V 9 N. 47 Cross Country Back Then and Some Other Stuff

Our good friend and foreign correspondent, Jerry McFadden, sent some more vintage cross country photos from France this week.  Not a lot of information came with the photos, but they do provide a look back in time at this pure sport.

French Cross Country 1931 Roger Rerolle winning French XC nationals at Maisons -Lafitte  Hippodrome

1921  France  Start of  a new season at Pavillon Sou Bois outside Paris.
7Km race won by a Belgian  Vandevelde in 22:08

Start of the Oxford vs. Cambridge duel meet  1921

Winner N. A. Mac Innes crossing a ditch.  Post race (Ashley) Montague left and Mac Innes.
Note Montague's missing shoe and the thick soles on Mac Innes' shoes.

And speaking of past cross country history, remember the British Invasion at Western Kentucky with Nick Rose, Dave Long, Tony Staynings and Swag Hartel?  These guys brought some hard training and hard partying to the sport. What had been upper crust in the older photos above, was now a very blue collar event.  

Now for a really cool site on history of the NCAA meet when held in East Lansing Michigan, I recommend this link out of University of Waterloo in Ontario run by Mark Havitz (MSU XC alum 1977-78).  If you click on the "videos" section you can download finish line film of several of the races back in the 1940s.  In the 1946 film you will see Dennis Weaver of "Gunsmoke" fame crossing the line in mid pack for Oklahoma U. wearing the number 141.   Michigan State Cross Country archives


Russians on the Run?

Then we digress to the Russian doping scam which seems never to end with the IOC  holding the white flag and an olive branch  at the Russians and saying that even though we know you are screwing with us, you might still be allowed to send athletes as "neutrals" to compete in Tokyo, provided they test clean.    I can only wonder what the discussions must be like in Putin's office these days.  Certainly a few heads are in danger of being lopped off or at least a re-opening of a residential wing in the Gulags is being considered for some bureaucrats, not for cheating, but for getting caught.  It was a run for your life situation after the balls up at Sochi for the domestic testing lab that got caught switching samples.  


Sean Ingle reported today in The Guardian:

The International Olympic Committee has demanded the “toughest sanctions” against those responsible for deleting Russian doping tests in data handed over to the World Anti-Doping Agency – calling it “an attack on the credibility of sport and an insult to the sporting movement worldwide”. However, the IOC left the door open for Russian athletes to compete at next year’s Tokyo Olympics – provided they can show that they are clean.

That provoked a hostile reaction from the US Anti-Doping Agency chief executive Travis Tygart, who urged Wada to ban all Russian athletes from the 2020 Games after its compliance review committee found that the Moscow lab files, which were handed over to it by the Russians in January, had been manipulated.

“Russia continues to flaunt the world’s anti-doping rules, kick clean athletes in the gut and poke Wada in the eye and get away with it time and time again,” said Tygart. “Wada must stand up to this fraudulent and bullying behaviour as the rules and Olympic values demand.”

Russia was banned from last year’s Pyeongchang Winter Games as punishment for state-sponsored doping at the 2014 Sochi Olympics but 168 Russian athletes with no history of doping were cleared to compete as neutrals – a situation Wada’s compliance committee said may be repeated at Tokyo.

Tygart warned: “The response is inadequate, especially given the deceit perpetuated by the Russian sport system which is controlled by the government. Wada must get tougher and impose the full restriction on Russian athlete participation in the Olympics that the rules allow.”

The IOC maintains that “natural justice” requires them to punish any perpetrators but allow clean Russian athletes to compete. It also says there was no evidence that Russian Olympic Committee members were implicated in the “flagrant” manipulation of the Moscow lab data.

But the IOC was accused of being soft on Russia by lawyers for the whistleblower Grigory Rodchenkov, who used to run the Moscow anti-doping laboratory before fleeing the country. “The Russian gangster state continues to deploy a predictable and deplorable policy of deception, evidence tampering and lying to cover up its crimes,” they said.

“The Kremlin must think the people of the world are idiots to believe this shameless and transparent stunt. Wada should be applauded for revealing Russia’s latest crime, but if the IOC and the international sports regulatory framework gives Russia yet another free pass, other countries will simply follow in their footsteps.”