The Court of Arbitration of Sport gives a "decision." My thoughts - or at least the ones I can publish...

The fight to get women equal treatment in the Tokyo Olympics has been on going.  CAS said they would rule on the merits literally half a year ago.  They've been stringing us along.  Now they say they can't help.  They, the highest sports court in the world, can't help athletes.  I call bogus.  I'm upset, I'm frustrated and honestly I'm pissed.  Not only for us women but also for our Lawyer Paul, who has spent countless hours and resources helping us.  I'm upset that women are STILL treated like this in the year 2020, and even more so I'm upset that there are people who think it's okay that women are treated like this. 

I realize that there are bigger issues in the world.  There are huge injustices happening all over the globe every single minute of every single day.  But to me this was such an easy one to fix.  Their biggest problem was that we didn't ask at the right time, we needed to ask three years ago and the problem now was that there was NO WAY logistically they could add an event less than a year from the Olympics.  That's what they based their main argument on.  The logistics would just be impossible.  Never mind it's not really adding an event, it's adding 60 women to the 60 men that are out there. 

Then they announced that they would move the marathon and the Race Walk to Sapporo, against the wishes of the Tokyo government.  Not knowing where courses would be.  Not knowing so many, many things.  Can you imagine the logistics involved in moving five events?!?!?!  And I thought to myself, there goes their big argument!  There goes what they were basing it all on.  And now they did that.  What reason could they possibly have to say no now?

They found their way out.  They found their loophole.  They wanted so badly to keep equality out that they found a way.  Never mind that every single everything talks about equality and how they strive for it.  It would've been so simple to do, so very, very simple. 

The words are all jumbled up inside.  I just can't even...  I hate injustice.  I hate feeling helpless and weak.  I hate not having somewhere/someone else to go to.  I hate feeling like a bunch of old dudes are getting the final word.  I want to scream, I want to yell, I want to cry, I want to punch a wall (but I won't).  I'm mad. 

To the people who have always stood beside me in the fight for equality, all the way back since 2011, thank you for 9 long years of support.  To those who get outraged at the unfair treatment, thank you.  And for those of you who read this decision and don't get upset, why not?  Shame on you.  You should. 

If you haven't read the excellent summary that Paul wrote I will copy it here. 

Thank you.

From Coubertin to Bach: the Olympic Champions of Sexism

By Paul F. DeMeester

On August 7, up to 60 male athletes will vie for gold in the 50K Race Walk Event at the 2020 Olympic Games in Japan. Women 50K walkers, however, are excluded from Olympic competition, rendering the race the only track and field event still subject to sex discrimination.

On March 31, 2019, seven women athletes and one male athlete filed the first of two suits in the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), based in Lausanne, Switzerland, to remedy this situation. They were not asking for anything new. The 50K Race Walk has been on the Olympic program since 1932, save one. All they asked for was that women be included in the event.
The Olympic Charter, which serves as the constitution of the Olympic Movement, guarantees gender
equality and prohibits sex discrimination. Women 50K race walkers want the same opportunity that female marathon runners finally obtained in 1984: to contest their event at the Olympics just like the men do.

The world governing body for track and field, now called World Athletics but until recently known as the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) requested the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to live up to the gender equality provisions of its own Charter and include women in the 2020 Olympic 50K Race Walk, just like the IAAF had been successfully doing in its own World Championships since 2017. But the IOC said “no.” Hence, the legal challenge.

The CAS Court, often dubbed the “world supreme court for sport,” added insult to injury on February 3,

2020. In their just published decisions – after sitting on the case for six months beyond their own self-
imposed deadline – the Court held that it did not have personal jurisdiction over the athletes who brought the claim. Never mind that the Olympic Charter assigns any dispute arising in connection with the Olympic Games exclusively to the CAS Court.

The CAS Court set up a perfect catch-22 in upholding the IOC’s sex discrimination: because a woman 50K race walker is not an Olympic athlete – by virtue of being excluded, of course – she is out of luck. Let’s put it another way: the CAS Court told these women athletes that because they are women, they are not allowed to ask the Court to order the IOC to follow its own constitution. The CAS Court decisions are prime examples of gender discrimination.

