Athlete focused

I made it safely back across the Irish sea after a refreshing few days travelling north through Ireland. It was onwards and upwards as I continued my journey beyond Dundee to attend a Scottish wedding. Bagpipes and ceilidh dancing kept it traditional, the only surprise was the warm and clement weather.

The lack of phone reception combined with an action packed social few days has been wonderfully refreshing. It is however rather shocking when catching up with the news, it seems that if you blink another depressing news story will have broken. As I have mentioned previously it is times like these that we rely on sport to unite and distract us from the problems our world is facing. Sadly it is sport that is adding to those disheartening headlines, I am referring the continued allegations and subsequent decisions regarding the Russian doping situation.

At the time of writing the world of sport is up in arms following the decision by the IOC not to ban all Russian athletes, across the twenty eight Olympic sports, from competing in Rio. The track and field athletes who train in Russia will not be on the start line at this summer’s Olympics however the decision has been passed on to the individual international federations. The president of the IOC Thomas Bach, has passed the buck to the other twenty seven sports who now have the pressured and difficult decision to make, should they allow the Russians to compete? I wait with baited breath to hear the outcome for Modern Pentathlon, the time is now incredibly tight as a ban on Russia will result in four more athletes being invited to compete at the Games at such a short notice. The whole predicament is tough on the athletes, they need to trust they are competing on a clean and fair playing field. How is that going to be possible with Russia on that start line?