18/02/00
Women & Golf/Cycling & Drugs
Summary:
With the Australian Women's Open underway this week, Amanda Smith speaks with world number one golfer, KARRIE WEBB, who took up golf when she as just 8 years old.
And while Karrie Webb is currently dominating her sport, the numbers of women who belong to golf clubs in Australia has dropped significantly over the past 20 years. MAISIE MOONEY, the National Executive Director of Women's Golf Australia, discusses some initiatives to change this - like the Executive Women's Golf Association.
plus, drugs and cycling. Ever since the 1998 Tour de France, the image of cycling has suffered badly. Cycling commentator PHIL LIGGETT and French team physiotherapist STEFAN AZZOLIN talk about how the sport is now trying to clean up its act. And phsyiologist DAVID MARTIN explains a research project he's running with cyclists to investigate use of the banned, but difficult to detect, human growth hormone: EPO.
Details or Transcript:
THEME
Amanda Smith: On The Sports Factor this week, Women and Golf. We’ll hear from the world’s Number One, Karrie Webb; and find out about a plan for business women to get a competitive edge through learning to play golf.
Also coming up, drugs and cycling. In particular, efforts to crack down on suspected use of the massively effective, but illegal, performance enhancer known as EPO.
CYCLE RACE ATMOS
David Martin: The reports coming from Europe from the sports science community and the drug testing community in Europe, and also from cyclists themselves, indicate that there is at least some use of EPO, if not widespread use of EPO. And we don’t know the numbers, but we’re very sure that there is use of EPO amongst at least the cycling population, and very likely amongst other endurance sporting populations as well.
CYCLE RACE ATMOS/COMMENTARY/CHEERS/CLAPPING
Amanda Smith: And more on the research that’s trying to establish detection methods for this particular drug later in the program.
Before that though, to hitting little white balls with long thin sticks. In professional women’s golf, nobody’s doing it better at the moment than Karrie Webb, currently ranked world number one. The women’s Australian Open is currently underway in Melbourne, and the Australian Ladies Masters starts next week on the Gold Coast. Karrie Webb is in Australia to play these tournaments, although these days she spends most of her time competing in the United States. Karrie learnt to play golf in her home town of Ayr, in North Queensland, when she was just eight years old.
Karrie Webb: Of course my parents and grandparents started golf just after I was born, so it was a bit of a family sport, so I just wanted to be like Mum and Dad I guess.
Amanda Smith: And was it an advantage being a young woman playing golf, growing up in a country town, as you did in Queensland?
Karrie Webb: Yes, I think it was an advantage, because you know, a country town, you had access to the course at any time of the week. You know, apart from the Saturday and Sunday afternoon competitions, you pretty much could be on the course whenever you wanted.
Amanda Smith: And having started at that age, is that younger than many of your peers on the competition circuit now?
Karrie Webb: I don’t think so, I think there’s a lot of girls that started fairly young. But there are a lot of different ages that everyone started, obviously. And there’s always different reasons for why they started the game.
Amanda Smith: Are there advantages to having started young, as you did?
Karrie Webb: Yes I guess. I think I had all those years to learn different skills. I don’t think it’s a disadvantage or an advantage. I think as long as you’re prepared to play golf; I look at 8-year-olds now and I can’t imagine how they can keep their concentration for that long.
Amanda Smith: Well how did you keep your concentration?
Karrie Webb: I don’t remember that far back, but obviously I just liked playing golf and it really interested me.
Amanda Smith: Are there, nevertheless, disadvantages? Are there techniques or habits that you picked up as a youngster that you had to unlearn later in life?
Karrie Webb: No, I’ve had the one coach since I started playing, so I’ve had good guidance ever since I started, so I never had to worry about stuff like that. Kelvin taught me probably about six months after I started.
Amanda Smith: Now you turned professional in 1994; you were still just a teenager then. How big a leap was that for you, moving from amateur to professional? And I wonder as much psychologically as anything?
Karrie Webb: Well I think when you’re 19, I didn’t think that it was going to be that much of a change, you know, I thought I was ready, and you know, luckily I was, you know I didn’t make a bad decision and I didn’t turn pro too soon, which I think some of the girls do. They think they’re ready and they’re not quite.
Amanda Smith: How do you have to be ‘ready’?
