Briatore/Ecclestone/F1 Snippets

Times

Put the brakes on chicanery - Hugh McIlvanney


Until an anti-banality drug is discovered, not a lot can be done about the indefatigable throng of connoisseurs of the obvious who are forever telling us there’s always been skulduggery in sport. But when they add that only the pitifully naïve could possibly become worked up over the current prevalence of cheating scandals, patience is difficult to sustain. Then it’s time to point out that perhaps if they paid more attention to what other people were actually saying their own worldly wisdom might not be quite such a heavy cross to bear.

They might realise that those of us who are less shrug-the-shoulders philosophical than they are about the toxic values now pervading many areas of sport aren’t hopelessly blinkered romantics unable to recognise that the temptation to cheat must be nearly as old as the instinct to play. Of course there’s nothing new in the willingness to be villainous. It’s the reaction to major wrongdoing that threatens to set this era apart. Sometimes sport appears to drift dangerously close to a policy of zero intolerance, to operating as if no behaviour can be sufficiently heinous to warrant unmitigated condemnation and its concomitant punishments. Anybody who doesn’t suspect that kind of thinking is already establishing a few beachheads has been determinedly ignoring the evidence.

Once Flavio Briatore was found guilty of masterminding a potentially lethal scheme to gain a race-winning advantage for the Renault team at last season’s Singapore Grand Prix by instructing Nelson Piquet Jr to crash his car into a barrier, Briatore’s permanent banishment from Formula One seemed automatic and when motorsport’s governing body, the FIA, imposed penalties encompassing that effect the main complaint most observers had with the verdict was its craven failure to apply any worthwhile sanction to Renault as an organisation. However, the affront to justice implicit in the leniency shown to the team will be dwarfed if there proves to be a vestige of the prophetic in comments made last week by the most influential figure in Formula One, the commercial rights controller Bernie Ecclestone.

Though he was a member of the commission that sat in judgment of Briatore, Ecclestone blithely described the ban on the Italian as harsh and specified a one-year exile as a more appropriate punishment for an offence involving serious hazard for Piquet, fellow drivers and the spectators. That the remarks were reported in the build-up to today’s staging of the Singapore Grand Prix gave them an extra dimension of unreality. And F1’s little caesar went further towards an ethical fantasyland by suggesting the most questionable element of Briatore’s sentence was that barring him from functioning as a manager of drivers. Sure, Bernie, where should a lad revealing promise at the wheel look for help but to a man whose concept of career guidance sent one client hurtling straight into a concrete wall?

Some will argue that broad conclusions can never be drawn from happenings in Formula One, since it barely qualifies as a sport. But lovers of rugby see theirs as the sport of sports, yet it has produced a catalogue of depressing sleaziness in the tale of deceit and betrayal of all principles of fair play at Harlequins. Yes that tale, the one so many in the old game aggressively insist we should be drawing a line under. Meeting their demand would be easier if they didn’t strive so feverishly to minimise the moral implications of the string of offences that began with the faking of a blood injury (as part of an illegal ploy meant to bring victory in a Heineken Cup quarter-final) by the Harlequins wing Tom Williams.

The refusal to acknowledge the gravity of the episode is typified by the continuing efforts to persuade us that a three-year ban from rugby was draconian punishment for Dean Richards. Though Richards orchestrated the outrageous cheating and subsequent cover-up, his lawyer, Mark Gay, has gone on record with the view that the treatment Quins’ former director of rugby received at the hands of his judges was “savage and excessive”.

Gay identifies feigning injury as the “core offence” but it wasn’t in Richards’s case. He didn’t feign injury. He feigned honesty and sportsmanship. Feigning injury was no more the core offence in what he did than is wearing a mask in an attempted bank robbery. Richards engaged in a larcenous enterprise, a scam to steal a result, and then sought strenuously to conceal his guilt. If that’s a minor misdemeanour, rugby’s code of honour doesn’t count for much.

Admittedly, flourishing codes of honour aren’t especially conspicuous across the spectrum of sport these days. The old notion of sport as a realm of invented dramas in which it’s natural to maintain a higher standard of conduct than might be found in the real world outside is inevitably withering a little more every day. Obviously, for intensely committed professionals the arena is the real world and it’s a place where nobody can expect the faintest echo of Corinthianism. But honesty, a decent measure of respect for competitors, a resistance to outright cheating, shouldn’t be too much to ask. Does belief in sportsmanship have to be regarded almost as a badge of wimpishness, as it so often appears to be in the biggest sport of all, football? It is off the field that the game reaches its worst depths of disreputability, as in the acceptance of club owners with yard-dog pedigrees and in the darkly dubious activities surrounding the recruitment of boy players and many other transfers. But on the pitch, too, chicanery is rampant. Diving, wrestlemania in the penalty box and efforts to have opponents ordered off are only a few of the ugly practices eliciting a grossly inadequate response from the disciplinary authorities.

