30/06/00
End Of Race
Summary:
With the completion of the draft map of the human genetic code this week came the announcement that there's no scientific basis for the concept of race. Sociologist JAY COAKLEY discusses what this means for the argument that athletic ability is racially determined - that black athletes are superior at many sports because of their genes, and 'white men can't jump'.
We'll meet an Australian world champion skiier who's no ordinary skiier. BART BUNTING is fast, he's daring - and he's blind. And DAVID BLYTH, president of the Blind Golfers' Association of Australia, talks about hitting little balls with long thin sticks, when you can't see what you're doing.
Plus, a new match-fixing scandal in sport. CURTAIN RODDING won The Sports Factor's Invent-a-Sport competition last year. Since then, it's been wracked with controversy.
Details or Transcript:
THEME
Amanda Smith: On The Sports Factor this week: When believing has nothing to do with seeing; we’ll meet a world champion skiier who’s fast, daring, and blind. And a golfer who’s also blind, and who believes that, in the mind-game of golf, not being able to see what’s ahead can be an advantage.
Also coming up, new revelations about match-fixing in sport; it’s probably not what you think (it’s nothing to do with cricket), but it is serious. Well, sort of. More on that later.
Now, something that caught my attention earlier this week, with the completion of the draft map of the human genetic code being announced, was this news grab from the President of one of the two groups involved in the project: Craig Venter, from Celera Genomics.
Craig Venter: In the five Celera Genomes, there is no way to tell one ethnicity from another. Society and medicine treats us all as members of populations, where as individuals we’re all unique and population statistics do not apply.
Amanda Smith: In other words, there’s no genetic or scientific basis for the concept of race, or ethnicity, they’re cultural concepts, not scientific facts. Well, what are the implications of this in relation to sporting ability, especially the arguments that athletic ability is related to race: black athletes are superior at many sports because of their genes, and ‘white men can’t jump’?
Jay Coakley is the Professor of Sociology at the University of Colorado, in the United States. He’s the author of ‘Sport in Society - Issues and Controversies’. And one of the controversies that’s raged for some time now in sport is this question of whether athletic ability is genetically determined according to race. So what does the announcement of there being no scientific basis to race, mean to this debate?
Jay Coakley: Well it means that what we’ve done is we’ve seen the world in racialised terms, and we’ve tried to make sense out of it in those terms, and we’ve used our racialised ideas to explain athletic ability. But basically, sporting ability is related to a combination of cultural environment and the genes of an individual, and those genes are related to the individual’s physical capabilities and cognitive, and psychological traits. And this whole notion of looking for the magic gene, you know, a single gene that underlies something as complex as an athletic performance, even a single dimension of athletic performance, like jumping, is basically I think a wild goose chase. Our genes don’t exist in environmental vacuums, and I think that some of the spin-off research that’s been done related to the human genome project shows that there are various kinds of environmental factors that actually turn genes on, turn genes off, influence the biochemical processes that occur inside of genes. So to think that our information about a gene, a single gene or a limited set of genes is going to tell us all we want to know about athletic performance is pretty naïve.
Amanda Smith: Well if race and ethnicity are scientifically invalid concepts, how then do we understand the differences in the athletic abilities of different population groups, all-black sprint finals at world championships for example?
Jay Coakley: Well I think we understand them the same way we understand the all-white world cup downhill skiing finals, and the all-white northern European Nordic skiing finals, and the all-white crew finals, and rowing finals, and the all-white swim finals and the dozens of other all-white finals. We understand those in terms of culture, in terms of opportunity and terms of tradition and social support systems, and sponsorships, and encouragements and the way people define national identities and individual identities, and the way people see themselves in terms of their social, cultural and biological destiny in the world. You know those are what I see as the important factors, and our ideas about race influence a lot of those things. They influence who wants to play sports, who has access to sport participation, who actually plays certain sports and how people imagine their place and the future in certain sports. So the social notion of race is not irrelevant to athletic performance, but it’s relevant in terms of shaping the environment within which people make choices and determine what they’re going to do with their lives.
