Editorial | Case for Paris inquiry

Professor Rachel Irving’s revelation that Jamaica’s athletics authorities failed to engage her on the possible effects hot weather in Paris could have on the wellbeing and performance of athletes at the Olympics, is of itself good grounds for a broad-based review of Jamaica’s achievements at those games.

But when Professor Irving’s disclosure is placed against all the bungling that went on before the Olympics, including the public contretemps between the Jamaica Athletics Administrative Association (JAAA) and the Jamaica Olympic Association (JOA) over the allocation of spaces and funding of athletic coaches for the games, a formal inquiry is in order.

First, though the JAAA’s president, Garth Gayle, and his counterpart at the JOA, Christopher Samuda, are morally obliged to have their respective associations publish their internal reviews of the games, the production which would be expected by any serious or decently managed organisation, no such analyses can be deemed to be internal documents.

For, as this newspaper said previously, while the JOA and JAAA may have been incorporated as private bodies, accountable to registered members, they can’t, in any real sense, be private institutions. As the domestic regulators of track and field athletics and other Olympics sports, the JAAA and JOA transcend their membership. In essence, they operate in trust for the Jamaican people, who are deeply invested, emotionally and otherwise, in the island’s athletes.

ACCOUNTABLE TO THE PUBLIC

In that regard, the JAAA and the JOA are ultimately accountable to the public. That demands their transparency. There is a crucial fact that places this issue in its larger context. In track and field athletics, especially the sprints, Jamaica is an acknowledged global power. It owns a coveted brand.

So, when athletes represent Jamaica that is the context within which their performances are framed. They are therefore expected to be well-prepared and have a reasonable expectation to be professionally looked after.

That, given human frailties and all the exigencies of sports, doesn’t always guarantee exceptional performances, or medals, from athletes.

Notwithstanding, Jamaica’s returns on the track in Paris was disappointing. Only two of the six medals it won were from runners, against the expectation of a double-digit haul.

Without behaving like commissars, or perceiving athletes to be assembly line automatons, it is not unreasonable to want to know what, if anything, might have gone wrong.

Did the heat of Paris, for instance, affect the wellbeing of our athletes and led to the injuries they developed, or exacerbated during the games? In the event, such reviews and analyses are what good organisations do. Don’t they?

On the question of heat, Paris faced a scorching summer. But the organisers of the Olympics, in a commendable bid to reduce the carbon footprint of the Games, decided against having air conditioners in the rooms at the Olympic Village. They opted instead for an under-floor geothermal cooling system to manage the temperatures.

Food served in the village was also 60 per cent plant-based, aimed at lessening the Games’ contribution to the CO2 emissions associated with the production of meat.

Many national teams didn’t readily adapt to those climate initiatives. Some of the richer ones made alternative living and/or cooling arrangements.

IGNORING THE DATA

Professor Irving, who teaches sports science and biochemistry and the University of the West Indies, Mona, has researched the issue of heat and the performance of Jamaican athletes. She also has data and simulations from other countries.

She wrote in this newspaper on Sunday of her efforts to discuss the scientific data with the JOA and the JAAA, including what, in the circumstances, would be required to keep Jamaica’s athletes in their best shape at the Olympics.

“Even though for more than two months I tried to meet with those who would make a difference, to date I am yet to get a reply from the JOA or the JAAA,” Professor Irving wrote.

That declaration is hard to believe. We expected that by now it would have been roundly rejected by Mr Samuda and Mr Gayle. If they have, it has not been public.

It would have been deeply embarrassing if Professor Irvine’s allegation was the only blunder by either the JAAA or the JOA. But there was even the more egregious case of the JAAA’s omission of hammer thrower’s Noyoka Clunis’ name from the list of athletes for the Games, although she qualified for an automatic place in her discipline as one of the world’s top throwers.

When the JAAA discovered its error, it claimed, improbably from our perspective, that the loss of electricity and telecommunications because of a hurricane prevented it from urgently informing World Athletics of its mistake.

Happily, Mr Samuda has denied that the JOA threatened to withdraw future accreditation of an athlete who criticised the association. Which would have been petty.

However, like the several other issues, that matter needs fuller airing.

Having first published their own reviews, the JOA and JAAA should agree with other stakeholders to a fuller and deeper semi-official inquiry into the Games, and on how they can become more transparent, with greater accountability to the public.