Rugby World Cup: The ref debate

It's been a long time between posts - busy work periods, lack of inspiration, lack of news stories (well, that's not entirely true!), but pick the excuse.  Apologies for the long break. I'm back with a viewpoint on rugby - probably not the topic of interest for most of you reading this in the USA, but as our national sport in SA, felt compelled to put it out there!  I'm planning a series on fatigue, probably as a series of short video posts in the coming week, so hopefully that breaks the silence on sports science!  Join us soon!  And for those who followed the Rugby World Cup, congratulations to New Zealand.  Some thoughts on the refereeing below!


Rugby World Cup: New Zealand's drought ends and rugby's referee problem

So 24 years of waiting is over for New Zealand, who beat France 8-7 in a pulsating and perhaps unexpectedly competitive Rugby World Cup Final today.  It may have been the lowest scoring final ever played, but it was suspenseful and adventurous, certainly more than the previous two finals.  France produced a performance worthy of the showpiece match of the tournament, having come into it with two losses and the anticipation of a blowout victory to New Zealand.  Rather, it was France who played the adventurous rugby, and only some ineffectiveness in attack and New Zealand's resolute defending prevented them from winning their first title.  

Instead, New Zealand won their second, but it was significant in that they have been, for the most part, the best team going into each of the six World Cup tournaments, sometimes by a large margin.  Having failed to win the World Cup on five occasions despite being the favorites had earned New Zealand the tag of "chokers", a team that peaked between World Cups but failed to deliver when it mattered.  Two of those famous defeats came at the hands of France (in 1999 and 2007) and so when this French team stood firm and began to control the match following a second half try that brought the score back to 8-7, a blanket of anxiety settled over Eden Park in Auckland.  

Choking vs panic

There were times when New Zealand appeared close to panic in this final - they were flustered, made unforced errors, chose poor tactical options and generally seemed to be hanging on and defending a one-point lead with desire rather than application.  At this point, it seemed to me that had New Zealand NOT won this World Cup, it would have been because of panic, rather than choking (an explanation that is just too convenient to use, and unfairly earned, not only by NZ rugby by also by SA cricket).  Their composure deserted them, though the injury to their flyhalf, which meant that they played most of the final with a fourth choice pivot, certainly influenced their tactical approach.  As did their lead, and they seemed more concerned with defending the one-point advantage than playing proactively, which set the final 30 minutes up as France with the ball, New Zealand without it.

For an explanation of how choking differs from panic, and why a team that loses a match is not necessarily choking, read this piece by Malcolm Gladwell.  I've never really been fond of simply throwing out the excuse of "chokers" every time the more favored team loses - sometimes you are just outplayed or out-thought by a team who are better than you on the day.  The margins in international sport are so small that this can happen fairly easily, and it's too simple to say "New Zealand choked", when in fact, France may have simply been unbeatable on a given day, as was the case in 1999.  For a comparable case in tennis, Federer's loss to Tsonga in Wimbledon earlier this year is the best I can think of - sometimes, however great you are, the other team/player just rises to a level that no one would match, and it's your bad fortune to be there at the time!  

The influence of the referee in rugby

However, the tactical and technical nature of the game is not what I want to focus on in this post - that is something that rugby websites around the world will do enough of (see this example for a match report).  

Instead, I thought I would give some of my thoughts on a topic that follows every rugby match, and that is the debate and criticism of the referee.  The reality is that the referee in a rugby match has become incredibly influential in determining how the game is played.  The result is that rugby has a growing credibility problem, where every match threatens to degenerate into objections about the performance of the referee, rather than assessment of the relative performances of its players.  Whenever the result on the scoreboard can be dismissed as being the result of someone's opinion or bias, there is a problem.  

And this has happened in virtually every close match in the 2011 Rugby World Cup, which will be remembered not solely for the on-field performances, but for weak referee performances, some of which have been questionable, some outright poor.  The most controversial of these probably came in the Quarter-final, where Australia beat South Africa 11-9 in a match that was later alleged to have been "bent" as part of the condemnation on the performance of referee Bryce Lawrence (more on my views of that allegation later)

Rugby presents a unique challenge in that the referee is required to make a specific decision about a contested tackle almost 200 times a match (once every 30 seconds), and this decision is multi-dimensional, instantaneous and open to interpretation.  As a result, these decisions (and there are so many of them) influence the game to the extent that accusation, criticism and allegation are inevitable.   It's part of sport, certainly, but rugby seems more prone to accusations that "the ref helped ABC win" than any other sport.  The problem is that from this point, it's a short journey to allegations of fixing, corruption and cheating, when the problem may be simple incompetence or interpretation of the tackle rules of the sport.  Either way, the credibility of a result is called into question.

This situation exists because so much of the contest in rugby revolves around competing for the ball after a tackle, in the breakdown contest.  The attacking team needs to recycle possession quickly, whereas the defending team are at worst trying to slow it down to re-organize in defence, at best trying to win the ball on the ground.  The result is a huge contest, the outcome of which goes a considerable distance towards determining the match result, but which is itself determined by how the referee interprets how both sets of players test the boundaries of the law (because this is what players will do, understandably - it's like football players trying to play close to the offside line)

A unique situation?

I cannot think of another sport where the interpretation of the rule by an official so clearly influences the way that teams play the match.  In football (soccer), the most contentious decisions are those when a penalty appeal is made, offsides is ruled, or when foul-play is adjudged.   They are fairly clear-cut, and far less frequent than in rugby.  And certainly, they can influence matches in a big way - I'm not downplaying how significant a referee decision can be.  In the NFL, decisions can be similarly significant, but usually involve clear transgressions of rules.  Tennis, there's no influence, particularly now that television replays are used.  And similarly, cricket umpires are often criticized and single decisions can be very influential, but with TV assistance, the incidence of these has certainly come down.  If there is a sport that I'm missing, please let me know.

The rugby situation - too much interpretation

Rugby is different - the most contentious decision in rugby is one that is made on average twice a minute (five times a minute if you use ball in play time rather than total time), and it influences the next minute, rather than being a decision in isolation.  Consider that a typical match has about 170 rucks (or contests for the ball in a tackle) , and you realize that there are probably 100 decisions (because not all are contested the same way) where the referee must interpret, in a split second, a dizzying array of laws, and where each decision has implications for what follows.  

Different referees have a different sequence or approach to the decision, but they must judge, more or less in order: how the tackler interacts with the tackled player, when the tackle actually occurs, that the tackler releases the tackled player, that the tackled player releases the ball, when the ruck is formed, that players arriving to join the ruck remain on their feet, and that they join from the correct position and do not seal the ball off to prevent the contest.  Add in that there are often multiple tacklers, so the referee has to decide who the tackler is, and you appreciate that within half a second, there's a lot to judge.  Then the next problem is that many times, four or five things happen more or less simultaneously, and so it really is a judgment call.

Ultimately, what the decision comes down to is a) assigning roles to the involved players, and b) deciding on the order in which events occur - every tackle has similar events, and the job of the referee is to sort through the order in which they occur,  and if he sees a different order to you or I, then his decision will be accordingly different.  And this is precisely what happens to make these decisions so contentious.

I've been fortunate enough to work with the SA Sevens team for the last three seasons, and at every tournament, the IRB Head of Referees, all the coaches and technical staff of competing teams, and all the referees have a sit-down meeting a few days before the tournament starts.  The meetings involve discussion around how the referees have been instructed to officiate and usually include clips of tackles and rucks from previous tournaments.  Now bear in mind that this is Sevens, where the contest involves fewer players and with less congestion than you'd see in 15s, and then consider that even so, there rarely agreement in these meetings.  The situation in 15-man rugby is of course even more complex (though the tackle contest may be more significant in 7s, but that's for another discussion!)

For each clip, one coach will point to the tackler, another to the tackled player, another to the arriving player, another to the offside line, each one pointing out a different possible transgression PER RUCK!  Mostly, it boils to disagreement about the order in which events happen, and which player should be entitled to do what.  Eventually, even in slow-motion, it takes consensus or a swing vote to sort through the order of decisions that a referee must make.  Even then, it's often a 50-50 call as to whether a player released the tackled player or the ball and so on (if you are reading this without much knowledge of rugby and you're confused at how complex it sounds, well, that's exactly the point!)

A general approach to the decision and its implications

The reality is that rugby, by design, prioritizes the contest for the ball on the ground, and therefore the spotlight falls squarely on the man who must judge whether players are transgressing those laws.  Simple on paper - there is a very distinct set of rules governing the tackle.  But here's the problem - the rules may be clear, but the judgment of them is not.  So much is open to interpretation, and it is interpretation that happens in an instant, while on the run.  The result is that a match can very, very easily look 'influenced' by the referee, who generally speaking, can take one of two extreme approaches to how they cut through this organized chaos to make a decision.  Call it "conservative" vs "liberal" decision-making, but at its simplest, a referee is going to lean one of two ways.