Amanda Smith: Is it more relevant when talking about athletic abilities for example, to talk about population groups rather than to talk about race? I mean is there a difference in the term?
Jay Coakley: Well I think that there should be a difference in the terms. Sometimes when people use the term ‘population group’, they’re coming out of a long history of racialised thinking that associates population groups with racial term. But there is human variation, a biological variation around the world, it’s just that using the concept of race to study that variation I think is an invalid way to go about it. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t population groups that have various kinds of traditions and experiences, and in some cases may have particular kinds of biological traits. But nobody has shown in any systematic way, that any of those traits are directly related to overall athletic ability or to specific abilities in particular sports.
Amanda Smith: So where do you think the debate and research about what determines athletic ability will go now Jay? If there’s no way to tell between the genomes of people who identify as Caucasian or African-American or Hispanic or Asian?
Jay Coakley: Well it’s hard to say right now. We’re pretty excited about the release of this information about the human genome project, but my guess is that in the near future, that some scientists because they live and they do their research in particular cultural contexts, are not going to give up the traditional classification schemes that they’ve used for many years to conceptualise their research, and they will still try to incorporate their ideas about race into genetic research. And I think that a good example of that is the drug test validation studies that are being done right now at the Australian Institute of Sport, where they’re trying to have a drug test ready to detect the use of EPO by athletes in the Sydney Games. And the researchers in that study are still using traditional social definitions of race as they try to validate their tests. And this is really kind of interesting. I think that one of the reasons for that is that some of the scientists may believe that there is actual differences in the blood of people from different so-called races, and then I think there’s another, and I think this is a valid reason, is that some of the people at the drug tests feel that the validity of the test that they come up with may be challenged by athletes and by sport leaders and by lawyers who are going to claim that the test doesn’t equally apply to people from all races. And then when the cases go to court, those lawyers are going to be seen as credible by judges and juries who still believe that race is a valid scientific concept. Some scientists are in a bind, because race does have real social significance in the world, and it influences people, but to incorporate the concept of race in a biological sense, and to their studies, is really taking them down the wrong path. But I think that some scientists will continue to go there for quite a while.
Amanda Smith: Jay Coakley, who’s the Professor of Sociology at the University of Colorado in the United States.
Now earlier this year, an Australian skiier, Bart Bunting, won two Gold Medals at a World Skiing Championship in Switzerland, in the downhill, and giant slalom events. Bart’s no ordinary skiier though: he’s been blind since birth and he came second in the World Cup series for blind skiiers this year. Skiiers with vision impairment compete in three categories: B1, if you have no sight at all; B2 and B3 if you have some degree of vision. Now skiing really fast in a competition when you’re sighted has a fair degree of risk about it, but when you can’t see what you’re doing, that sounds scary, especially when, like Bart Bunting:
Bart Bunting: I’m B1, I have some light perception but because I’m classified as B1, when I do ski, I ski with blacked-out goggles on, just to make sure that I really can’t see anything.
Amanda Smith: But now you’re skiing with a guide, is that right?
Bart Bunting: Yes, all blind skiiers have a guide, but the difference with B1 skiiers compared to 2 and 3, is that instead of actually trying to look at my guide, what I’m doing is following him down the hill by listening to his calls. He has a loudspeaker in a bum-bag and a microphone on his helmet, and he essentially just calls to me where to go.
Amanda Smith: All right. So say in the giant slalom event, how do you and your guide work together to compete?
Bart Bunting: Well it’s my job to go as fast as I can, and it’s his job to stay an even distance in front of me, because if that distance between the guide and the skiier starts to fluctuate, I lose my accuracy on where he is and what sort of turn, because I’m trying to follow as close as possible exactly what he’s doing, without turning too sharply. Like if I turn sharper than he does I’ll hit the inside gate. So I’ve got to judge it to be as close as possible to what he’s done, but if anything, just to be a little bit outside of his turn.
Amanda Smith: And what sort of things is he saying to you through his helmet microphone during this?