Even occasional readers of this column are liable to know the orgy of manhandling that precedes every free-kick and corner is a particular hate of mine. That definitely is a comparatively new form of cheating, something never seen a few decades ago. And there again the sinister spectre of zero intolerance looms. Had referees tackled the problem early and decisively, awarding as many penalties in each match as the flagrant violation of the laws demanded, football wouldn’t be so sickeningly disfigured now by all that anarchy in the goalmouth.

If performers in sport decide fair play is an outmoded idea, they should be reminded that punishment never goes out of fashion.

Fitting honour for Sir Bobby

After half-a-dozen years, let alone the half-a-dozen days that have passed, the warm emotional resonance of what happened in Durham Cathedral last Monday will still be with many of us who were there. The posthumous honouring of somebody as remarkable as Sir Bobby Robson, inset, could hardly fail to be affecting but there was something particularly moving about the total naturalness of finding a life devoted to a game celebrated so beautifully amid the ancient stones of one of the architectural glories of Europe. It said much about Robson and about his native North East, and it brought to mind the elegance and truth of the late Arthur Hopcraft’s assertions on behalf of football’s significance in British life, especially his declaration that it had never been only a game “since the working classes saw in it an escape route out of drudgery and claimed it as their own”.

Arthur was making points (in the 1960s) that the football of today would struggle to justify but few men ever incarnated his case more comprehensively than the son of the Durham coalfield who came up out of the pit to brighten the fields of this country and the Continent as a player and manager. His spirit spread a glow through that great Norman cathedral, too.

Woodburn wronged

Complaints from seriously offending footballers that they are too severely disciplined often prompt thoughts of a distant time when punishments were frequently so extreme they might have been delivered by a man wearing the black cap. Last week I checked on the day in 1954 that saw the great centre-half Willie Woodburn suspended indefinitely (sine die) after what was just his fourth ordering off. The Rangers and Scotland defender wasn’t a dirty player but, if provoked, he was given to outbursts of punching, butting violence. So — although his belief that he had suffered a grave injustice was publicly endorsed by the flawlessly behaved Tom Finney — the late, lamented Willie may have had less cause for feeling wronged than two other players carpeted on the same day. The Scottish Football Association minutes tell us that G Thom of Arbroath and G Henderson of Alloa received a fortnight’s suspension “for adopting a fighting attitude”.

www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/columnists/hugh_mcilvanney/article6850887.ece

Independent

The Last Word: If you can't steer clear of trouble, just say sorry

Briatore's old Formula One friend Ecclestone should give him a crash course in performing rapid U-turns

By James Corrigan

Bernie Ecclestone (right) apologised for his comments about Hitler and says a similar approach could have got Flavio Briatore (left) off the hook

Bernie Ecclestone is rather adept at doing what we in the trade call a "reverse ferret". He is able to perform his U-turns without the barest glance in the wing mirror. If only he had the same skill with a steering wheel, Bernie's own attempts to become a racing driver would surely have been successful. Alas, it seems Bernie never did require anyone to order him to crash into a wall.

But then we should praise Ecclestone for recognising his driving faults and privately bowing to his own failings. In a world where immovable leaders are all too disinclined to say: "I was wrong", here is the refreshing exception. Nobody is prepared to self-flagellate with the enthusiasm of our Bernie. And that includes Max Mosley.

Never mind "I was wrong", the lovable little figure who is destined forever to be known as "the F1 supremo" is even prepared to say: "I was an idiot". No, he didn't quite go so far in 2005 when fessing up to the ethical flaws in his theory that all women should dress in white, "like all the other domestic appliances". But he certainly did a few months ago in the wake of some comments he made about Adolf Hitler.

Old Bernie credited the Third Reich supremo with "getting things done" and wondered if it was Hitler's idea to exterminate six million Jews at all and whether he hadn't, in fact, been persuaded into it. In the ensuing outcry, it would have been all too easy for him to disappear into his personal bunker and ride out the storm. But brave Bernie saw his error and declared: "I sincerely, genuinely apologise" (so much better than an insincere, fake apology). So it was all forgotten.