The first approach is to over-police the contest (the conservative).  The result is that the referee will appear to punish legitimate contesting for the ball, and will reward penalties frequently, forcing players to back right off, killing the contest for the ball.  This favors the team in possession.  Alternatively, the referee can under-police the breakdowns (liberal), and allow much more to go unpenalized.  

Importantly, when this happens, the result is that the defending team will usually be favoured, because the referee will fail to prevent them from slowing the ball down, and slowing it down creates a disproportionate advantage.  I believe this is what happened in the South Africa - Australia match, where the rucks were highly contested and too much was allowed on the ground.  The result is that the defending team is advantaged.  But, significantly, the problem in that particular match is that the defending team was mostly Australia.

The stats reveal this - South Africa had 131 rucks, compared to Australia's 44.  That is, for every one opportunity for South Africa to contest and slow down Australian ball, there were three chances for Australia to do so.  So, by allowing too much contesting, the referee effectively gave Australia three times as many chances to push the limits of what was legal (and some would say exceed those limits).

When one team is as dominant as this (in terms of possession), and the more liberal referee is making the extreme "decision" to under-police and allow more, then it will always appear that he is deliberately biased.  The reality is that if the possession was equal, and if both teams have the same number of rucks, then nobody would really notice the referee because BOTH TEAMS would get away with slowing the other team's ball down!  You'd get a very messy match, but the liberal referee would be far more "anonymous" because his leaning affects both sides equally.

Instead, this match was one-sided, and South Africa seemed to be on the receiving end of an unfair performance.  I do think that Lawrence was poor, and I do think that his poor performance affected SA more, but it wasn't deliberate.  And as for match-fixing?  Not based on decisions that didn't go our way, no.  Rather, I think that the referee was poor and didn't do enough to control the rucks, but my point is that this may be because he was either instructed to allow the contest, and "over-applied" the instruction, or he just has a natural inclination to be liberal towards the contest.

In the case of Bryce Lawrence, it would not surprise me if he was told to allow a contest for the ball, because earlier in the tournament (in the Aus v Ireland match), he was criticized for penalizing Australia TOO MUCH at the breakdown.  I strongly suspect that what happened next is that he was asked to be a little slower on the whistle, and he erred on the other extreme, and didn't do enough.  In the end, it appeared that South Africa were hard done by, but as I have said, that's more because whenever one team dominates play, an error like Lawrence's appears to favour the team without the ball (Australia).

Analyzing referees - navigating with a broken compass

It may not surprise you to learn, for example, that many international teams now attempt to analyze referee trends, so that they can attempt to guess whether a given referee is likely to decide one way or the other.  At the most basic level, for example, you can look at whether a particular referee tends to award a penalty to the attacking team or the defending team to get an idea of that referee's "in-built bias".  This partly reveals whether that referee's priority in assessing the breakdown is whether the attacking team player releases the ball (penalty against the attacking team) or whether the tackler releases the player (defending team).  You can then go further to see whether the referee is more or less lenient on the tackler or the tackled player and the arriving supporting players from either team.

The problem with this approach is two-fold.  First, it's subjective.  When analysing clips, you have to judge not only what the referee does decide, but what he does not.  This means you have to make a call yourself, and this brings us back to the point about disputable situations, especially because on TV, you don't see what the referee does.  

The second problem, more significant, is that the referees, in my experience anyway, are too unpredictable to code in this way.  They are influenced by individual players and teams, and they change their approach too often, probably because they are very susceptible to suggestion and to the instructions coming down at them from their superiors. 

For example, we tried this in the Sevens setup,but it was a futile quest, because the referees changed their approach too often.  We worked out that what was happening was that the IRB were evaluating the referees and providing feedback on their performances (which is a good thing, of course), but this feedback was influencing the way that referee approached their next match.  The result was that for each referee, if you plotted a graph showing how they made decisions, it would look like a zig-zag curve of mountain peaks and valleys - one week they leaned one way, the next week they went the other.  And so trying to pre-empt how they would decide was like navigating with a broken compass.  

Yet again, what this showed is the "unstable" nature of the decision-making process.  Again, 170 decisions per match, each one in a fraction of a second at speed, with five or more variables to assess is going to introduce some "interpretation", and the problem is that this can lean one way or another very easily.

Emotion - the inherent bias when working backwards

The other factor in all this is that emotion and passion are such significant influencers of how we interpret this watching on television.  Fans (and even neutral spectators) have an inherent bias (it's what makes them fans!) and the result is that when they assess a referee performance, they exist in a world of black and white - the referee is either right or wrong.  Unfortunately for rugby, the decision is rarely black and white.  It is grey, because of the previously mentioned decisions around judging the order in which events occur, and who does what in the tackle, and so there is always conflict between what fans see and what is actually happening on the ground.

Consider an example from football (soccer):  A player scores a goal but is offside when he received the pass.  The referee/assistant see this, and the goal is correctly disallowed.  On first viewing, a fan who feels that his team has been robbed can make all manner of accusations including match-fixing and bias, but a replay will prove him wrong in most cases.  Similarly, in tennis, the ball is either in or out, and in the Hawkeye era, there's little dispute over those calls.  NFL, there are debatable calls (pass interference, roughing the passer etc), but they're much less frequent and different in nature to the ongoing, continuous rugby tackle calls.  

Rugby, however, has a much more subjective decision happening 170 times a match, and that's why I laboured the point about how "grey" the decision-making process can be earlier in this post.  The end result is that people who watch matches can make the logic mistake of working backwards.  They then interpret their observations to fit their theory, and of course their desired theory is that their team must win!  

It's a lot like bent science, in fact, in that you start out with the finding already "known" (in a fan's mind, there is only one team that can win - they "know" the result before the match!).  Then you have a series of "experiments", also known as the tackle situation, where the outcome of each must be known too.  The entire match is an observed experiment, and unwittingly, people mix emotion with interpretation and they will come up with accusations of bias because their observation will always fit their model.  This is the danger of looking for proof of what you already believe, because you will always succeed at finding it!

Don't trust the passionate perception

I made this mistake myself when working with the Sevens team.  Every single decision was "wrong" as long as it went against our team!  Such is the desire to win, that I stood on the sidelines and could not believe that a penalty should not be awarded to us.  We lose the ball, it could only be because the other team cheated, and the referee missed it!  

Only in the cold light of day, often the next morning, sitting in the hotel lobby, did I have the opportunity to review the match, sometimes to talk to the referee and he would explain what he was seeing as he made the call, and then it became much clearer to me that what was "obvious" to me was in fact "obvious" in exactly the other direction!  I was wrong, pure and simple.  But at the time I could not see that I was looking at it incorrectly.  I learned to have a deep mistrust of my own perceptions in those emotional, stressful situations, and learned instead to wait, hold the opinion and rather decide when removed from the passion and emotion.  It was a valuable lesson.  

Sometimes, of course, the referees did make mistakes - more than once, I still believe we were wrongly judged and that it cost matches.  Sometimes, referees even admitted it, and apologized.  But we have also been the beneficiaries of the decisions, and that's the result of rugby's tackle rule.  It certainly needs to be fixed, but this was a difficult lesson to learn, but an important one.

The reality is that fans need to step away from the emotion, and if they did, they may, in the case of South Africa anyway, recognize a few other reasons why it was New Zealand, and not us, lifting that trophy in Auckland yesterday.

The solution - analysis and a scorecard

As for the solution, my bias as a scientist is to measure and analyse, so that's where I'd look for rugby's problem.   And transparency would help - no one really knows what the IRB does with referees - they are accused of being a "protected species", which may not necessarily be a bad thing, but I do feel that some more open discussion would help.  At the moment, it's all left to the media, and in this day and age, the "media" now includes social networking, and so the public WILL have their say, and they are rarely going to be diplomatic in the absence of information.  Rather control the perception by making some information available  (it's a lot like the Caster Semenya case - the secrecy around her testing and treatment only fueled the flames and allowed people to make up the "truth".  And that version is always worse than the real truth).

And for rugby, the solution to me is that the performance of referees needs to be evaluated more transparently.  A panel of independent officials could analyze matches, producing a report on the match.  This report could analyze every single one of the 200 decisions a referee has to make in a match.  How many of the 200 were incorrect?  20? 30?  And of those 30, how many were clear, conclusive errors, and how many were interpretive calls?  One has to build in this human interpretation element, because it would be wrong to think that one can accurately judge off TV when the referee is 5m away from the decision he is making.