Karrie Webb: Well obviously you’ve got to feel like you’re ready yourself, but you know I think you’ve at least got to be winning a lot of amateur tournaments and representing Australia as far as Australian girls are concerned, and you know, if you’re in the top three in Australia, then you know possibly then you could be ready. But you know, it’s still a personal choice.
Amanda Smith: Well I know that you, like a number of other golfers now, have been using a computer video analysis program that enables your coach, Kelvin Haller, to work with you at a distance: he’s in North Queensland, you’re in the States. How have you found that as far as maintaining this coaching relationship that you’ve had, as you said, since you were a youngster?
Karrie Webb: Well I didn’t have it for the first few years I was overseas, and I found that in the last couple of years it’s really been a benefit to me, because he gets to see my swing pretty much whenever I want him to. So you know, whereas before it would be you know eight months where we wouldn’t see each other and you know I could develop all sorts of habits in eight months. So you know it’s been a great benefit for me.
Amanda Smith: Karrie Webb, and the long-term, long-distance relationship she’s maintained with her coach, Kelvin Haller.
Well unlike Karrie Webb, who’s been playing since she was a little kid, lots of women come to golf much later in life. And their interest in choosing golf is not necessarily as an end in itself.
MUSIC - It Don’t Mean A Thing If It Ain't Got That Swing
Woman: I chose to learn golf because we were invited to sponsor a corporate golf day, which cost us quite a lot of money and only had women in my department, and none of them played golf. So I thought if I have to send someone along to play golf, it would have been someone in another department who was a male who could play golf, and that really wouldn’t have served the purposes of the sponsorship. So I thought, best I learn golf.
MUSIC
Man: At our golf day that we have for our own company, women are invited. This is one of the golf days that women aren’t invited. I’ve had some discussions with females about this, and I say, ‘Look, you are more than invited to participate, but the fact is that there aren’t many females that want to be involved with a golf day.’ So as much as they might put up the banner and say, ‘Oh, we’re not invited’, I think that if they were, a lot of them wouldn’t attend anyway because they’re not comfortable in golf club surroundings. So it comes back to them. I think it’s up to the ladies involved to put their hand up and say they want to be involved.
MUSIC
Woman: You don’t actually sign a deal on the golf course, as maybe a lot of people think, but you’re sort of networking with the Managing Directors and CEOs of these companies, and on a day to day basis, you’re probably dealing with someone who works for those people. So that you can then say, ‘Oh I played golf with So-and-So on the weekend’, or something. And it sort of gives you an in I suppose, gives you a bit of status.
MUSIC
Amanda Smith: And that idea of women wanting to enhance their business status through golf is something Maisie Moonie, the National Executive Director of Women’s Golf Australia wants to accommodate. The problem is that while women want to play golf, they don’t necessarily want to join clubs. In fact, in Australia, fewer women belong to private golf clubs now than they did 20 years ago. Women’s Golf Australia is addressing this with a couple of initiatives, including a thing they’re calling the Executive Women’s Golf Association’. At the Yarra Yarra Golf Club in Melbourne, where the Women’s Australian Open is being held, Maisie Moonie explained the idea to me.
Maisie Moonie: OK, well it’s a golfing network for women essentially, women in business. It’s come out of an initiative and a program started in the United States in the early 1990s, and that program is now the fastest-growing area of golf in the United States, with something like 90,000 women and 90 chapters across the States. We’ve entered into a co-operative arrangement with the Executive Women’s Golf League in the United States, and we’re now currently setting up chapters here in Australia. And essentially the program will provide an introduction to golf, clinics, rules of golf, the basics of the game that business women might like to have to enable them to network in terms of their business activities.
Amanda Smith: So this is for women who felt excluded in the past from corporate golf days and the like?
Maisie Moonie: Yes, essentially that’s it. A fair amount of business, I’m led to understand, is actually conducted on the golf course, or discussions take place in that sort of wonderful setting out there. And women I think probably compared to men, like to be a little bit more in control, so they just won’t go out to a corporate golf day or a pro-am unless they know a little bit about the sport and they can get the golf ball around the golf course somewhat effectively, and so that’s the need we’re meeting.
