These are worryingly reassuring times for anyone with a lasting stake in the track and field business. It used to be that all athletes could say that records are there to be broken, but no one can take the medals away. Only now it’s easy to see without looking too far that neither can be considered sacred.
Which of course is not necessarily a bad thing. When a team of Jamaican sprinters lose their Olympic relay gold medals for a doping offence, nine years after the event, who knows what’s coming next? If Russia’s ban from international competition lasts much longer, might they actually decide to play fair again?
And if all other sports were subjected to such levels of retrospective testing, might our wider credibility be restored? Athletics, for better or for worse, is the only sport to impose an all-out ban on Russia, while the rest appear happy to play on as if Grigory Rodchenkov and his secret little keyholes never existed.
Anyone for tennis?
Anyway, against that backdrop also comes this week’s order from the president of European Athletics, Svein Arne Hansen, to review all the existing records in their books, both indoors and outdoors, in order to weed out those not considered “100 per cent believable and credible”.
Heading his seven-member review committee is our own fool-proof athletics statistician Pierce O’Callaghan (as if he wasn’t busy enough already), who has opened the social media floor to suggestions about how to go about this.
Yet therein lies the problem: there will inevitably be near unanimous disagreement on how, or rather why, certain records should be discredited, while others aren’t. And even after certain ones are, does the next best time automatically assume record status?
Longevity alone can’t be the deciding factor, because some of the newer ones, we know, are unquestionably dodgy. Russian athletes currently claim 15 European records, between indoors and outdoors, and those should be discarded into the dustbin of history without further ado.
Clean slate
Others we know belong to the old East German era where doping was equally systematic: Marita Koch’s 47.60 for 400m, for example, has stood as both the European and world record since 1985, and trust me, that may never be broken. Likewise the European and world discuss record of former team-mate Gabriele Reinsch, which has stood since 1988.
The IAAF have so far been reluctant to touch their record books, despite the fact their women’s world records now have a combined age of well over three centuries, many of which will outlive the women who set them: in the case of Florence Griffith-Joyner, her 10.49 for 100m and 21.34 for 200m, both set in 1988, they already have, as she died in 1998, of a sudden epileptic seizure.
The obvious solution is to adopt the “clean slate” policy, not necessarily by wiping out existing records, but simply by starting over, ideally to coincide with a new set of anti-doping rules. O’Callaghan has until September to report back on what, if any, European records should be rewritten, and while it’s all certainly well-intentioned, it’s a risky exercise nonetheless.
Nowhere are some of those risks more obvious than in the current list of Irish records, in both track and field. If longevity alone was used to decide which ones are suspicious and which ones aren’t then most of them would be discarded immediately.
Indeed some of those records are coming up on big anniversaries this year. Ray Flynn’s 1,500m and mile records both turn 35 years old this summer, his 3:33.5 and 3:49.77 set back in July 1982.
Truth is there’s no great hope of those records being broken anytime soon, and Flynn, who actually turned 60 last Sunday (happy birthday Ray), might be very quietly wondering if his records will also outlive him.
Others are similar or even longer standing.
Colm Cronin’s Irish triple jump record of 15.89m will turn 40 this summer, while Declan Hegarty’s hammer record of 77.80 turns 32; Brendan Quinn also ran his 3,000m steeplechase record of 8:27.09 back in 1985, and John Treacy’s marathon record of 2:09:15 turns 29 years old in April.
Those six records alone now have a combined age of over two centuries, and again there’s no great hope of them being broken any time soon.
Increasingly untouchable
There’s almost as many years in the Irish women’s records. Sonia O’Sullivan is largely to blame for that given most of her marks stem from the 1990s, including her 1,500m record of 3:58.85, set in 1995, although there is considerable hope that Ciara Mageean can rewrite that one sooner or later.
Others however are looking increasingly untouchable, such as Catherina McKiernan’s marathon record of 2:22:23, set in 1998, and the seemingly unreachable discus record of 57.60m set by Patricia Walsh in 1984.
There are some exceptions, Thomas Barr single-handedly rewriting the Irish record books last summer, the only worry being his 47.97 for the 400m hurdles in the Rio Olympic final is now so brilliant that he might struggle to break it again anytime soon.
And I still have a nice bet with my dad that Mark English will break the Irish 800m record before very long, the current mark of 1:44.82 still belonging to David Matthews after 22 years.
There is no reason to suggest any of these Irish records are not 100 per cent credible, my only suspicion being the athletes simply trained harder. And even if records are firstly there to be broken and secondly there to provide some aspirations for athletes rising through the ranks, many of these look to stand the test of time.