And of those conclusive errors, do they favor one team?  If you find for example that 30 decisions out of 200 are wrong, and 90% of them go against one team, then you have some weight behind accusations of bias or fixing.  But until that kind of evaluation is done, people speculate, and speculation is almost always worse than the truth.

Especially when the passions of die-hard fans are involved.  Just ask any referee...

Ross

Two doping cases: Exonerated vs punished. Fair or foul?

Springbok rugby players and a cycling champion: Why some are exonerated fairly and others punished unfairly

Yesterday, a reader sent me a link for an article from the Telegraph newspaper, titled "Rugby Union players are exonerated while cyclists take the blame.  How is that fair?"  Ordinarily, articles from the Telegraph are thought-provoking, accurate and praise-worthy.  This was not one of them.

The article concerns the recent one-year suspension handed to Alberto Contador, and the exoneration of two Springbok rugby players, Chiliboy Ralepele and Bjorn Basson, for a failed doping control in November last year.  It asks how one can be suspended for a year, while the others are exonerated with no blame at all.  The conclusion of the article is that rugby is in denial about its doping problem, while cycling is taking the fight to doping (as I said, the writer, Brendan Gallagher, clearly doesn't follow cycling very closely...).

As an aside, isn't it curious that not a single cyclist who has ever spoken out about doping, or made a confession, or blown the whistle, has been welcomed by the UCI?  Every single one of them is a bitter, malicious liar.  One would think that a sport serious to clean up, taking the fight to dopers, would pay attention to the confessions of its own riders...

However, the issue and the question raised by the journalist, who needed to do some homework on both cases before painting the rugby players with the same brush as Contador, still invites some interesting debate.  How is the exoneration of the players in one case fair, while the 1-year suspension in another case is being criticized as too lenient?  It boils down to the science, the law and also the issue of full responsibility of the athletes for doping.  Here are the 'facts' (as much as one can use that word in the anti-doping argument!)

Same defence, but with big differences

The biggest error (the fundamental error, in effect), comes at the outset of the article, when Gallagher writes "Their defences are essentially the same".

Perhaps to an outsider who has done little to peel away the first reaction to a positive drugs tests, the defences are the same.  But once you look a little more closely, then you that see a great deal was different.  And those differences make for an interesting talking point in the anti-doping battle.

Let's recap - 2010 brought two "surprise" positive doping tests.  First Alberto Contador, cycling's current champion, was informed of a positive test for clenbuterol, a beta-2-agonist.  His samples in the Tour de France contained minuscule amounts of the drug, but that was irrelevant - it's not a threshold drug, which means that unlike testosterone, it doesn't need to be present in a specific amount to constitute doping.  ANY clenbuterol is a failed dope test.

The two South African rugby players, Chiliboy Ralepele and Bjorn Basson, were tested after South Africa's match against Wales in November.  In their case, it was methylhexanamine, a banned stimulant, and also a drug whose presence is a positive test, regardless of its level.  So far, the cases are similar.

The initial reaction:  It got in by accident

The initial reaction was also similar.  For Contador, the issue seems to have been swept under the carpet for as long as possible, and only a tenacious media forced Contador into a statement.  That statement, I guess predictably, was along the lines of "I am innocent, this has been a mistake, I will fight to clear my name".  In no time (perhaps thanks to the forewarning provided by the virtuous and kind UCI, who are serious about doping control), Contador had his defence prepared - contaminated beef.  A legal document by Douwe de Boer was released, giving examples of the same thing in previous cases.  The Spanish farming community didn't buy it, and of course, Contador's cow was long gone, but his defence essentially argued that he was a victim of contamination.

For South Africa's rugby players, the reaction was similar - surprise and strong denial of cheating.  In this case, the fact that it was a stimulant that had already been responsible for dozens of positive results in 2010 was a clue to where the source might have been - contaminated supplements.  And so the focus was immediately placed on all the team's supplements and medical products.

Also, the substance, methylhexanamine, had been identified as a problem drug, and was to be reclassified as a "specified substance" by WADA, which was essentially an admission that this drug could easily be taken inadvertently.

That realization is the first difference - no such recognition exists for clenbuterol.

Finding the contaminant - the vital difference

The second and most important difference is that on hearing of the rugby positives, SA Rugby called for all supplements and medicines to be returned to South Africa immediately.  Here, they were tested, and sure enough, methylhexanamine was found in a USN supplement that the players had been using.  But there's more - that supplement had been declared "safe" by the manufacturer, who gave assurances of quality control and a certificate that 'guaranteed' that it did not contain any banned substances.

The point is that the rugby players took every precaution - they not only used a supplement that wasn't supposed to contain banned supplements, they also did as much as could be done to ensure that contamination was not possible.  The fact that it was, is an indictment on the supplement industry, for whom "quality control" is non-existent (at least, in SA), and not on the players.

In the cycling case, to quote Bonnie Ford, "Contador's cow has gone off to greener pastures".  Therefore, there was no way to prove the source.  Instead, all the evidence pointed at how UNLIKELY it was for the clenbuterol to come from contaminated Spanish beef.  Certainly, the farming community were none too pleased with the accusation.  Add to this the fact that an expert from Montreal suggested that the low levels in Contador's system are in keeping with how the drug is used for doping, and not what is seen in contamination cases, and you have a defence that is stretching the realms of possibility.  Indeed, even in Contador's own defence report, the previous cases of clenbuterol contamination were usually "poisonings" that caused some nasty side effects with very high levels of clenbuterol in the body.

And then finally, not a single team-mate tested positive for the same thing.  Not too surprising, of course, since they didn't all eat it and weren't tested like Contador was.  Had an Astana team-mate been tested, it might have made a massive difference to his defence.  That was true for the rugby players - the way professional rugby works, two players per team are chosen for doping control at each match, and the fact that the chosen two (out of 22) were positive for the same substance actually strengthens the case that they were taking something inadvertently.  I dare say many others might have been tested positive had they been picked out.

The media here in South Africa were quick to condemn the doping problem, and the players were labeled as cheats.  One prominent anti-doping figure in SA proclaimed that they should receive two-year bans instantly, then quickly back-pedalled when it became quite clear that the team, and the players, had done everything possible to avoid ingesting a stimulant, but had been let down by the system.

The fact that the supplement could so easily be identified meant their defence was credible.  Contador's meanwhile, was unprovable and only marginally plausible.  Again, to quote Bonnie Ford, "There's no out clause saying you get a reduced suspension just because no one can figure out precisely how the substance got into your body."

Why the reliance on the smoking gun is futile in the anti-doping battle

The end result is that exoneration was 100% correct.  That's not to say that rugby doesn't have a doping problem.  I'm convinced it does, and I am sure that it exists right down to the school boy level.  But to suggest double-standards based on this case is a failure of common sense, and also ignorance of the law.  The law allows for leniency or pardons when the athlete can prove (and finding a tub of powder that contains the stimulant despite a certificate that says it doesn't is strong proof) that they didn't cheat. Failing to prove it, the law allows for a 2-year ban.  Not a "proposal" for a one-year suspension.

So Gallagher and the Telegraph should be saving their ire and criticism for cycling, who from afar seem to be doing what they can to stamp out their doping problem ("What doping problem?", ask the UCI).  But as I have maintained for a while, the media, the sponsors, some teams, and independent experts and agencies are the ones driving the 'crusade' to clean up the sport, and the UCI, much against their will, are being dragged along with it.

The continued search for the "smoking gun":  Rather bury your head in the sand

The final interesting aspect of the rugby vs cycling case debate is that doping control is becoming less and less about the "magical" drugs tests and doping controls after races or matches, and more and more an accumulation of evidence that is presented before a judge or jury, the way any other court proceeding is handled.  Right now, for example, many of the biological passport cases are being heard, and both sides are using experts who present why a cyclist should or should not be sanctioned based on their blood profiles.  That kind of court case is the future of anti-doping, because as we have seen, a positive test is rarely simply accepted, and a negative test means, well, next to nothing.

This is why when people jump to the defence of an athlete saying "they never tested positive", they are showing deliberate ignorance of the reality of anti-doping, which is that we cannot rely simply on a test and the insistence that we'll find a smoking gun.  As mentioned before, doping somehow requires that this smoking gun, a video of the 'crime' and a confession exist in order for people to finally admit, "Yes, that athlete doped".  People are sentenced on far less than this outside of doping, and that's the direction anti-doping is going, and must go in order to make inroads against what seems to be a massive, systemic problem (at UCI level, team level, and if history and the SI article are believed, national level.

Look at ALL the evidence, and sometimes, you'll find that players should be fully exonerated (even apologized to) despite failing a doping test.  Other times, athletes should be found guilty and banned despite never failing a test.  Common sense, some would call it...