Amanda Smith: To what extent do you believe that business women though have shied away or felt more intimidated about playing golf and using golf to their corporate advantage in this way?
Amanda Smith: I think it’s just been for women that sport hasn’t been a natural part of their day to day life, and so therefore hasn’t rolled over into their corporate existence either.
Amanda Smith: How much demand do you think exists for this Executive Women’s Golf Association in Australia? And you’re doing this program nationally?
Maisie Moonie: Yes, it is a national program, but the actual activities will be run through our State organisation which is pretty much the way sports function in Australia, and probably around the world, so they’ll deliver the program as such. I guess we’re going to find out what the need is, but clearly we’ve rung a number of focus groups after we became aware of the program in the United States, to see if there was an interest, and there were a couple of things that happened. One, at the time this is the only Women’s Australian Open, we were actually out in the marketplace seeking sponsorship for this tournament, and as part of the sponsorship deal for this, we run other activities for the naming right sponsor: club teams championship, which networks the company with member base which is 120,000 women in the private club system. But corporate Australia is quite interested in targeting business women, so we were being asked questions: Can you introduce us to this network of women that we want to talk to about our products, or in essence, they’re looking for key decision makers within business so that they could promote their products or services, or their particular industry. So that was one area that we came away from those sponsorship negotiations and looked at and said, 1. There’s a need there for the sponsor to be able to target these women; but 2. Is there a need for us to target these women? So the answer to both was Yes.
Amanda Smith: And you feel comfortable with that?
Maisie Moonie: Oh yes. One of the things we have discovered within our organisation is that there are more women now playing golf outside our natural network, which is the private club system, than there are in it, and it seemed to us that here was a quarter of a million women playing golf, not under our umbrella, not necessarily being serviced in an appropriate way or introduced to the benefits of club golf, so we saw that as a way of servicing our member clubs by starting the Executive Women’s Golf Program, the Girls’ Golf Club, and the Women’s Golf Club, because they’re all programs external to the private club system that will bring women into the sport in a more organised way, and hopefully introduce them gently to the benefits of club golf, and ultimately over time, build our own membership base through that program or process.
Amanda Smith: Well now you mentioned the Women’s Golf Club, and I think you have actually established that there are about 220,000 Australian women who do play golf to some extent, but who don’t belong to clubs. Why is that, and why is that an issue as far as you’re concerned?
Maisie Moonie: All right. We’re going to try and find out what we were dealing with and whether there was a requirement for our organisation to provide access or a network for these women. We ran focus groups throughout Australia, particularly in the capital cities, and there were diverse reasons why women weren’t joining golf clubs. But they came down probably to maybe four or five: one was time; a round of golf is four or five hours. Women still are the primary caregivers in family, most are leading careers now, and four or five hours for a game of golf just isn’t viable. So timing was an issue, cost was an issue, now club memberships particularly in the metropolitan areas are pretty high, and if you’re a working woman with that limited time, you’re only looking at once, maybe maximum twice a week at weekends, when you can play. There are issues over weekend access and competitions for women; there are issues concerned with the perception which is probably quite true, just based on the numbers within golf clubs, that they’re mainly male organisations rather than something that both genders share.
Amanda Smith: Even though the old membership, associate membership for women thing has long gone, there’s still some of the remnants of that sense around clubs?
Maisie Moonie: Well yes in effect, just in terms of numbers, 20 years ago the correlation between men and women playing golf was about 60%:40%. It actually now is 80%:20%, so if you walk into a golf club, yes, you’ll most likely feel that this is where the boys come to play.
Amanda Smith: So there are actually more men, the ratio has shifted so there are more men playing golf now than there are women, compared to some years ago?
Maisie Moonie: That’s right. The ratio used to be about 2-1, and it’s now really moving out way beyond that, almost at 3-1.
Amanda Smith: Is that mainly because golf has become much more popular with men?
Maisie Moonie: Well as I said, you’ve still got that 220,000-plus women that have actually come into the game in the past 20 years, but not into the private club system. I’ve no doubt that Greg Norman’s had a huge influence on the sport here, it always helps I think any sport, when you have someone who’s a world champion and particularly somebody as commanding and with the stature of a Greg Norman. Perhaps now we have that with Karrie Webb, I’ve certainly noticed that through the Girls’ Golf Club so many of them now are focused on Karrie, they get on to our website, they send messages to her, they ask questions about her, so that will have an effect. But I think it’s been more social and cultural factors that have kept women out of the game in the past 20 years.
