association to recommend that all athletes undergo cardiac screening before being allowed to train or compete.’

In many instances, experimental or therapeutic drugs publicly available to anyone in many countries are not available to athletes. Former NRL player Sandor Earl is one example of the double standard. After accessing experimental peptide treatment to recover from a shoulder reconstruction, Earl was banned by the NRL for four years. This was despite his drug treatment not specifically influencing his performance outside recovery and ASADA dropping their probe into Earl.

In many ways, the quest for superhuman performance at any cost dehumanises athletes, and puts them in avoidable physical danger.

Why Sun?

Sun Yang has become a particularly popular villain in swimming – other positive drug tests haven’t seemed to draw the same ire as Sun’s, and Mack Horton’s silence after his Australian teammate Shayna Jack’s positive test in 2019, was not lost on fans of the Chinese star.

South African swimmer Chad le Clos sensationally accused Sun of being ‘dirty’ when the Chinese swimmer came from behind to beat him in the 2016 200m Freestyle event.

‘I was ahead by a long way with 50m to go in that race, but Sun Yang came past me,’ le Clos said.

‘He was the only man who did that, and that says it all really … Sun passed me like I was standing still in the last 25m, which is unheard of.’ Swimming commentators at the time, however, disputed this claim, noting le Clos wasted more energy than his competitors on his poor final turn. Attacked from many sides, paranoia brought about Sun’s eventual second doping ban – this time, without a positive test. After giving blood and urine samples to three antidoping assistants (DCA) at his home on September 4th 2018, Sun sensationally took a hammer from his garden shed and destroyed the samples.

Unsurprisingly, the already embattled swimmer became, again, an easy villain for the Australian press. How could he not? Sun’s fans have abused several high-profile athletes who commented on his case – including basketballer Andrew Bogut and British swimmer Duncan Scott – and his abrasive personality hasn’t made him many friends in the sporting world. Sun’s shed became the butt of many jokes among pundits, as did his “fearsome Tiger mother”.

Few commentators managed, however, to observe that a doping test taking place in a shed is not protocol and that Sun did not in fact bring a hammer with him to a test, as was often purported. Few still reported that after providing samples, Sun observed a DCA taking photos of him. When confronted, the DCA could not provide any accreditation, even claiming to be a construction worker. None of the DCAs had brought any accreditation at all.

More confounding still is the allegation from Sun’s Australian coach, Dennis Cotterell, that the drug test conducted on the 4 September 2018, was his ninth in two weeks (These tests were conducted during the Asian Games, and all returned negative results).

Speaking to Glass Media in 2021, Australian Olympic Silver Medalist Jack McLoughlin had little sympathy for Sun, and stressed that other swimmers felt the same way.

‘As someone who thinks what he did is despicable and as someone who is racing him, I did find the 8-year ban to be really harsh,’ McLoughlin said.

‘I think that was a big statement against what he did.’

‘Even if he was concerned with how the test was carried out, with all of our tests we complete there’s areas in the forms where you can report what you weren’t happy about. If the panel thinks that it’s valid, they will scrap the test, no matter what happened. So, there was no real reason for him to do what he did.’

‘We are meticulous with that stuff, when I look at a vial even if I see a speck of dirt in it, I request a new testing tube. Just flat out refusing is a no-no. We all agreed that he should be banned for something like that.’

Sun’s Fate

Sun’s farcical defence at the Court of Arbitration for Sport in 2019 and 2020 was easily lambastable in the international media, including his refusal to respond to questioning, to his attempted boycott of the court. But his initial hearing was also deeply marred by translation issues, which caused frustration among judges and lawyers. The unnamed DCA who had been unable to provide accreditation at the time of Sun’s drug test, also admitted to being a construction worker via written testimony.

The eight-year ban handed down by the CAS may have seemed inevitable, but in context, the case of Sun Yang resists simplicity. Sun is a helpful villain for a sports media industry concerned by the threat to western sporting dominance posed by China. But when one considers his actual crimes, it's nearly impossible to justify an eight-year ban. In fact, last year, the Court of Arbitration for Sport halved Sun’s ban from eight years to four, clearing the way for his Olympic return in 2024.

Meanwhile, at these June World Championships, Sun won’t be in the pool. He remains the World Record holder in the 1500m Freestyle, but at 30-years-old, whether he will ever race professionally again remains to be seen.

Sun has always carved a lonely figure at major meets, and is by all accounts difficult for other swimmers to be around. Sun’s confrontations with his competitors has been difficult to justify, even to his fans. When Duncan Scott refused to share a podium with Sun in 2019, Sun infamously berated Scott, calling him a ‘loser’.

I also find it difficult to detach Sun’s cantankerous personality from his swimming performances. At a swimming camp in 2015, my swim team stayed at the Runaway Bay complex where Sun used to train. It was, and remains, the only time I have ever seen a swimmer, elite or otherwise, train completely alone. Sun was accompanied only by the five or six assistant coaches by the pool-side – the only time I’ve ever seen a squad in which the coaches outnumbered the swimmers.

But an abrasive personality is not enough to justify a career ending ban. It’s difficult to defend Sun Yang, and it’s important to criticise him – but that doesn’t mean we can’t try both.

This piece was originally published on qutglass.com