Ross

The Science of Rugby

The Science of Rugby:

Articles of interest and the revisiting the role of science in sports performance

We're building up to the big London Marathon weekend, which has thankfully come one week after the Iceland Volcano and so most of the big names will line up in London on Sunday.  As always, we've got the race covered - a preview tomorrow, then in-race coverage and splits, and the post-race analysis, so join us for that in the coming days!

For now, I have been putting off a post on the science of rugby for a while, but tonight I was an invited guest on a weekly South African TV show called Boots and All (Hollywood next week - my agent will be taking future bookings!  Just kidding!), and the topic of conversation was rugby and the science of performance.  The site got mentioned on the show, and so partly out of necessity (for those who now visit it looking for rugby pieces), but also out of a desire to post on this topic, below are the links to some interesting articles that those of you who follow the sport may enjoy. For those who don't know the sport, it's the newest (along with golf) Olympic sport (in the form of Sevens rugby) and well worth watching and enjoying if you haven't already!  I'm sure I'll post on it in the future!

The articles - rugby through science's lens

So below are links to the four articles I have written so far - I was commissioned to write these as part of Powerade's sponsorship of the Super 14 tournament, which is the biggest tournament in the Southern Hemisphere, and arguably the toughest rugby tournament in the world.  In terms of playing intensity, level of competition, depth of competition, you'd be hard pressed to find this level of play anywhere else in the world.  Add to this time-zone travel, jet-lag, and playing matches at altitude, and you have an incredibly tough tournament.

• The physiological demands of rugby - how far do they run, how often do they tackle, how much energy, and what intensity is the game played at?
• Rugby and altitude - when should teams aim to arrive for altitude matches?
• Injuries in rugby - how often are players injured, when they are injured, and how seriously?
• Possession is not everything - why rugby has been a sport where the team with the ball is LESS likely to win

Answering the question vs explaining the answer?  The true value of science

And finally, related to the above pieces and the topic of sports science in general, I have a philosophical thought regarding the application of science to rugby, and any sport, for that matter.  Regular readers will know that a big focus here on this site is the role of science in improving sports performance.  There are coaches who don't see the value of the science, and there are coaches who embrace it.

My personal and professional battle in the last few years, in the South African sporting landscape, has been to promote the value of the science, to help people realise what it can do to improve sports performances, because in SA at least, it has largely been under-valued.

And what has gradually dawned on me, particularly as a result of some fascinating discussions in the last two days (thank you Jimmy and Clinton) is that a big part of the problem is that the science itself has not communicated the value to the coaches.  Instead, what has happened is that science has tended to explain the answers, rather than answering the questions.

So what often happens is that science arrives too late to the 'party', and then produces research that only serves to explain the mechanisms behind what is already known.  The coach, who typically spends 8 waking hours a day (and probably a good few hours in their sleep) thinking about the sport, has often figured out the answer long in advance of the scientist arriving to tell them what they need to do.  This kind of science is still valuable, of course, and there is enormous value in both understanding mechanisms and validating current methods and practices, but it often makes the science seem "out-of-touch".

The coach is less interested in looking back and proving himself correct than he is on finding the advantage moving forward, and so this kind of science is often dismissed as unhelpful. When the science is too forceful, and fails to appreciate this, it even creates hostility - the "who are you to tell me what I've known for five years?" syndrome.  Good science, at least from a coach's point of view in high performance sport, is science that answers a very specific question and allows the coach/athlete to make changes in advance of failure or a negative outcome.  It is prescriptive rather than reflective.

The way to achieve this is to have coaches and science working intimately with one another, so that the science is "coach-driven" to answer specific questions that he/she may have regarding player preparation, strategy, match tactics, injury rehabilitation, environmental management (heat, cold or altitude, for example) and ergogenic aids to performance.  If the science is not "immersed" in the team environment, and not driven by the central character, the coach, then the likelihood of it adding value is greatly reduced.   

I have said many times, and repeat it here - the value in science is NOT the content, but the process by which new things are discovered.  In other words, the scientist is not there simply to contribute specific knowledge on energy, heart rate, muscle injuries and so forth.  This is important, certainly, but the real value comes from implementing a "hypothesis-driven" approach, and then embarking on a process that produces deeper understanding of what would otherwise remain intangible and unknown.

In elite sport today, where the margins between winning and losing are so tiny, the purpose of science, in my opinion, is to instill a culture of measurement, monitoring and hypothesis testing at every level of player preparation and performance.  You cannot manage what you don't measure is one adage, and science is there to help measure and manage the right things.  In doing this, it could help the coach, his support staff and the player find 1% improvements in five different areas.  If that happens, the result may be a 3-5% improvement, and a completely different outcome.

The articles I've linked to above are not intended to provide those answers.  They are more of the "explaining answers" type of science, but their intent was to give a new perspective on the sport of rugby.  If they stimulate discussion and force you to ask another question, to challenge a finding, then you've understood the value of science, and you've taken the first step towards understanding how science helps performance, because the answers to your questions, and the questions they generate, will ultimately help to inform decision-making.

Ross

Easter Weekend musings

Two Oceans, two extra-ordinary marathons, two tournaments to go

If it's Easter weekend, then it must be the Two Oceans Marathon. For those not in the know, the Two Oceans Marathon is one of South Africa's biggest running events, a 56 km ultra-marathon and a half-marathon around the Cape Peninsula. You can read my post about the race from last year here, including a profile of the course, and some comments. I won't do the same this year, other than to say we're in for a beautiful autumn day, perhaps a little warm for super-fast times, but a good day out for most.

The race has been dominated by Zimbabweans for the last few years, defending champion Marcus Mambo going for a fourth win. The Zimbabwean runners flood south over the border to claim what is, in their terms, enormous prize money (R150,000 for the winner, or about $15,000), and have had the better of the locals for a long time. Added to this is the fact that they don't race as much as our athletes do, and the combination of incentive and preparation is usually enough to relegate local runners to the minor placings.

Compared to international marathons, Oceans is a "minor" race, however, with regards to prize money. Consider that the big marathons offer six figures (dollar amounts) appearance fees plus prize money and you see what we're up against. For SA, the problem is exchange rates as well - a weak currency compared to the dollar, pound and euro. Many people have in the past said that the Kenyans will one day come down here and dominate as well, but given that a second level Kenyan can make twice as much money winning a B-level marathon in Europe, that's unlikely.

I'll be commentating this year's race for the local television broadcast, which should be fun. I am on-board as a 'technical' analyst, so I'll be brought in to discuss, among other things, performance limits, causes of fatigue, hydration and fuel strategies, and other physiology issues that might (hopefully) add a bit of value for the viewers. I'm looking forward to it, we'll have to see how it goes.

The marathon world looks back to days of old

Meanwhile, while South Africans are basking the glory of "fast" 2:18 marathon times (seriously, the media are reporting that the top local MALE runners are in great shape because they ran 2:18 marathons recently), the rest of world is now racing competitively at sub-2:05 pace!

Last weekend, in a momentous day for marathon running, 13 Kenyan men broke 2:09 on a single day (only 6 Americans have ever done it, according to LetsRun.com). The Paris Marathon saw 11 sub-2:09 clockings, a record for a single race, with a winning time of 2:05:47. The Rotterdam Marathon, while not as deep, was even more spectacular, with two men running 2:04:27.

That's right, a sprint for the line, and a victory margin of less than a second in a marathon run in 2:04:27. Duncan Kibet and James Kwambai were 1 and 2, and they ran the third and fourth fastest marathons in history that day.

It was, for marathon running, a definitive statement that a new era has arrived. A lot of people, including a coach on the LetsRun.com boards, are proclaiming that this was a weekend that changed the marathon world, the start of a new era. A revolution, certainly, but it is a change that started a long time ago. And so it is not so much that we are seeing a new era, it's just that the era which began three or four years ago is now so obvious that it's starting to punch us between the eyes.

Looking back, Rotterdam and Paris were spectacular, but predictable. It's easy to look back in hindsight, but the ripple effect of what happened on the track in the 1990s, driven by Gebrselassie, was bound to reach the marathon (once again, it was Geb who has played a key role). It is actually not dissimilar to what happened in the 5,000m event in the mid-1990s. In 1994, the world record stood at 12:58 (Said Aouita). That year, Gebrselassie broke his record for the first time, taking it down to 12:56. Moses Kiptanui "borrowed" it in early 1995, before Gebrselassie produced what might be one of the greatest runs of all time, to take almost 11 seconds off the record when he ran 12:44.39 in Zurich.