Amanda Smith: National Executive Director of Women’s Golf Australia, Maisie Moonie.
And now to professional endurance cycling. It’s still a small scene in Australia but the international cycling circuit each year rivals the Olympics in size, audience and money. Winning cyclists are feted in Europe, although they’re relatively unknown here. But Australia is now part of that international race circuit, with the ‘Tour Down Under’, which was raced last month in South Australia.
Along with the excitement and the money involved in these endurance cycling events, there’s also the drugs issue. Ever since the 1998 Tour de France, when the Festina Team was kicked out of the race for banned drug use, suspicions continue as to how ‘clean’ this sport is. At the Tour Down Under in Adelaide, James Plummer talked to former cyclist and veteran commentator, Phil Liggett, about the damage the drugs scandal has done to the image of international cycling.
Phil Liggett: Well it’s tarnished it, of course it has, and it annoys me in many ways because again we go back to the media of the English-speaking nations, who tend to rip the sport apart, because to them it means nothing. There’s no passion for them, and I blame the media a lot for making cycling appear a lot worse than it is. However, there’s no doubt that cyclists have and do take drugs, but the checks and the medical controls now enforced are second to none in the world of sport in any sport you can name. These cyclists in the Tour Down Under on 1st January now have to produce medical records, and they have to go through that another three times during the season. If their body fluids show a difference which cannot be explained, then they automatically will be suspended under new regulations. And they check your eyesight even, now in cycling; they’ll check your heart, they’ll check your blood pressure, and they may not say that you’re taking drugs, but if you show a big difference, they will simply say ‘For safety reasons of your health, we’re holding your licence for 15 days.’ Well that’s the equivalent of a suspension, and that means cyclists can’t race, and that means they lose money.
James Plummer: Isn’t that being a little bit dishonest though, in a sense? Why not just come out and say, ‘Look, there’s something pretty dodgy going on here. We may not be exactly sure what it is, but it is highly dodgy, and let it be known as that’?
Phil Liggett: Well the reason they do that is because at that point they cannot prove the rider is taking a forbidden substance. For example, the drug EPO which is a hormone, the body makes it automatically, so what they’ve done, it’s a red corpuscle drug which increases the oxygen content of your bloodstream, they’ve set a mark of a reading of 50. If you exceed that mark of 50, and it is very possible to do especially if you train at altitude, or you’re dehydrated, then the body will say, ‘We’re not saying you’re taking artificial EPO to give yourself a boost, we are saying that you are unfit to ride for your own health reasons’, because it is a dangerous situation. And riders who take that drug without correct medical advice simply die in the middle of the night, because it thickens the blood, and as the blood gets thicker and automatically your heart slows down at night when you sleep, the heart stops working, because the blood is too thick and you die. And that’s what obviously they’re now saying. ‘If you’re over 50, you can’t ride a race.’ But they can’t say you’re drugged, because there’s no test to say you’re taking a drug. Therefore they’d be wide open for a lawsuit. So that’s why they simply say, ‘We don’t think you should ride a bike race and we’re taking your licence.’
James Plummer: Cycling commentator, Phil Liggett.
Now in the past, team masseurs, or soigneurs as they’re known, who are usually former cyclists, have been found to be the links to competitors getting knowledge and supplies of performance enhancing drugs. But since the 1998 Tour de France drugs controversy, the teams have tried to break this link by employing full-time doctors and physiotherapists.
Stefan Azzolin is the physiotherapist for the French team, La Française des Jeux. Ever since the ’98 Tour de France, Stefan’s been in charge of his team’s soigneurs, and his job is to make sure the cyclists aren’t getting illegal drugs through them.
Stefan Azzolin: We just want to make sure that it’s not team stuff. The racers, they know that they shouldn’t do it, we have a strict controlling in France, so they almost can’t use anything. We in the team just make sure that everything is perfect, about food and we make everything perfect for them to ride the best, and if they do something it’s their fault, and we have nothing to do with this. And so the team is clean.
James Plummer: But can you check very much to see whether they are actually taking things they shouldn’t be? What can you do about that? How can you find out if they are?