The CAS Court cited four of its prior cases as precedent. None of them is on point, as lawyers would say. One of those cases involved the interpretation of the terms of the Code of Ethics, an issue irrelevant to our case. Three other cases dealt with individuals who had been passed over for selection to represent their countries at the Olympics. Other athletes had been selected instead. The Olympic Charter gives discretion to national sports bodies to decide whom to select. The overlooked athlete may qualm with the subjective decision of her or his national federation, but this does not implicate the IOC and does not rise to the type of dispute that involves the wholesale exclusion of more than half the world’s population from an Olympic event based on their gender, an issue that strikes at the heart of the Fundamental Principles of Olympism.

The CAS Court admitted that it has subject-matter jurisdiction. In other words, the Court ruled it could properly decide the exclusion of women at the Olympics but a woman 50K athlete cannot bring a case because she is not an Olympic athlete. Of course, she is not! That’s the whole point of the case.

That’s like telling women who are deprived of the vote based on their gender that they cannot claim unconstitutional gender discrimination in court because they are not voters.
Perhaps it should come as no surprise that the CAS Court ruled as it did. It was created by the IOC, and a prominent IOC member serves as its President. The two lawyers for the IOC in the discrimination case had previously served as CAS arbitrators (judges, really). The Court and the IOC are mere blocks away from each other in the same small, Swiss city of Lausanne.

The IOC is a peculiar institution. It was founded in 1894 by a Frenchman, Pierre de Coubertin, who
handpicked a committee of men to be the IOC. Ever since, those committee members select who their new colleagues will be. Coubertin was the epitome of a sexist. He wanted women excluded from sport. His legacy lives on, albeit in a more subtle fashion. While the current IOC President, German Thomas Bach, goes around collecting “gender equality” awards from well-meaning organizations, behind their back, he  stabs women athletes in the back, figuratively speaking (Bach was an Olympic fencing gold medalist).

The IOC is undemocratic. The large world governing bodies in sports, like World Athletics or FIFA (soccer), regularly elect the members of its governing council and its executive leadership. The voting is based on one vote per national member federation. Think of it as similar to a vote in the United Nations General Assembly. Back in December of 2018, democratically elected IAAF Council members voted to request inclusion of women in the 2020 Olympic 50K Race Walk. The internally handpicked IOC denied the request.

This dynamic points to a larger issue in sports. The IOC demands adherence to its rules and wishes before allowing any sport, discipline or event to be on the Olympic program. International sports federations are happy to oblige, because ever since the commercial success of the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, the Olympic Movement has generated a giant cash cow for the IOC. Part of that largesse is distributed by the IOC to the various federations. The money flow creates a dependency, whereby international federations are quick to give in to Olympic demands. This way, the IOC will end up writing all the sports rule books. It was not always so. Before this monetary dependence started, the IAAF organized its first World Championships in 1976 just for the Men’s 50K Race Walk Event, courtesy of the IOC having axed the event at that year’s Montreal Olympics. One Olympiad later, the 50K was back.

More recently, in 2017, the IOC once again wished to rid the Olympics of the 50K. Too long, the IOC said. Not enough broadcast interest, they said. And get this, not gender equal. But when the IAAF remedied the latter, the IOC did not want gender equality in the event. Why not? Because gender equality would most likely result in the survival of the 50K as an Olympic event.

The real reason the 50K is a thorn in the Olympic eye is that the event does not bring revenue into the
Olympic coffers. Attending Olympic race walk events is free to the public. And fair enough, having Usain Bolt on the track sells tickets. But not so much for Matej Tóth. Who? Hence, staging this four-hour-plus event costs the IOC money in logistical arrangements. Being sexist about the 50K race walk is the IOC’s way to look out for their financial bottom line. Forget gender equality, forget sports, forget the Olympic Charter, forget justice. This is all about the almighty Swiss franc.

The time has come to scrutinize the corporate governance structures and finances of the IOC. Maybe the CAS Court ruling, as bad as it is, may help with that. Athletes may instead turn to their own nations’ courts to combat Olympic ills. Antitrust law and European competition rules may come into play. With the next two Olympics after Tokyo being held in Paris (2024) and Los Angeles (2028), courts in those locales may not be as solicitous of the IOC as the CAS Court has proven to be. Perhaps athletes will turn to their legislatures and demand accountability, transparency and democracy from the IOC, the National Olympic Committees and the Local Olympic Organizing Committees.

