May 10
by Jeff Fannell in Golf, MLB, News, Olympics, People, Sports Issues 0 comments tags: Drug Testing, PEDs, PGA

IN PURSUIT OF ‘CLEAN’ SPORT

Athlete drug testing continues to make headlines.  In recent weeks several Major League players were suspended by MLB for testing positive for PEDs.  More recently, PGA golfers who have qualified for the 2016 Olympic golf field became subject to the more rigorous Olympic drug testing program. Included in the Olympic testing regime is a “whereabouts requirement,” under which golfers must provide a one-hour time slot between 6 a.m. and 11 p.m. when they will be available for testing on days when they’re not in competition. This is a World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) requirement faced by all elite athletes who are in the registered testing pool of their respective international sports federations.  For many non-athletes the idea of having to provide your whereabouts on a daily basis, with a specified hour to take a drug test (or to do most anything, for that matter) is an imposition on personal freedom beyond debate.  Yet the supposed desire for genuine competition among fans and citizens, who themselves are nipping-and-tucking and crafting artificial personas on social media, justifies the intrusion.  After all, we’re talking about athletes, many of whom get paid big money, so anything goes, right? It’s such blasé thinking that no doubt […]
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Mar 01
by Jeff Fannell in Olympics, Pioneers of the Game, Sports, Track & Field 0 comments tags: Herb Douglas, Jesse Owens, Movie, Olympics, Race

INTERVIEW WITH HERB DOUGLAS: OLYMPIAN, BUSINESSMAN, HUMANITARIAN

On February 19, 2016, Focus Features released the motion picture Race, a biographical film about Jesse Owens, who won a record-breaking four gold medals in the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin. Owens was a childhood idol and later a close friend of Herbert P. Douglas, Jr., who, himself is an Olympic medalist and former corporate executive. Born on March 9, 1922 in Pittsburgh, PA, Herb starred in high school in gymnastics, basketball, football and track & field. Later, he attended the University of Pittsburgh, where he captured three AAU and five intercollegiate championships and set a Pitt long jump record that lasted for 23 years. At the 1948 London Olympics, Herb won a bronze medal in the long jump, becoming the first Pittsburgh native to capture an Olympic medal. After graduating from Pitt with a master’s degree in education, Herb began a career in corporate America working first for Pabst Brewing Company, and later Schieffelin & Co., distributors of Hennessy Cognac and Moet & Chandon Champagne. While at Schieffelin, Herb founded the International Amateur Athletic Association, Inc. and created the Jesse Owens International Trophy Award and the Jesse Owens Global Award for Peace in honor of his hero. Recipients of […]
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