Bart Bunting: Do you want me to give you a bit of a go at like something he’d say at the start of a race, like the whole sort of call sequence?
Amanda Smith: Yes, that would be terrific.
Bart Bunting: So we’d be in the gate, when you say in the gate you’re in the sort of start gate and you’ve got a wand in front of you and I’d be standing in the gate, and he’d be standing just down the ramp a little bit, which is the starting ramp which gives you a bit of speed when you take off. And so he’d go ‘Three, two, one, go!’ and then he’d go, ‘Straight, straight, straight, and left, left, left, and right, right, right, dip, left, right, right, compression, straight, straight, straight, and left, left, left, delay, right, right, …’ and it goes on. And it’s all different little calls that we’ve worked out, even to the extent of how he says the directions as to what it means. If he’s saying ‘RIGHT! RIGHT!’ that means ‘TURN NOW!’ and if you’re saying, ‘Right, right, right’, it’s just an easy, slow, casual turn.
Amanda Smith: Well you must have to put a lot of trust in your guide. How have you developed that trust?
Bart Bunting: I’m lucky in the fact that Nathan, who guides me, I’ve known him for, oh, it must be eight or nine years now and we’ve been good friends and we’ve done a lot of things together, climbing and caveing and surfing and what have you, all different sort of outdoor activities, so we have built up a good relationship in terms of trust over that time. So when it came to skiing, we already sort of knew how the other person worked and we worked together fairly well already, and skiing’s just made that even closer. And you do have to trust them because I don’t know where I’m going and I hope he does, you know! (laughs)
Amanda Smith: Yes well even though you do have a guide and you might trust that guide, is it still scary?
Bart Bunting: Of course. That’s the fun, that’s why I do it. I think that’s the buzz of it. I mean as opposed to someone who can see who’s skiing, you can sort of relax a little bit. I mean you’re skiing, but you can relax to some extent, whereas when I ski, every single thing is full concentration, whether that be just trying to get into the lift line or to make the turn, or just to - I basically have to respond to whatever Nathan says as if that is the only way to turn, and turning any other way, I’ll crash into something. Because you don’t know. You have to just assume that whatever he says is what you’ve got to do. Because if he says ‘Stop’ I don’t have time to go, ‘Oh, why are we stopping?’ and he’ll go, ‘Oh because that tree you just hit was in the way.’ So you really have to respond quickly without questioning it. And I think when we first started we had a couple of times when I’m like, ‘No, I don’t want to stop’. Bang. Hit something. ‘Oh OK, next time I’ll stop.’
Amanda Smith: Yes, well I wanted to ask you if you’d ever got into hairy situations on the ski slopes regardless of having a guide or not, where you have lost control or got disoriented?
Bart Bunting: A couple of occasions. One was when we won the Gold in the downhill in Anzier in Switzerland, I came through the finish and Nathan thought I was going to hit the last gate so he’s turned around to see what I was doing and he’s caught his edge and I’ve sort of just got round the gate and he’s gone, ‘Straight! Straight! Straight!’ which basically means ‘Come to wherever you hear my voices is’. He’s gone across to the side, I’ve hit him, hit the fence, the skis have come off everywhere, done a big loop-the-loop on my stomach.
Amanda Smith: Well it sounds like a dramatic finish.
Bart Bunting: It was. I was literally within one or two metres of being on the wrong side of the finish, so that would have been devastating. But on the right side of the finish I really couldn’t have cared less.
Amanda Smith: So what was it about skiing that attracted you to it? Is it a sport that for you has sensory pleasures that aren’t reliant on sight? And I guess by that I mean the feel and the sound of skiing on snow.
Bart Bunting: There certainly is that aspect to it. It’s the freedom, you do feel free, like you can sort of, even though I’m following a guide, I still can turn, and you’ve got that full feeling of speed and control I guess, that you can just change your direction or do whatever you want. I think the times I enjoy most are things like when we were in Canada, the runs are really wide and long, and I can actually just ski wherever I want to go with Nathan skiing behind me, and he’ll just tell me if I go too close to the edge or have to stop for some reason. But that feeling of just - yes, if I want to turn left now, I can. There’s no-one one telling me what to do, and that sort of aspect of it’s great.