Unfortunately, all of that will come too late for those women athletes whose quest for an end to sexism wasturned down by the CAS Court because of one jurisdictional defect: they are women.

50K nationals 2020 is in the books!

Hello from cold, snowy and icy upstate NY!  I'm finally home with real internet service, happily sitting on the couch watching TV in English and cuddling with my cats.  Feels like heaven.  I'm hoping to write a post on my experience training in Ecuador for the month before the race, but for now I'd like to share about the race in Santee, California on January 25th.  The race that was the Men's 50K Olympic Trials and the women's 50K national championships.

Start of the women's and international and masters men's 50K

Historically in Santee we've had crazy hot weather for that time of year.  One year the temperature got up to about 86F (30C) and the ambient temperature on the pavement was insane.  This year we started off I think around 45F (7C) with a really nice mist in the air.  That misty fog stayed around for a good couple hours before burning off and the sun coming out.  For me it never got to feeling that hot.  What I noticed more was that it seemed dry.  Near the end by the time I was getting back around to the aid table (1.25K loops) my mouth was getting dry.  I wasn't necessarily thirsty, just dry mouth.  I know for Dave it felt warm, but that's because he's been in the cold, icy mess that is upstate NY at this time of year.

AJ and Dr. Tina Nagle

Okay, I'm getting ahead of myself!  First, I want to make sure I get the thanks out there.  I knew that if I was training in Ecuador for a month my body would be out of alignment.  Ever since my accident my body can be... shall we say... temperamental.  My spine will go out of alignment and I'll lose all power and strength in my stride.   Sometimes if I see a new chiropractor they don't really know the intricacies of my neck and can actually make things worse.  So my chiropractor took three days off work to come out and make sure my body was in the best possible condition it could be.  Words will never be able to express how thankful I am to her for doing that!  Because wow did I need her!  My body was just about sideways by the time I got to California between the training in Ecuador and the 18 hours of plane flights/travel.  There is zero chance I would've raced as well as I did if it wasn't for her.  If you're ever in the Southern Tier of NY and need a chiropractor there is absolutely no one better than Dr. Tina Nagle!!!!!!!!   From the bottom of my sore feet to the top of my head, thank you!

With the new Safesport rules we thought that we would have to have a safesport checked and verified person at the aid station.  Those rules were subsequently loosened to have a waiver for people, but before we knew that I told our friend Brett Shelton and he immediately jumped into action.  He also took three days off work so he could come out and do our aid.  And he did amazing!  I never had to worry about anything, things were waiting for me when I came by.  He was always positive and happy and encouraging.  If you haven't done a 50K you don't realize the importance of a solid aid person.  It can literally make or break your race at times.  Well, with Brett our race was made becuase he was amazing.  I can't thank him enough for the time he took for us to help us reach our dreams.

AJ by the flame

On to the races!  I had four athletes competing; myself (yes, I count myself as my athlete because I coach myself) Dave, AJ and Lydia.  Dave and AJ were entered in the Olympic Trials and started at 7:00.  Lydia and myself were in the open 50K that started at 7:20.  Everyone had their race plan, their goals and their motivation.  I had a feeling it was going to be a good day and it was.

AJ racing strong.  You can see how nice and foggy the race started off.

AJ went into the race seeded 4th which is where he placed.  He had a strong race, not as good timewise as we needed, but he kept pushing and never gave up.  We have some things to work on and improve, but not too shabby for his first Olympic Trials!

Isn't he cute!  I think we make a good tired and sweaty post 50K race couple.
Photo Credit Karen Beth Pearlman

Dave went into the race with his goals.  He held pace for about half the race and slowed a bit.  Some people passed him, he passed some back at the end.   His finishing time of 5:06:52 was an improvement from his last 50K in hotter conditions and placed him seventh and in the money position.   And that improvement came while training in snow and ice and temperatures that were sometimes 17F (-8C).  I couldn't be prouder of him.