What happened next is that the rest of the world was "pulled" into faster times. Where before 1995, it was remarkable to break 13 minutes, it suddenly became commonplace. Sub 12:50 was the new standard, and by 1997, Gebrselassie's "untouchable" world record had fallen to Daniel Komen, and easily half a dozen men were running 12:50 times each year.

The same has now happened in the marathon. One year ago, only one man had ever run under 2:05. Last weekend, four men did it on one day (once again, credit to LetsRun for the stat). Yet the signs were there. Elite half marathons that are NOT won in sub-60 minutes are now deemed "SLOW", because so many men are running 59-something for that distance. Gebrselassie, Tergat and other men with 59-credentials are translating that speed (and their obvious track speed) into 2:04 marathons, and the rest of the world is following suit. To me, the key moment came in 2003, when Paul Tergat and Sammy Korir raced to a world record of 2:04:55 in Berlin. That was the start of the current era, in my opinion, and Kibet and Kwambai are the next step in the evolution of the race, the steps now being taken more and more frequently.

Added to this, the huge money on offer provides an enormous incentive (as for the Zimbabweans in Two Oceans, though it's all relative), and the rest, as they say, is history and a race for 2:04:27 "photo finish" in the marathon.

Best of all, there are still two big marathons to go. First is Boston, which probably won't produce those kinds of times thanks to the tougher course, but should give us a great race between American favourite Ryan Hall (who is apparently in awesome training shape) and defending champion Robert Cheruiyot, who won last year's race in brutal, dominant fashion.

Then the week after is the big one - London. Last year, London produced six sub-2:07 clockings, which is a record that was matched in Paris last weekend. This year's London race promises to be even better - Lel vs Wanjiru vs Goumri vs Gharib vs Tadese. There are world champions, Olympic Champions, World Series Champions, debutants with magnificent half-marathon credentials. It promises to be an extra-ordinary race.

Closer to the time, for both Boston and London, we'll recap our analysis from last year and look forward. And then obviously, on race day, I'll be doing my "real time" splits and race commentary, as has become custom here at The Science of Sport.

Sevens rugby: Two to go, as we near the end of the season

Finally, it would be remiss of me not to mention the Sevens Tournament in Adelaide, seeing as how I've been updating you on the tournaments in Dubai and Hong Kong.

We won Adelaide (huge celebrations), and are now within striking distance of claiming the overall World Series title. That was of course the big goal for the year and so we approach that with the chance to wrap it up in London at the end of May (followed by Edinburgh a week later).

The Adelaide tournament was really just a war of attrition. It was the 5th tournament in 9 weeks, and came only a week after a tough Hong Kong tournament. Players were battered, bruised and fatigued, and it was always going to be a survival of the fittest contest.

In the end, I have little doubt that we won because of superior fitness, for which the coaching staff and fitness and conditioning staff (Allan Temple-Jones, to be specific) must take a bow. We had injuries, as did the other teams, but our intensity remained closer to normal than anyone else's throughout both Hong Kong and Adelaide, and that made a difference, along with the other changes made after the Dubai trip.

So a successful trip, with one to go, which I'll hopefully report good news on in due course!

Enjoy Easter, have a wonderful break, and join us for more next week!

Ross

Dubai Rugby World Cup 7s

Dubai Rugby World Cup. The World Champions are Wales

Well, it's now been the longest break between posts since we started this site almost two years ago - my profuse apologies.

As you may have read two weeks ago, I was in Dubai with the South African rugby team for the Sevens World Cup, and I found very little time or energy to write anything. So our series on aging was suspended (but not forgotten!) as was the debate about doping in sport (much to the pleasure of some, I am sure).

For today, I'm going to indulge myself in something of a "diary" post about the trip in Dubai, mostly because I need to get some things off my chest and gain some clarity of my own thoughts of that tournament, which was, to put it mildly, an enormous disappointment. It's a post that mixes sports science, management and my own personal reflections on my involvement with the team, and hopefully, some lessons that might be applicable to all sports.

Wales: Rugby 7s world champions

The appropriate starting point is to state that the World Champions for the next four years are not South Africa (the reason for my disappointment), not England (the joint number 1 in the rankings), not New Zealand (the historically dominant nation), not Fiji, not Samoa, not Argentina, but Wales.

The odds on Wales winning this tournament must have been astronomical. Ranked only 11th coming in, the Welsh exceeded all expectations and deserve credit for finding form and great rugby when it mattered. The big four all fell in consecutive matches in what must be one of the most astonishing sequences of upsets in all of sport - four matches, four favourites gone and the semi-final line up was a one in a million chance. Wales emerged World Champions, and congratulations to them.

South Africa - lost opportunities

As for my team, we fell at the quarter-final stage, beaten 14-12 by Argentina. As is always the case after defeat, post-mortem analysis is easy, and playing the blame-game is a routine that is done by everyone without much effect. The post-mortem often limits itself to on-field action and misses out what may be even more important than what happens off it.

On the field, knock-ons, missed tackles, refereeing decisions, lazy defence, ill discipline, kicking inaccuracies, lack of concentration - the list of possible reasons goes on, because in defeat, finding reasons is always relatively easy, no matter what the situation or even sport. However, the list may well be justified in our case, and we were incredibly disappointed in the manner of the defeat. It is a practice common to all sports, and any fan reading this can relate to how agonizing those defining moments can be when they don't go your way.

The real answers lie off the field

For South Africa, defeat came after going into a 12-0 lead, and looking completely dominant for most of the game. In sport, leads do slip and teams come from behind often. But when the same error occurs not once or twice but five times in the space of a few months, then it is a symptom of something else. That has happened to us in three consecutive tournaments, and I must acknowledge part of the blame for that. On-field performance and execution is part of this, but victories are secured not on the field, but off it, in the preparation and build up phase, thanks to the discipline of management and players.

That's where the answers need to be sought, but they are much more difficult to find, and it is easier to simply point to moments in the match that contributed to the result. Certainly, that is true, and but for perhaps three or four things that happened in the game, we would have won the match and at least given ourselves a chance of winning the World title. This is again true for any sport - moments swing matches, and "if only" is the most over-used yet ineffective review of matches. Dwelling on match performances, however, is to ignore that 99% of the effort goes on behind the scenes, in training and between tournaments, and so that's where we need to be looking for answers.

Sports science and my personal role

And here is where it is personal for me. My role with the team is that of scientific consultant and strategic advisor to the coach Paul Treu. It would be accurate to say that I'm in charge of details, finding the final 1% to add to the players' preparation and motivation to ensure that we take the field with the advantage. As many of you will know, I am firmly of the belief that sports science is not simply a VO2max and heart rate, but the integrated approach to athlete preparation.

I have written before that when an athlete takes to the line or the field, they must believe that they have done 99% of the work in training, and that the final 1% lies before them. The team that has prepared the best (99% as opposed to 90%) has the advantage. If you have done more than the opponent in training, then he needs to do more than you to win - you hold the advantage, both physically and mentally. I believe that sports science is the quest for those percentages, or millimeters, or milliseconds. It asks "What stones remain unturned, and how do we overturn them"? That is comprehensive, integrated sports science and management.

As a result of my PhD work, my personal interest lies in the role of the brain in performance, and an extension of this is an interest in the mental component to performance. I'm not a psychologist, nor do I wish to be, because I believe that the role of the mind is very much physiological. But in my role with the Sevens team, I've done a fair amount on the mental approach to training and matches, because it's impossible to separate this from the physical. "Mind over matter" is bogus, because they're the same thing.

Before the tournament, I spoke to the players about the "moments" that define them. There are ten key moments, I said, that determine the outcome of the game. We must aim to win at least six of them. But because so much of the result happens off the field, this means that we fight for every millimeter in training, every percentage in practice, so that on the field, those moments go our way. We also find these millimeters in our culture, our way of thinking off the field.

In the end, we lost all those moments. We succeeded at neither controlling what we could, or taking the chances we had.

So to lose a 12 point lead three times in three tournaments, to fail as a result of what is most definitely not a physical/fitness problem is a reflection on me, and just as I would expect every player to look first at themselves, I hold up my hand in acknolwedgement that I failed. I failed, and hence the team failed. I dare say many of our players probably did not even recognize my role or purpose with the team during the week, so spectacular was MY failure. When outcomes are determined by millimeters, I missed the mark by meters.

Now, every single player needs to do the same - "I failed, and in future, if I am to return to winning (because SA is the number 1 ranked team in the world, we are winners), then I need to look very, very hard at HOW I do things. And if I cannot do them better, then I am accepting failure, and have decided that I will remain a loser for the rest of the year". The player who does not seek improvement in defeat will remain defeated. Acknowledging failure is not being overly hard on yourself, it's being realistic and realizing that where you stand currently is not good enough to win. If you wish to win, you must move. And to move, you must work and improve.