Amanda Smith: And Bart Bunting is now training towards the paralympic skiing at the 2002 Winter Games in Salt Lake City, where if he maintains his current form, he’s surely a strong medal contender.
Now another sport that’s growing in popularity for people who are blind, or have restricted vision, is golf. Every two years, there’s a World Blind Golf Championship; in September this year, it’s being held in Scotland.
David Blyth is the President of the Blind Golf Association of Australia. And while you might think it must be terribly difficult to hit a little ball with a long thin stick when you’re blind, David Blyth says golf is actually a very good sport for people without sight.
David Blyth: I remember many years ago a golf professional told me then that when he was teaching golf up in Japan he used to blindfold the people and he’d blindfold himself to show them that if your swing is correct and your stance is correct, you should hit the ball and it should go straight. And that’s the theory of it. But most of us manage that reasonably well, and we have a totally blind golfer in Western Australia who is the world champion and he has won the last two world championships, and he plays in his normal club competition off 14, which is a very good handicap.
Amanda Smith: Yes well I guess the marvellous thing about golf because of its handicap system, is that sighted and non-sighted players can play together quite easily, unlike in many other sports.
David Blyth: Yes. The other thing is too, that you don’t have to push somebody else’s ball back to them, so it’s not like cricket or tennis. Golf is a game where you viritually play against yourself, and although you might have a little wager with somebody you’re playing with, but you’re the only person that can do anything that affects your score. And we find that a good relationship between the caddie and the player is essential to work out distances and things like that, particularly when you come to chipping and putting, where you need a little bit more accuracy, then it’s quite important. But it works out quite well.
Amanda Smith: Yes well tell me more about the role of the caddy, because you play with a sighted caddy, so what are they doing with you?
David Blyth: Well it depends on the amount of vision a person has. In my case I have no vision, so therefore my caddy does do a lot more. If we had what we would call a B3, which is a person who has restricted vision but would be able to see their ball and their immediate surrounds, but wouldn’t be able to see where the ball has to go, or where it’s gone, that caddy would probably give directions and watch for the ball and things like that; may actually do a bit of lining up when the putting is being done. In my case, and in people who have no vision, or very little vision, say we’re on the tee: a caddy would line the club up behind the ball, I then take my position on the club, and I set myself there. The caddy would step back and just check that I was reasonably straight, and most times I am, because we’ve worked this out, and then they have to watch the ball and find it, and we repeat that process all the way through. They’ve given me the directions, they’ve given me the distances and we decide between us which club I’ll use, so all those things work together, it’s a very close relationship between particularly one with very restricted vision, or no vision, and a caddy.
Amanda Smith: And where do you get your caddies from?
David Blyth: That’s the biggest problem we have, is getting caddies. It’s usually amongst friends, work colleagues, other club members, people like that. But a number of our members, I should explain, are actually people who were golfers, were regular golfers. We’ve got people who play with us now who used to play of plus-one, plus-two as sighted people. But as they became older, they developed some vision loss which is quite normal, and that’s one of the reasons we did start the club up, was to keep those sort of people in the game of golf. And part of our role is to educate golf clubs and members that if a person is starting to lose the ball in the air when they hit it, you know, if everyone just helps, that person can stay in the game.
Amanda Smith: So to what extent do you feel your shot, David, and know what the shot’s like and where your ball’s heading?
David Blyth: I think I can tell if I’ve hit the ball well, because you can feel that on the club, and any golfer will tell you that. That doesn’t always mean it went straight! Sometimes some of my best shots haven’t been straight, but they’ve had a lot of distance on them. And getting the accuracy is something I don’t feel, although Ron Conway, who is the present world champion who I alluded to before, Ron can tell the direction his ball has gone by the way where his hands finish, and he has practiced very hard to do that, and that’s why he’s a world champion, and he is very good. But no, I can tell if I’ve hit the ball well, and like a lot of golfers, the further it goes the better I think I’ve hit it, so accuracy isn’t always the most important thing.
