|
Dear Mr Robertson,
UK ATHLETICS CHAIRMAN - MR ED WARNER OBE
With reference to your letter to the Rt Hon Theresa Villiers MP dated 22nd August 2012, I presumed that if anyone was to be nominated for an OBE, someone somewhere would be singing that person’s praises. The fact that nobody will admit to nominating Ed Warner brings the entire honours system into disrepute.
Your sports department has continually been shown to have a culture for secrecy. You are now complicit in this lack of transparency and in keeping Team GB’s training methods hidden. These secret’s have resulted in an extraordinary number of medals being won at the 2012 London Olympic Games. Your failure to force UK Sport to publish the progress reports received from UK Athletics casts an enormous shadow over the achievement of every athlete. The athlete’s who have nothing to hide deserve better. Tax payers enabled Mohamed Farah to develop from an athlete who at the age of 25 could not qualify from the heats of the 5,000 metres at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, into a double gold medal winner in 2012. His dramatic improvement only occurred after he left the shores of Great Britain for the USA. It is therefore American training secrets you are protecting, paid for by British tax payers.
Mohamed Farah’s athletics journey is testimony to the damage caused to British athletes by your quango UK Athletics. The employment of Kevin Tyler by UK Athletics and the continued involvement of Dr Ekkart Arbeit, the former East German drugs cheating guru, do nothing to inspire confidence. UK Athletics and UK Sport openly admit to keeping training methods a secret. UK Sport wrote on 31st March 2010 “it is accepted in the world of high performance sport that competitor nations will attempt to find out the sporting performance secrets of other nations who are seen to be successful on the world stage”.
Such warped logic demands that this country’s outstanding youth be forced into the shadows if they want to succeed. Good luck in keeping these concerns out of the public eye, because I am at loss to know how you will defend your position if you are required to do so in the future.
Even more disgraceful, if that is possible, is the question of why Richard Kilty was not selected to represent Great Britain at the 2012 Olympic Games in the 200 metres. He achieved the A qualifying standard twice, and was the only athlete eligible to take the third 200 metres place in the team. Richard Kilty received no public funding. He slept on the floor of a friend to be near his coach. He was even denied access to medical assistance from Team GB, because he was not a funded athlete. Despite this financial hardship, and no thanks to UK Athletics or UK Sport, he earned his place in the team to represent Great Britain in the 200 metres. Instead it was preferred to leave his place in the team blank!
What sort of system, and what sort of people would leave a 22 year old out of the Olympic team under such circumstance? I can only speculate that Richard’s place in the relay squad would have allowed him access to the secrets that your department are so keen to hide.
In the past I have given the benefit of the doubt to the various Ministers for Sport (even Richard Caborne), in the belief they might not have been fully aware of what was taking place under their watch. You deserve no such benefit of the doubt. You have been made aware of all the concerns, and as an opposition spokesman you claimed to share these concerns.
In the absence of any information to the contrary, I presume that it was you who personally nominated Ed Warner for his OBE and gave the reason as “services to British Athletics”. This reflects on your values, and the values of your government. By nominating Ed Warner for an OBE you have assumed responsibility for all the outcomes which have taken place under his watch. You can no longer blame the previous government, useless though they were.
Dwayne Chambers was never found with banned drugs in his system. He was convicted on the basis of witness statements and a paper trail which was uncovered in the USA. Lance Armstrong has also now been convicted by witness statements and a paper trail in the USA. Such evidence is not limited by the short number of hours that it takes for banned substances to clear through the body.
The actions of the US Anti Doping Agency allow for the hope that the dark shadow cast by UK Sport and UK Athletics over the performances of all the British Athletes at the 2012 Olympics will one day be lifted.
When that day comes, the successes of the 2012 British Olympians will be properly celebrated, and hopefully a future Minister for Sport will not be so nervous about admitting to nominating a “sports administrator” for an OBE.
Yours sincerely
C.Zacharides
| 