That is fundamental to self-improvement in sport. If you are not challenging yourself to improve, then you will regress. This is the theory of overload and adaptation in physiology. If you wish to strengthen a muscle, you must acknowledge its relative weakness and then train it. If you wish to strengthen a sporting team's performance, you must acknowledge the weakness or failure, and then aim to be better. Accepting the status quo, especially in a competitive environment like the World Cup, means you go backwards.

And my impression is that most sports people and even sports scientists do not appreciate this ethos. And again, I submit myself as one culprit, with an admission of guilt and acknowledgment of failure. If the Springbok Sevens rugby team are to improve, I must improve. Hopefully, the players are adopting the same attitude, and will seek to improve ahead of the next tournament in Hong Kong (where I will also be, hopefully seeking a personal redemption for my failures of Dubai).

Accepting mediocrity is too easy

The other great lesson for me is that it's very easy to accept mediocrity. This was a tournament that comes once every four years. And while it's a odd tournament, because of its position in the calender and the other rugby going on, it's still a World Cup, and the opportunity to be a World Champion, which only arrives once in a lifetime for a select few.

As result, defeat should mean a great deal, for it represents the end of a four-year dream, with the possibility of never again returning to the same opportunities. However, having been on the receiving end of defeat, and feeling that disappointment, it becomes very easy to accept and rationalize it and resume with life as though "it's not that bad". Celebrate in the face of defeat, "it's not so bad after all". But I am grateful for the small things that remind me of the failure in Dubai:

• Returning empty-handed to an empty hotel room, that only 12 hours before, I had left with aspirations of returning as part of the World Champion team
• Queuing in an airport at 5.30 in the morning after the final, with no sleep and nothing to show for exhaustion other than a weak justification of why Wales, and not SA, were world champions
• Arriving home to an airport in South Africa to be met by families and friends who offer words of consolation, when it might have been an army of thousands to welcome back the world champions
• The knowledge that in 2013, I may watch the next World Cup and remember back to the moment that got away, when it might have been a celebration of a moment that was taken
  

These are the moments that sting and bring me back to the realization that Dubai 2009 was failure, both for me personally and for the team. I just hope that the players feel it as deeply. If they do not, then they have accepted mediocrity and failure. I dare say that the driving force behind the great sporting dynasties of the past is their love of victory and the absolute contempt they have for defeat. If you start to accept defeat, then you guarantee it in the future. Let's hope the Springbok Sevens team burn deeply as a result.

The bottom line - preparation is the entry point, and attitude is the key

I know this post is a personal testimony, mostly to get off my chest my own disappointments in Dubai. It is also a commentary on high performance sport, and maybe some insight for some of you into what it is like in elite competition, where the stakes are high and pressure is intense. It needn't be limited to that though.

And so whether you're an aspirational World Champion, or a weekend superstar or simply a fitness enthusiast, hopefully this post has stimulated some thought into what it is that you may be missing in your own exercise habits. The key point is that preparation does not simply involve hours a day of training to strengthen the muscles and heart, it is a culture of belief that the training brings you nearer to the finish line, so that by the time you start, whether it's a marathon or a 10km race, you've done the work. Your attitude determines your preparation, and preparation determines your outcome.

And if you are not hard on yourself, then you never leave the ground.

Ross

Doping, management and inquisitions

A-Rod hits the bottom, Sevens Rugby hits the USA and Carl Lewis hits out at track and field

It's been a pretty controversial last 48 hours for US sport, with the revelations that Alex Rodriguez, the owner of baseball's richest ever contract ($275 million over 10 years with the Yankees) has admitted to using steroids during a period from 2001 to 2003. It means that one of baseball's great heros is now tainted with the same brush that has affected McGwire, Bonds, Sosa, Clemens and dozens of others, with the prospect of another 104 names to be released in the next few days.

All in all, baseball's credibility is fast disappearing, as can be seen by the headlines in the papers in response to A-Rod's confession: "A-roid", "Cheat", "Deception" are some of the common words. The strange thing about this is that Rodriguez is breaking the mould somewhat by confessing (having initially denied it, accordingto the script these guys read from). Some commentators have suggested that by confessiong, Rodriguez will escape the same kind of fallout that has affected McGwire and Bonds (who is facing jail-time). Honesty will see him rise above this, they say.

I don't believe him. I have watched the interview with Peter Gammons of ESPN, and it seems to me that he is playing what has now become the classic game of admitting to part, but not all of the allegations, once you've been caught red-handed. It's a case of say something to pacify the wolves at your door, but say only enough to keep them quiet. Marion Jones turned this deception into an art form when she admitted to doping but thinking in was flaxseed oil. A-Rod seems, to me at least, to be taking a similar approach. "To be quite honest I don't know exactly what substance I was guilty of using" were his words in response to the question about which substances he had used.

It seems to me, based on numerous cases in the last few years, that elite athletes are capable of lying without the slightest sign of deception. Rodriguez himself outright denied steroid use in 2007 in a 60 Minutes interview with Katie Couric. "I've never felt overmatched on the baseball field. I've always been a very strong, dominant position. And I felt that if I did my work since I was, you know, a rookie back in Seattle, I didn't have a problem competing at any level. So, no." His justification was at least original, convincing himself that he was worthy of his place among baseball's stars without steroids.

However, hindsight betrays his deception, and renders that apparently sincere answer a complete farce. The problem, then, for any newly-confessed doper, is that having weaved complex lies before, they now expect to be believed for their honesty? Perhaps I'm less trusting than most, but it feels as though we've heard "Wolf" too often and so Rodriguez's latest interview "confession" doesn't work for me.

Interestingly, his performances during his doping years (assuming we believe that he suddenly stopped doping, despite having some of the best success of his career, and moving to the Yankees where the pressure would be even greater than it was in Texas) were quite a bit better than in the other ten years of his career. According to ESPN, he hit 52 Home-runs a season while using steroids compared to 39.2 without, and 131.7 RBI per season compared to 119 when not using steroids. More detailed statistics would be insightful, perhaps they'll materialize in coming days.

All in all, I feel there's more to come, particularly for baseball. Perhaps A-Rod, by virtue of the "wholesome" interview he gave, will be passed over, and certainly, he has avoided the fate of Barry Bonds. But he's the latest in a long line of "symptoms" for baseball, though the underlying cause remains untreated (and is perhaps untreatable).

Sevens Rugby: A game and a website worth checking

On a more positive note (uplifting, that is, not doping positive), if you're a fan of Sevens rugby, then you'll appreciate the qualities of the game. Even if you're not a fan of rugby, Sevens brings a dimension to the sport that attracts the "non-purists", which is its most valuable (and potentially profitable) quality. The game has taken off in the smaller nations, because it gives them an opportunity to match the traditional powerhouses far more than would be the case in the 15-man version of the game.

Just this past weekend in Wellington, the USA beat Fiji, Wales beat New Zealand, Argentina beat England and Kenya beat South Africa. Such upsets are relatively common, and highlight the growth and relative competitive balance in the game. That competitive balance does not exist in the 15-man game, where the outcome of all but about six possible matches is known before the kickoff.

What will be interesting in the future is whether the game grows faster than the 15-man game, particularly in the lucrative Gulf region. You'll recall a post we did a month ago looking at how the Gulf region (Abu Dhabi, Qatar, Dubai) have pumped enormous money into bringing sport to the region. The world's richest golf tournaments, marathons, tennis exhibitions, Formula 1 races are but a few of the sports they have attracted. And Sevens rugby, faster, more competitive, and more exciting, looms as a possible "product" for the region. If it were possible, I'd be buying shares in Sevens rugby.

Onto a more personal involvement with Sevens, I've been fortunate enough to have been involved with the SA Sevens Team (currently number 1 in the world rankings, long may it continue) thanks to the vision of Paul Treu, the coach. I'll be going to the World Cup in Dubai in the first week of March, and the Hong Kong Tournament at the end of March.

Paul Treu, the youngest coach on the circuit, is also one of the smartest, and most savvy. He recently started up his own website, to which I contribute from time to time. My latest article can be read here - a commentary on sporting success and failure. For Sevens fans, the site is well worth following.

This week sees the Sevens Series visit the USA, and so if you're in the San Diego area, this is your chance to check out my post first-hand. The action happens at PETCO Park, starting Saturday. It's the last tournament before the World Cup in Dubai, and following on from Wellington, should be a great battle. So if you're in the San Diego area, make a plan to join the 50,000 other expected fans there (and drop us your feedback if you do!).

Track and field in the USA under fire

The Beijing Olympic Games were a low point for US track and field. They came up against an extra-ordinary athlete in Usain Bolt, and short of producing three world records, they were never going to win gold medals anyway. On the women's side, it was more of the same as Jamaica took three of the four sprint medals, Great Britain the other, and the USA claimed only the gold of LaShawn Merritt in the 400m.