Amanda Smith: But are there actually advantages to playing golf when you’re not relying on sight?
David Blyth: Well I keep saying to my caddies, because often if we have a difficult shot likely to go over a bunker or a water hazard or something like that, they start to worry about it, and I say, ‘Look, don’t worry about, it’s just another golf shot. We’re going to play exactly the same shot as if the hazard wasn’t there.’ And we have to think that way. I think we have that advantage, that we don’t see the problem, but our caddies can make it pretty realistic if we’re not careful. So in my case they don’t even tell me if I’m going over a bunker, they just say, ‘OK the green is 30 metres away, we want you to land on the green and run up to the hole’ or whatever.
Amanda Smith: So there are times when you actually don’t want your caddie to tell you too much?
David Blyth: No, that’s right. Not to dramatise it, because that’s what happens to golfers, that they often see a problem and that becomes the problem in their mind, and that’s why we say golf is a mind game, it’s all in the head. You can talk yourself out of anything. But we play that way.
Amanda Smith: So in a sense that if you can’t see it, you can’t fear it?
David Blyth: That’s right.
Amanda Smith: David Blyth, who’s the President of the Blind Golf Association of Australia.
Now regular listeners to this program will have some familiarity with the sport of Curtain-Rodding; it’s the game that won The Sports Factor’s ‘Invent-a-Sport’ competition last year. Well until this week I’d never actually had the opportunity to see how Curtain-Rodding is played. Last night, I joined a couple of Rodders at training in their Melbourne office.
Nick Gadd: I’m going to strike the gob with my curtain rod and attempt to get it through Anthony’s picket.
A slightly wayward whinny there, but Anthony blocked it with his picket quite neatly.
Amanda Smith: So Anthony, I’m up at your end now; what are you about to do?
Anthony Lynch: I’m going to try for a long cone, which has a straight trajectory for most of its course and then dips at the end, and hits the dispenser. At least that’s the idea. So, I’ll give it a whirl.
Just under the nozzle, yes. Didn’t score.
Amanda Smith: Now for those of you who aren’t familiar with this sport of Curtain-Rodding, here’s the lowdown on it from Rodding fan Phil Kofoed and elite Australian Rodders Anthony Lynch, Paulette Jacob and Nick Gadd.
Nick Gadd: Well it’s usually played indoors, in an office, but you could play it outside. We play on carpet, but you could play on other surfaces such as clay or grass or even Rebound Ace but we normally play on carpet. The office is about 10 metres long, and we place two water dispensers, for goals, about 7 metres apart. On one side of the office there’s a large office dresser called a credenza; on the other side there are desks and so on. And we have a small ball called a ‘gob’, which we hit with long curtain rods which are about 2 metres long.
Amanda Smith: Just remind us all when and how this sport was developed, Paulette?
Paulette Jacob: The game is said to be originally developed by the Aztecs. It was originally called something like Quertz-an-rod, and it was originally a really violent game, and involved people striking the heads of their enemies from one side of an arena to the other, using a carved stick. The game was sort of lost during the Middle Ages, and was brought back from the New World to Europe by Cortez, and became popular in England where it was subsequently outlawed by Queen Elizabeth for being too barbarous. And then it sort of fell into I guess disrepute and was lost for some time; revived again in Footscray in Victoria during the Depression when at a factory there was a strike, and there was actually a picket line formed and the factory workers ended up challenging management to a game. And then it was sort of lost again for some time and revived again recently by ourselves. So it’s kind of a bit of a Holy Grail of sport; it keeps disappearing and reappearing again.
Amanda Smith: Well Phil, you’re not a player, but you’re a follower, supporter of Curtain-Rodding. It looks actually quite dangerous.
Phil Kofoed: Yes that’s quite right Amanda. I think I should remind listeners just how dangerous it can be. I’m not an active player myself. My workload is considerably more than the other members of the office and I just don’t get the necessary time to put in the amount of hours that’s needed. But on at least two occasions I’ve been working quietly away at my computer and I’ve been struck quite viciously on the back of the head and had to be stretchered out. So it can be quite dangerous, yes.
