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Veteran Channel Seven sportscaster Bruce McAvaney is an ‘old school’ television interviewer. This translates to always listening to his guest’s answers.
This is not like the vast majority of the younger brigade who constantly and rudely butt-in on their guest’s answers, which lowers interviews to a gibber.
McAvaney is saddling up for his tenth Olympic Games and I caught him during the week, quite by accident, interviewing IOC president Thomas Bach.
It was a brilliant interview – nothing unusual in that – with McAvaney in the chair, and Bach coming across as a warm and passionate Olympic Games supremo.
That was until McAvaney asked him what must Rio do in the next 12 months for the Games to be successful?
Next 12 months?
No wonder Bach came across so warm and passionate a year ago, instead of his current stance that doesn’t pass the smell test. That’s due to his wimpy reaction to Russia’s state-controlled doping on a grand scale.
For example, Bach’s answer to McAvaney’s question a year ago was that Rio must clean up the dangerous pollution levels in its waterways that could dramatically affect the Olympic open water swimming, sailing, rowing, and canoeing.
Rio hasn’t, not by a long shot.
Open water swimmers have recently been told to keep their eyes and mouths shut all the time they are in the water.
That’s an impossibility, so every swimmer will be risking serious health issues representing their countries.
That’s hardly in the spirit of the Olympic Games, the ideal Bach keeps repeating as the Rio Games descend into a shambles.
Bach, a lawyer, has since said he wants all proven drug cheats to be banned from the Olympics for life, but quickly adds that would not be possible as the life ban would not stand up in court.
Then why was American track sprinter Tyson Gay only banned for a year after testing positive in 2014?
He turned whistle-blower and received a light sentence.
The greatest sprinter of all time, Usain Bolt, described the ban as “the stupidest decision I’ve ever heard, he should have got life”.
That’s interesting.
Dick Pound QC is also a lawyer, and the biggest anti-doping fighter in world sport as the former head of WADA, the World Anti-Doping Agency.
He too wants drug cheats banned from the Olympics for life, and keeps fighting for that net result, with no mention of a legal battle in court reversing that decision.
Pound is disgusted Russian competitors weren’t banned in toto from Rio, and has openly berated the IOC for being so weak as to fob off the responsibility to the individual international governing bodies.
Now would be the perfect time for McAvaney to host a debate between Thomas Bach and Dick Pound.
That would be the gold medal event of the Rio Games.