To cap it off, both teams dropped the relay baton in the 4 x 100m. In response, the USATF Chief Executive Doug Logan called for the analysis and a nine-person task team led by Carl Lewis got to work. Their report was released yesterday, and among other criticisms, cites excessive travel by athletes, poor planning, a lack of professionalism among athletes, "chaos" in the national organization's relay program and a "culture of mistrust" among athletes and coaches as reasons for the disappointing performances.

So widespread are the reported problems that to enact the recommendations will require bylaw changes. They include the creation of a general manager for the organization's high-performance division; the development and support of high-performance training centers across the nation; shorter Olympic trials; specific criteria for athletes to compete as professionals; a comprehensive plan for winning 30 medals at the 2012 Summer Games; the creation of an organized athletes union; and more stringent standards for reinstatement after doping bans.

Is the criticism justified? As I said upfront, Bolt was never going to be beaten unless the USA managed to produce three world records in the short sprints. The relay failure certainly warrants mention, and the report calls for the termination of an expensive relay development programme. I don't know the ins and outs of this programme, but it seems to me that relay success requires finding four or five very fast sprinters (a separate system), combined with a week's worth of decent practice. No programme required...?

On the note of the trials, there is some physiological justification. As an outsider, the proximity of the US trials, combined with the very 'black and white' criteria for the selection of the team means that the season peak is stretched, possibly beyond what is achievable. This was the same as the swimming debate for the USA, since many of their best swimmers seemed tired by the time they got to Beijing.

The same may have happened to the athletes. To force an athlete to peak for the trials (which they have to do in order to qualify, especially in the sprints) and then to hold that for the Olympics a few months later is a physiological challenge, perhaps an impossible one.

A comparison with South Africa

In terms of the management structures that were so heavily criticized, my interpretation is based on my own experiences here in South Africa. It is interesting that the report's recommendations are very much in line with what was suggested in a report developed for SA sport in 2007. It too called for professionalization, high performance centres, and funding for sports science. Sadly, government have stumbled through implementation and ended up making a bad situation worse, so it's always interesting to read other nation's responses to similar situations.

The problem with strategic recommendations made by these reports is always implementation. Often, the organization charged with executing the strategy will attempt to do so within their current structures. The nature of such reports, however, is transformational, in that they often call for radical overhauls of the existing system and structures. So you have a Catch 22 situation, where the incumbents are asked to overhaul a system they're tightly embedded in, and they inevitably fail. It needs a transformational implementation, which is why execution lets them down. It will be interesting to see if the USA make these changes. South African didn't -the same people tried to execute the new strategy without the required change in support, and so given that they'd steered the sport into the abyss to begin with, they were always going to fail. It was a case of rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

On the note of South Africa...

If the USA felt that they had a poor Olympic Games, consider that South Africa won only one medal in TOTAL. Yet to date, the only sports code that has commissioned an enquiry into what went wrong is swimming. The government blustered and huffed and puffed and did nothing else, other than butcher the proposal they were given thanks to the personal egos and incentives of people within the system who prefer to wallow in mediocrity than to fix the situation. Then, on the other end of the extreme, certain academics and scientists undermined the hope of improvement through their refusal to collaborate with one another out of personal vendettas and, once again, insecurity.

We were inches away from negotiating a collaborative agreement for a sports federation that would have seen the athletes benefit. That was thanks to the vision and security of those in charge of the two respective institutions, who actually dared to collaborate and listen to others. Then a huge ego intervened and expertise was gagged, blacklisted and sidelined. So while the USA has problems with its systems, and hopefully can redeem the situation, if it's any consolation, South Africa will not pose a threat to any of your medal chances in 2012. We are a nation full of world-leaders in their own Universities, people who love to be the king or queen of their own sandpit while the athletes around them suffer thanks to their own inabilities.

Last word goes to Logan, the CEO of US Track and Field:

"Change never comes out of a climate of comfort. This report has and will produce a significant amount of discomfort. . . . At the end of the day, this is the only way this institution will be able to . . . realize its potential."

Ross

Sports news buffet Part 1

Introducing a new series and some sports news

Over the next few days, we'll be starting our first series of 2008 - exercise in the cold. Last year, we did a few series, most of which evolved out of news stories like the Chicago Marathon where the heat affected the race so badly. And the topic of exercise in the cold came up a few times when we did that series, and the subsequent ones on muscle cramp and dehydration. So starting probably early next week, we'll look at some of the physiology of exercising in cold conditions, its impact on performance and practical steps to take when you can't avoid it.

On that note, we've received some great ideas for future posts, things like lactate during exercise, altitude training, exercise and ageing, exercise and weight loss, more on drugs in sport, and we promise to try to get to all of them in good time!

But for today, quite a lot going on in the world of sports, with some interesting angles developing, so we have a bit of a concoction of news stories for today. I've done them in 5 separate posts, so you can jump to whichever might be most interesting and avoid those that aren't!

1. Rugby - SA's first black coach appointed
2. Cricket - the Australia-India row continues
3. Road running - Hicham el Guerrouj - a famous scalp for some runners
4. Cross-country - Bekele to race Tadese twice in Scotland
5. Athletics - verdict on Pistorius due on Saturday

Rugby - South Africa appoints its first black coach

Yesterday, South Africa, the world rugby champions, announced the successor to World Cup winning coach Jake White. It was always a race between two candidates - Heyneke Meyer (who was apparently asked specifically to apply) and Pieter de Villiers.

Eventually, the vote went to Pieter de Villiers. Reports from the SA media are saying that a vote was held to separate a dispute about which of the two should be chosen. It is reported that a split between the selection committee forced the vote, and in the end, it came down to the Inland provinces against the coastal province-representatives.

Apparently, after the decision was reached, the "the inland presidents looked distraught". Just for the record, South African rugby is run by presidents of individual provinces (states), who hold executive control through their vote. These reports suggest that there was something of a stand-off regarding who should coach.

Now that in itself is unremarkable, until you remember that this is South Africa we're dealing with, where rugby is something of a political football, kicked around by politicians and often affected by the spectre of race and history in South Africa.

And far be it from us to comment on the politics, but the following two quotes suggest just what a difficult time de Villiers will face as the coach:

First of all, Oregan Hoskins, the President of SA rugby says the following:

"I want to be honest with South Africa and say that the appointment was not entirely made for rugby reasons. We as an organisation have made the appointment and taken into account the issue of transformation very very seriously when we made it. I don't think that tarnishes Peter - I'm just being honest with our country."

This was followed up the following quote from Butana Kompela, who is famous for calling Australians typical colonial racists and for saying in the media that Jacques Kallis, one of SA's sporting heroes, typifies the racist attitudes of whites in South Africa:

“I want to make it clear that Peter de Villiers is not a transformation appointment. He has been appointed on merit. Rugby is now showing it is an agent for change and it can unite people around the Springboks.”

Well, it seems to me the least you might do is get the story right. Which is it, then? The first problem for de Villiers, rugby matters aside, is that he is clearly entering the job balanced on an unsteady perch high above two opposing parties who see the National team as their own, and wish to use for their own ends.

The second problem is that when the President of the sport says that the decision was not made for rugby reasons, then the public who follow the game immediately recognize that if the top position in rugby is awarded based on non-rugby decisions, then so too future decisions can be expected to be compromised...and therefore, they're in for a bumpy ride.

To date, de Villiers has said the right things for the sport (including that he will pick players on merit, that he's not a transformation pawn, etc.). But the quotes above don't suggest that at all, and I would predict a rough road ahead for SA rugby. Nothing to do with the quality of the coach, but just because he's the rope in a political tug of war, and that can't be good for quality.

Time will tell, let's just hope he makes use of sports science to prepare the team, and we don't revert back to the Camp Staaldrad way of doing things!

Join us next time for the series on exercise in the cold!

Ross

Pistorius decision due

Sports news part 5

In December last year, the IAAF issued a press statement saying that the decision around Pistorius' eligibility to run in Beijing would be made on 10 January. I have since read that the decision is to be delayed until the 12th, to allow Pistorius time to respond to the IAAF's decision.

It's one of the more poorly kept secrets around, since apparently, the lead researcher on the case, Prof Bruggemann, has said that the carbon fibre "Cheetahs" offer a considerable advantage to Pistorius. So it seems the IAAF is preparing for a challenge to the ruling, which is a highly costly affair (the testing they paid for cost between 70,000 and 100,000 dollars), and also, the expertise they had in Prof Bruggemann must rank as the best in the world. Finally, it's been theoretically argued that the limbs would provide the "considerable advantage" that has now been proven, so it's difficult to see what avenues he can pursue.