Amanda Smith: Well since reaching the heady heights of last year, winning the ‘Invent-a-Sport’ competition and so on, Curtain-Rodding is now in crisis, with a match-fixing scandal that’s threatening to bring the game down. How was this corruption in top level Rodding revealed, Nick?
Nick Gadd: Well it came about through a secret tape that was made by the Footscray Police, in which some high-profile Curtain-Rodders were allegedly overheard agreeing to fix matches. One player, who should not be named, was heard offering to throw a game in return for a cup of tea and a chocolate biscuit, and unfortunately it does seem that not everything has been as transparent as we would have liked.
Amanda Smith: And there is big bikkies involved in throwing games here, Anthony?
Anthony Lynch: Yes, although just what kind of bikkies is a subject of dispute at the moment; whether they’re chocolate teddy-bears, shortbread creams, no-one is quite sure. There’s been allegations and counter-claims. Police are still investigating.
Amanda Smith: Now in any issue or dispute that happens in Curtain-Rodding, the WRC, the World Rodding Council, invariably gets labelled ‘a toothless tiger’, that it can’t do anything about any kind of issue, crisis that comes up in the sport. Can and will it get to the root of this bribery scandal? Nick?
Nick Gadd: It has to, for the future of the sport. I think it’s a time for all people of goodwill to come out and make sure that all the Rods are out in the open and there are no dirty gobs hidden under anybody’s desk. And we just have to be completely upfront and make a new start.
Amanda Smith: How widespread though do you believe the corruption is in Curtain-Rodding? I mean the sport has always been thought of as a game of great integrity. Anthony?
Anthony Lynch: I think there’s a few bad Rods out there, but I think basically most Rodders have a very clean gob and I think the public should bear that in mind.
Amanda Smith: Well I’d like to ask all of you finally: Can Rodding recover from this crisis?
Nick Gadd: I think there’s no doubt about that, Amanda; I think it’s going to be one of Australia’s premier sports in the new millennium. I mean you’ve seen for yourself just how exciting it is. It’s very simple to play, anybody can play it in their office. All you need is a couple of water dispensers, a small gob, a couple of curtain-rods and one tight orange, and you’re away.
Paulette Jacob: Yes, I think Rodding has suffered through the ages as we’ve seen, how it’s disappeared from the arena and returned. And I think Rodding is a real survivor in the world of sports. There’s also moves afoot to market some of the merchandise and to sell starter packs for Rodding kits to schoolchildren, and introduce it in a more widespread way. So I think it’ll definitely survive.
Anthony Lynch: I think it can, it’s a minor hiccup. It’s a community-based sport, but it’s going global.
Amanda Smith: Curtain-Rodding in crisis, as told by players Anthony Lynch, Paulette Jacob and Nick Gadd; and fan Phil Kofoed. Believe it or not.
And that brings us to the end of The Sports Factor for this week. Program producer is Michael Shirrefs, and I’m Amanda Smith. Thanks for your company, and hope you’ll join me again next week.
Guests on this program:
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Jay Coakley Professor of Sociology at the University of Colorado and author of "Sport In Society: Issues & Controversies". |
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Bart Bunting Blind skier and Gold Medallist at the World Skiing Championship, in Switzerland this year, in the Downhill & Giant Slalom events. |
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David Blyth President of the Blind Golf Association of Australia. |
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Nick Gadd, Paulette Jacob & Anthony Lynch Elite Australian Curtain Rodders. |
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Phil Kofoed Curtain Rodding fan. |
Publications:
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Sport In Society: Issues & Controversies Author: Jay Coakley Publisher: McGraw Hill College Division, 1997 ISBN 0-8151-2027-3 http://www.mhhe.com/mhcollege/index.mhtml |
Presenter:
Amanda Smith
Producer:
Michael Shirrefs
©1999 Australian Broadcasting Corporation