Athletics: is Team GB good enough?
For too long, Britain was a nation of “incorrigible baton-droppers”, said Oliver Brown in The Sunday Telegraph. But at the World Athletics Championships last Saturday, the men’s 4x100m relay team “restored national pride”, gatecrashing Usain Bolt’s final competitive race to win gold. It was hardly a “showpiece send-off” for the Jamaican, who tumbled to the floor with cramp. But even if he had been without injury, it is unlikely his team could have caught up with Team GB: their time of 37.47 seconds was the fastest in the world this year. To cap “an unforgettable evening for relays”, the women’s 4x100m team took an “unlikely silver”. Then on Sunday, in the 4x400m, the women’s team took silver, and the men bronze. Since 2012, British Athletics has invested heavily in relays, on the grounds that they are less competitive than individual races. Last weekend, that strategy more than paid off.
Team GB didn’t fare as well in the solo events, however, said Andrew Longmore in The Sunday Times. The only individual medals went to Mo Farah: he won the 10,000m, but finished second in the 5,000m last Saturday. Racing for the final time before he swaps distance running for marathons, it was not the “last hurrah” Farah had hoped for: at 34, he couldn’t find the speed that had turned his “every race at the World Championships or the Olympics for six years into thrilling victory”. And to Farah’s great frustration, he is bowing out amid “suspicion” over his successes, said Andy Bull in The Guardian. There are questions over the two drug tests that he missed in the run-up to the 2012 Olympics. More troubling still is his relationship with his coach, Alberto Salazar, who is under investigation by the US Anti-doping Agency. When Farah was in his mid-20s – the age at which distance runners tend to peak – he was a middling athlete; it was only after he started working with Salazar that he achieved his best times, at the unusually late age of 28. “Hard as this is for Farah’s many fans to hear, his career invites scrutiny.”
Still, Team GB can ill afford to lose another of its stars, said Rick Broadbent in The Times. Just four people – Farah, Jessica Ennis-hill, Greg Rutherford and Christine Ohuruogu – have produced 19 of Britain’s last 22 gold medals at global championships. But EnnisHill and Farah have now retired from the track, with Ohuruogu soon to follow, while Rutherford is injured. Meanwhile, no young talents are ready to take their places – and the likes of Laura Muir, who came fourth in the 1,500m, and Katarina JohnsonThompson, who finished fifth in the heptathlon, are failing to fulfil their potential. British athletes will need to “get better”.
Mexico’s avocado mafia To The Guardian
Your article about the avocado shortage misses the point about the nature of the problem and who is responsible. A farm in western Mexico that I owned until recently could not get its product on the market because the commercialisation is controlled by mafias, including local political organisations whose demands, if not met, lead to rotting crops.
There is more than enough being produced to meet local and international demand at reasonable prices, but until the producers have direct control over marketing their avocados, the system of poorly paid harvesters, high prices for local consumers and the extortion of producers will continue.
Among other things, the commercial and marketing organisations insist on bringing in their own pickers – who are generally very poor people, usually indigenous, from the highlands. Once one deducts the costs of transport, accommodation, etc, from their pay, they earn below the minimum wage and have no protection and security.
One of the pickers sent to us was ordered at nightfall to cut so close to electrical cables that he was electrocuted. There was no compensation for his family. In fact, the team boss harangued the other pickers about the stupidity of indigenous people and told us that if we interceded, we would be blacklisted. He was backed up by local political leaders and other local families terrified by what could happen if we persisted.
The problem has an enormous human dimension, and the only people who gain are those who market the avocados abroad and the political organisations associated with them. So the next time you eat an avocado of Mexican origin, spare a thought for the suffering involved in its production. Charles Posner, Lavenham, Suffolk
Defence club To The Daily Telegraph
I see that Harris hawks are attacking walkers in Britain. At the Lahore Gymkhana Golf Club, we are regularly attacked
Nuclear know-how To The Guardian
When I was in the lower sixth, in 1960, we had a talk by the Women’s Voluntary Service as part of a scheme whereby one in four women in the country would be advised what to do in the event of nuclear war. The
advice was to put a large paper bag over one’s head and get under the kitchen table. Since large paper bags are no longer generally available, and most people nowadays do not have a kitchen table, has this advice been updated? I think we should be told. Kaye Mcgann, Standlake, Oxfordshire
Legs in peril To The Daily Telegraph
In 1940, during the Blitz, there was a sudden and unexplained increase in the number of people in London suffering from deep vein thrombosis. It was soon established that the vast majority of sufferers had spent the night in an Underground station as shelter from the bombs, often taking a deckchair with them to sleep in.
As the back of their knees rested against the wooden bar across the front of the deckchair, the popliteal vein, which lies behind the knee, was compressed for several hours, causing a clot to form. Simon Pike, Hoarwithy, Herefordshire
All at sea To The Guardian
Tanya Gold implies that as a Londoner, she would know little about the Royal National Lifeboat Institution. Strangely, the busiest RNLI station is on the Thames, just in front of Somerset House. It is permanently manned. John Fisher, Hitchin, Hertfordshire
Byron’s bear essentials To The Times
When Byron went to Cambridge in 1805, he was so irked at not being able to keep his dog that he studied the rules and noted they did not prohibit bears. So he bought one from a travelling menagerie, and still had it when he graduated. Byron would lead his bear on a chain around Cambridge, and wrote to a friend that he was minded to have him sit for a fellowship.
A story did the rounds that Byron once booked two seats on a mail coach in the names of Byron and Bruin. He dressed his bear in a travelling cap and “had him squat on the seat as demure as a Quaker”. A short-sighted tailor who sat down opposite commented on what he took to be Bruin’s “very nice warm travelling coat”. Richard Martin, Filkins, Oxfordshire