Lydia finding her 100% even before the race.  She always finds it when she needs it!

Lydia came into the race not quite 100% physically but 100% mentally.  She amazes me with her positive mindset and positive outlook.  When the race turned from what she wanted she was able to turn her mind from that disappointment into what positives she saw.  I knew I never had to tell her to just keep going.  I knew there was no way she'd stop.  Her strength and determination kept her in fourth place, an awesome showing.

Later the mist burned off to bright sunny blue skies.

I know the most about my race, since I raced it.  :)  I started off way slower than I thought I was going, probably because I was colder than I'd been in a month.  In hindsight it was a blessing in disguise as it let me really settle into a comfortable pace.  I started off in sixth that was actually fifth.  I'll explain.  We have deadlines for when our national championships are entered.  One of the women, Stephanie Casey wasn't entered.  My understanding was she wasn't planning on coming but later entered the 10K.  I heard that she was convinced to start the 50K to see what happened.  But since entries were closed she was entered as a guest, just like international athletes were.  So while she was ahead of me she wasn't my competition for our national championship places, prize money or World Athletics bonus points. 

Getting tired but still pushing.
Photo credit:  Karen Beth Pearlman

I was patient because I know what happens in a 50K.  I warmed into my pace and was feeling right on that edge of thinking "is this too fast" pace but thought this was a chance to see where I'm at fitness wise.  So I kept going.  I passed half way in about 2:22:45 and was happy with that.  By that point I had moved into fourth (third).   Then about 35K or so I moved into third (second).  Robyn, the eventual winner was way up, but Stephanie seemed to be not gaining on me and I thought maybe coming back towards me.  I knew she wasn't my direct competition, but I thought it was good motivation to keep my time from slowing, so I started trying to work up to her.  I think at one point she was about three and a half minutes up on me.  That time cut down to just over a minute and kept shrinking.  With two laps to go I was about 45 seconds back and with a lap to go I was 15 seconds back.  So I put my head down (literally and figuratively) and just gave it what I had.  With about  200 or so meters to go I caught her, but she had something left in the tank and was able to pick it up.  I knew I was still second in the championships and didn't want to do something stupid like race down the line and get pulled for being off the ground racing against someone who wasn't my competition so I settled and stayed smart.  My time of 4:47:01 is my fastest time since 2017.  My second half of the race was only about 1:30 slower than my first half.   I'm very proud of that.

The only thing better than finishing is finishing and then seeing my sweetie!
Photo credit: Karen Beth Pearlman 

Another thing I'm very proud of is I got no paddles or cards.  My technique feels stronger and more solid than it ever has.  I've really been working on my technique and my glute and core strength and it's paying off.  There's more to be gained there too!  Which is really exciting.

With the wonder Chloe!!!!  One of my biggest fans!!!
Photo credit: Karen Beth Pearlman

So Team Fashizzle (as one of my younger athletes calls me and the athletes I coach) did fantastic.  Second, two Fourths and a Seventh.  I'm not sure who all the athletes in the 50K are coached by (but I know most....) and I think we were the biggest team in the 50K.  I'm very proud of all the hard work that all of the athletes that I coach put in.  They really do inspire me to work harder and keep going and to try and be a good model for them. 

Lydia and I getting our age group awards.  I really am not posing, I don't even know how to pose. 

One thing that's really hard for me, being a coach and athlete, is not feeling like I am able to coach athletes during the race as much as I'd like.  I realize that an athlete must do the race themselves, but I love cheering and yelling and helping with splits and being supportive more than I can do while I'm also racing.  I'm very thankful that the athletes I coach are understanding of this. 

The Shore AC crew!  It's thanks to Elliott Denman and the Sore AC's support that so many of us are where we are today.  Their support  means the world to us!  

Now it's time to recover and figure out goals for the rest of the year.  Both AJ and I made the team to Belarus, so that's obviously on the radar.  I'm very excited to have made another (I think tenth?!?!?!) national team.

To the people who continued to believe in me through the few lean years.  If you continue to believe in yourself  and keep working it is possible to turn things back around.

Stay tuned for more!!!

"Boss" and "The Kid" 

Lydia and her amazing support team.  50K athletes can't do it without our support!!!