Stefan Azzolin: We always go in the rooms, just having fun with them, so we can mostly see what’s happening in their cases and in the bathroom, and they wouldn’t be able to take anything without, so it’s almost not possible for them to hide anything.
RACE ANNOUNCER: Again I remind you, keep back from the barriers especially with a massed finish...
James Plummer: French team physiotherapist, Stefan Azzolin.
As well as the official drug testing regime at the big cycling races like the Tour Down Under, David Martin, an Australian Institute of Sport physiologist, is running an unofficial set of tests on the cyclists. David Martin’s research is being funded by the International Olympic Committee.
David Martin: The official testing regime is completely endorsed, and there are penalties and sanctions that can be imposed on athletes. The testing that I’m doing is part of a research project, and so there are no limits that are identified right now, and there are no sanctions that will be imposed regardless of any parameters that we identify at a certain level.
James Plummer: Well you’re obviously testing for something that’s not tested for as part of the official regime?
David Martin: Yes, the drug that’s really created a lot of waves is this drug called the EPO, erythroproietin and it can be produced now by a synthetic technique, these recombinant DNA techniques, and the drug allows your bone marrow to produce red blood cells at a very, very rapid rate and we now know that that gives aerobic athletes like cyclists, a tremendous advantage over their competitors.
James Plummer: How much of an advantage though?
David Martin: It’s always difficult to quantify and just put a number to, but an athlete can raise their VO2 max, an index of aerobic capacity, by more than 10%, so it’s a significant advantage, and at the elite level where just fractions of a second or fractions of a kilometre can mean the difference between winning or losing, it can make all the difference.
James Plummer: Are there downsides to EPO though?
David Martin: Yes, we don’t know what the downsides to EPO are. From a physiological perspective we don’t know if it will make you sick, or we don’t know if it’s going to result in some type of cancer or some type of an endocrine problem, but what we do know is it’s illegal. Using EPO is banned by the IOC and it’s an illegal drug, so if you use it, you’re a cheat and you should be disqualified from competing in sport.
James Plummer: Well if, from an athlete’s point of view, a performance point of view, this is so much better than the rest, why isn’t it being screened for officially?
David Martin: It’s a really difficult hormone to test for. It has a very short half life, so if you inject EPO into your body, it will only last for about a day or two in your circulation at levels that we could actually detect it. And the drug that they use is almost a perfect identical replica of the hormone that you naturally produce in your body. So to distinguish between a synthetic EPO and natural EPO is nearly impossible, and to try to test for it after you’ve come off of EPO injections means we only have a day or two to try to catch you. So it’s an immensely difficult task to actually test for EPO.
James Plummer: Well if this is naturally occurring, then what is the big problem, other than the fact we might have more of it?
David Martin: Yes, the big problem is that the whole concept of sport is that you have an individual who has this genetic code inside them, and they put themselves into all these different exercise and eating programs to try to see what their body can naturally respond to and adapt to. When you inject EPO you bypass the fundamental link between a training stimulus and adaptive response. You go half way through the stimulus response connection and you force an adaptation to take place that genetically you may not be predisposed to allow happen.
James Plummer: Well you would have thought that would have created problems in the body though.
David Martin: Yes we know that there are some changes in the body, but we don’t know how dangerous they are. The biggest danger of using EPO is that you’ll make too many red blood cells, the haematocrit will go very high, the blood becomes very viscous and syrupy, and the heart can’t handle the load of trying to pump such a thick liquid around, and you have a myocardial infarct or heart attack, and die. And there are these unexplained, mysterious deaths in athletes, such as cyclists, and in the autopsy reports they identify very high haematocrits and it’s suspected that they died from EPO use. So the drug can be dangerous if not used in a very controlled situation.
James Plummer: Well what makes you suspect that it is being used widely perhaps, amongst elite level cyclists?
David Martin: The reports coming from Europe from the sports science community and the drug testing community in Europe, and also from cyclists themselves, indicates that there is at least some use of EPO, if not widespread use of EPO, and we don’t know the numbers, but we’re very sure that there is use of EPO amongst at least the cycling population, and very likely amongst other endurance sporting populations as well. So no direct evidence, but it’s reports coming from cyclists that admit to using EPO, team directors that admit to using EPO, and drug busts such as happened in the 1998 Tour de France with the Festina affair where they unveiled a soigneur carrying massive amounts of EPO into the tour.