Now, this is an issue we've covered many times here at The Science of Sport, and we'll certainly wrap it up with analysis when that report is eventually released and we have a final decision.

2008 Preview Part II

Preview of the Olympic track events: Some classic clashes in 2008

Yesterday, we ran through some of the highlights of the upcoming sporting year, including the Olympic Marathons in Beijing, cycling's Tour de France, and some of the other big city marathons in 2008. Today, we continue with some predictions for the Olympic Games track events, and one or two random sporting events that grab my fancy.

The Olympic Track events

There are so many fascinating races and match-ups on the cards for Beijing that it's difficult to know where to begin. I think that closer to the time, we'll have to devote entire posts to each event, but for today, we'll just throw out some of those match-ups, pick our winner (according to our unique Crystal ball) and touch on some of the interesting stories behind the "result". So here we go, men first:

Men's 100m: Tyson Gay vs. Asafa Powell. A familiar story here - Powell will be majestic the whole way through. He'll ease off the throttle in his second round and semi-final race, but still run comfortably under 10 seconds despite coasting the final 20m. But come the final, Tyson Gay will step into the spotlight and Powell will be found wanting. It won't be as easy as Osaka, but Gay will win. His time? 9.82 seconds, to Powell's 9.85 seconds, and Gay bags Olympic Gold. Powell will have to wait until 2009 for his first major title.

Men's 800m: Kenyans vs. Borzakovskiy vs. Mulaudzi. The crystal ball nearly broke when we looked at this event - the strain was just too great. Osaka showed just how unpredictable the event can be, with the big favourites all being upstaged by Alfred Kirwa Yego. Don't expect the same in Beijing. Instead, it's Yuri Borzakovskiy who shows up after a couple of 'anonymous' years to put his finishing kick on the event and defend his title. It should be a worrying sign for the other athletes when a runner with such credentials spends a whole year out of the limelight, because his focus is clearly on Beijing, just as it was before Athens. So back a slow first lap, with a fast finishing Russian to relegate the Kenyans to the minor medals. Quite which Kenyans that will be is anyone's guess (for that matter, they may be running in non-Kenyan vests, with middle Eastern names)

Men's 10000m: Kenenisa Bekele vs. Zersenay Tadese. OK, there are some Kenyans and an Ethiopian (Sileshi Sihine) who will have their say in this race, but I'm really looking forward to this battle. Tadese of Eritrea came of age in 2007 - World Cross Country and Half Marathon champion, and he's shown his credentials on the big stage. No one would question Bekele's credentials, he's a great athlete. But 2007 was a somewhat patchy year for him. Yes, he won the World 10000m title in Osaka (in what I believe was a shaky defence), and he ran some good personal bests in the shorter distances, but he didn't look the part to me. In addition to Mombasa, there were some less than convincing performances, though with nothing at stake in some of them, difficult to say.

And perhaps 2007 was an indication that Bekele has devoted his year to sharpening up his speed (which would be a great move), but if it's more than that, and he comes out in 2008 with anything less than his best form, Tadese will challenge him in Beijing. Tadese, for his part, had a disappointing time in Osaka, but he'll go to Beijing having fixed those problems. And the race between the two will be awesome - Tadese will force the pace early, relying on his Cross country and 21 km strengths, while Bekele will sit and wait for the final 400m. So quite how it will unfold is the most mouth-watering prospect of all. I'm going to go out on a limb here and predict Tadese to surprise and win, but that's more for the sake of controversy, and because I hope it happens! (I'm a big Tadese fan). Deep down, I'm sure Bekele will fix up whatever affected his patchy 2007 year. If he doesn't, money on Tadese will be rewarded!

Men's 5000m: Bekele vs Lagat. OK, so the the fact that we even have Bekele running the 5000m is probably a sign our crystal ball is not infallible. But I'm assuming that Bekele has a 2008 year along the same lines of his 2007, and the focus and strength is seen in the shorter events. Some PB's over 1500m and 3000m will encourage him to try the shorter event. That, and the fact that he won't win the 10000m (work with me on this one!), will see him line up in the 5000m final and beat Lagat in a last lap sprint, but the damage will have been done between 3600 and 4400m, where Bekele will run 58-something laps to break the speed of the 1500m runner. Or at least, that's how he'd need to do it!

Women's 200m: Allyson Felix vs everyone else. No contest here, Felix by a length. She won in Osaka by the biggest margin in Championship history and while the gap should narrow, it's difficult to see anyone bridging it. Felix is the most majestic, elegant runner around at the moment - a sprinter who looks almost fragile but is so smooth and rhythmical. She'll win comfortably. For Felix, though, it's the next event that holds the most interest...

Women's 400m: Sanya Richards vs Christine Ohuruogu vs Allyson Felix. OK, so I'm HOPING AGAINST HOPE that Felix will run the 400m event, ala Marie-Jose Perece in Atlanta and do the double. If she runs, I'm backing her, simply because her 200m speed, combined with her elegance and rhythm equals a fearsome 400m runner. Richards SHOULD be in Beijing - she missed Osaka after a blip in the US trials, but don't expect that to happen again. The world champ, Ohuruogu, has been cleared to run after a little doping scare, but the Olympic gold against the Americans will be too much to ask.

Women's 5000m: Meseret Defar vs. Turinesh Dibaba. Again, we're guessing blind here because there's no guarantee that Dibaba will run the 5000m event. She'll win the 10000m race, with another 60-second final lap, and hopefully (I'm holding my thumbs already), she'll recover enough to take on Defar in the 5000m race too. It's the race everyone wants to see, a race we missed out on in 2007, but remember back to the most epic clashes in track from 2006. So let's hope that both are in form, that both run this race, and that we see the race of the Olympics when they clash. Defar was magnificent in 2007, world records, world titles and untouchable performances. Dibaba can challenge her, but our prediction is that Defar edges it, and that's only because Dibaba has a 10 000m race in her legs (and a gold medal around her neck!)

Other sports: Some random musings from the crystal ball

We tend to neglect the other sports here, not because we're not interested in them, but more because the link between those sports and science is sometimes tenuous at best. However, here are some sports that offer interesting matchups and possibilities for analysis in 2008:

Tennis: Can Federer topple Nadal on the clay of Roland Garros?

The best months of the year for tennis fans are May through to July, when the world focuses first on the red clay of France, and then grass of Wimbledon for the two most interesting Grand Slam tournaments. In 2007, it was Nadal in France, Federer at Wimbledon, in the two most epic matches of the year. Federer is chasing the only Slam to avoid him, but must beat Nadal first. I don't think that 2008 will be the year for it, unless Nadal is injured...

From a sports science point of view, I think that tennis offers some fascinating opportunities for "Game analysis", because in 2007, we saw Federer come out and try to out-hit Nadal on the clay. It was a tactic that was doomed from the start, but Federer seemed determined to beat Nadal at his own game. I think the fascinating research will be to use game analysis to work out how best to construct a point to beat Nadal. It definitely wasn't what Federer tried last year, the clash between the elegant Federer and the brutal Nadal turning into a mismatch as Federer played the game Nadal must have wanted him to. For Federer, the challenge is to figure out what game Nadal DOESN'T want him to play and that's why this clash interests us.

Rubgy - a year of All Black dominance

Now that the World Cup is out the way, things will be back to normal and the All Blacks will dominate...Well, OK, that's a little tongue-in-cheek, but I do expect that the All Blacks will be the team to beat in 2008. Mostly, it's the rule changes that will feed their strengths, and South Africa's game of winning without the ball (subdue and penetrate) will be more difficult to implement successfully. That, and the fact that South Africa will have a new coach and have some internal politics to deal with, will mean the expected building from their RWC triumph will be nulllified. But mostly, from the science point of view, it will be fascinating to see how the rule changes affect the game - we'll hope for more running, more phases and less kicking, which will only be good for the game.

Conclusion

OK, so that is that from the crystal ball. As I said yesterday, I reserve the right to "forget" everything I've written in these last two posts! Just kidding, I do of course predict based on what I believe will happen, but hey, sport is unpredictable and there's no harm in going out on a limb and making wild predictions. The obvious disclaimer at this point is that most of these predictions are likely to be wrong! But it's an interesting means to introduce some of the more interesting stories of 2008 - stories we'll certainly be covering, analysing and dissecting. So do join us before, during and after these events, and we'll do our best to bring the HOW? and WHY? to the WHO? and WHAT?

Next up, incidentally, we'll start on our series-concept again. We're not entirely sure what series that will be. We've definitely lined up series on altitude, lactate and exercise in the cold, so they're on the horizon...

Ross