James Plummer: One hears that perhaps up to two-thirds of elite level cyclists may be taking some sort of dope to give them enhanced performance. Is EPO on that sort of level?
David Martin: EPO would be the No.1 choice as a performance enhancing drug for an elite cyclist, or an elite runner, or an elite rower, or a kayak athletes or any athlete that’s engaged in a sport that has a very high aerobic requirement to it. It would be the No.1 drug of choice. The gains that come from EPO, they overshadow these more subtle gains that can be made with other illegal drugs. So it is probably one of the No.1 on the list. And that’s why we’re making such a concerted effort to go after EPO.
James Plummer: How would elite level cyclists take this, because the team physiotherapists say they’re very rarely left alone. They often have surprise checks to see what’s actually happening, particularly in things like bathrooms and that. So how would they actually use this or physically inject it or take it on a daily basis if that’s what’s needed?
David Martin: I think that the soigneurs that you’ve talked to, these massage therapists you’ve talked to are correct. During racing, it’s very difficult for these athletes to be able to use drugs, they’re constantly surrounded by media and by professional staff. But there are training camp situations where an athlete can go off on his own for a three-week period, and he could use erythropoietin during that time, go off of the drug, and then still have performance gains from that drug usage protocol for up to two to three weeks after he’s come off of his training camp.
James Plummer: So that’s the maximum time, about two to three weeks?
David Martin: That’s what we suspect. We suspect that the performance advantages that could come from EPO would really only last for about two to three weeks. So if somebody was going to use drugs for the Tour de France, they could go away onto a training camp, use EPO, go off of EPO two to three days before the Tour de France starts, they would be having certain benefits in the first week and even in the second week of the Tour de France, and some performance benefits in the last week.
James Plummer: Would EPO normally be injected?
David Martin: Yes, it’s injected; it’s a subcutaneous injection, it’s normally injected with iron, because if you’re going to start making red blood cells at a very rapid rate, you want to make sure they’re full of haemoglobin, which requires iron. So it’s a subcutaneous injection, you could inject maybe two to three times a week for three weeks, and they could do it in the bum or under their skin in the upper part of the arm.
James Plummer: And where would elite level athletes be able to procure these sorts of things?
David Martin: Usually it will require a connection with somebody in the medical profession who is illegitimate, and is able to use their medical credentials to secure some EPO. It would also be black market EPO available, and so there would be those in the underworld that are trading and distributing these drugs without licence.
James Plummer: Now if as you say, after about a day it’s impossible to detect this, how are you actually going about doing it then?
David Martin: Yes, what we’re looking for is not EPO itself, but we’re looking at the effects of EPO. And so it’s very much along the lines of if we have a person who’s been injected with EPO, they start producing red blood cells at a very furious, abnormally high rate, and as those red blood cells come out at such a high rate, it’s as if the quality control on the production of red blood cells starts to fall apart. You start to see a large number of young red blood cells in circulation, you start to see red blood cells coming out bigger than normal, and sometimes with less haemoglobin in them than normal. You see other indicators of iron metabolism starting to be disturbed. So we don’t look at the EPO itself, we look at the aftermath of using EPO for a period of time.
COMMENTARY/WINNING KLAXON
Amanda Smith: At the Tour Down Under in Adelaide last month, sports physiologist David Martin, speaking there with James Plummer.
And that brings us to the end of The Sports Factor. Michael Shirrefs produces The Sports Factor, and I’m Amanda Smith. Thanks for your company. I’ll be back next week, hope you’ll join me. Cheers till then.
THEME
Guests on this program:
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Karrie Webb Australian Golfer & World Women's #1 (as at 18/2/00) |
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Maisie Mooney National Executive Director of Women's Golf Australia |
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Phil Liggett Former Cyclist & Veteran Cycling Commentator |
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Stefan Azzolin Team Physiotherapist for French Cycling Team La Francaise des Jeux |
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David Martin Sport Physiologist with the Australian Institute of Sport |
Presenter:
Amanda Smith
Producer:
Michael Shirrefs
©1999 Australian Broadcasting Corporation