Well, the petty World Jewish Congress were still annoyed and called for his resignation, but how diplomatically Bernie snuffed out their ire. "It's a pity they didn't sort the banks out," he said. "They have a lot of influence everywhere." He'd said sorry, what more did they want? How long did they want him to wear that sackcloth and ashes? Don't they realise how painful it is for a person of his standing to confront his own fallibility?

Saying sorry plainly suffices for Bernie. It is good enough to excuse most sins. If only Flavio Briatore had done so in all that Renault furore last week when he received a lifetime ban for his part in Nelson Piquet Jnr's deliberate crash in Singapore last year.

"He has just handled the whole thing badly," said Bernie. "He should have stood up and said, 'I was caught with my hand in the till, it seemed like a good idea at the time and I am sorry'. He would have got a slap across the wrist. They would have said, 'You naughty boy' and that would have been the end of it."

So simple, so clean, so utterly incontrovertible. Instead, Formula One will line up in Singapore once again today in something of a mess. All because stubborn old Flav couldn't say sorry.

Bernie should wash his hands of him. But he won't. That's not in his forgiving nature. As ever, Bernie has been big enough himself to apologise. "[The ban] was too harsh. I was on the commission so I am probably as guilty as anyone else." Will this be enough to persuade his pal, his fellow QPR co-owner, to return his calls, even if it is only to have a natter about the resurgence of Wayne Routledge? We can only hope so. Otherwise, what will Bernie do, where will he go?

Imagine if "sorry" didn't suffice. Imagine if you really had to pay for your actions, for what you say, for those you offend. Imagine if they did not forgive in the blink of a carefully worded statement. What sort of world would it be then? And what sort of sport would it be then?

Not a sport Ecclestone would want to be the figurehead of, that's for sure. He wants Briatore to appeal and to do what's plainly required to get his ban reduced. Say sorry. For God's sake, man, say sorry. Do not, Bernie repeats, do not dare to mount a proper defence, in a proper court. "Because somebody will say he sent a young guy out to what could have been his death. It wouldn't go down too well." Just keep saying sorry. Over and over. They'll soon forget what they're supposed to be forgiving you for. It always works.

Gonzo puts his drive behind reds not greens

Gonzalo Fernandez-Castano now accepts he was wrong to accuse the Spanish prime minister, live on TV, of "stripping us all naked". "It wasn't the right time or the right place," said the golfer. It was the first round of the Seve Trophy, and the Spaniard had just birdied the eighth.

We can only shiver at the prospect of other sportsmen taking his lead. Of Emmanuel Adebayor running 100 yards to the opposing fans to advise them to vote for Nick Clegg. Of Craig Bellamy shrugging off three security men to remind a pitch invader of his human rights. Of Serena Williams urging a line judge to alter her views on the war against terror or face up to the moral – and yes, colonic – consequences...

Keep politics out of sport, we say. And thank goodness our self-obsessed superstars wholeheartedly agree. No subject could possibly be more important than the parameters of their existence. Could it?

Gonzo, as he is known on Tour, is not so sure. Not only does he have passionate opinions about Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero's leadership, but it's the nature of these beliefs which is so shocking.

Zapatero, as we politicos all know, is head of the Socialist Workers' Party. So what is this millionaire golfer's gripe? Extortionate taxation, perchance, of the achievers being punished for their industry? I ask you, where is the incentive to make eagles nowadays?

Erm, no. "We have five million unemployed," screams Citizen Gonzo. "What is this man doing to help these poor people return to work?" Zapatero is probably just doing what our man is doing. Fronting up World Cup bids and having Fernando Torres over for tea.


www.independent.co.uk/sport/motor-racing/the-last-word-if-you-cant-steer-clear-of-trouble-just-say-sorry-1793913.html

Mirror -

Bernie Ecclestone says 'sack me if you dare' By Byron Young at Singapore 27/09/2009

Furious Bernie Ecclestone has told interfering big wig Sir Martin Sorrell - sack me if you dare.

The F1 ringmaster was fuming at the marketing guru’s criticisms of the way he is running the multi-billion pound sport.

Sorrell, accused the motor racing magnate of being "totally out of touch" by calling for Flavio Briatore’s Crashgate life ban to be cut to just one year.

The Italian was banned for life from team and driver management for asking Nelson Piquet to crash his Renault during last year’s Singapore race to pave the way for teammate Fernando Alonso to win the event.

Ecclestone is livid because Sorrell does not even have any authority at CVC, he is only an influential advisor to rhe board.

As he prepared for Sunday’s famous night race in Singapore the 78-year-old roared: "Let him take over F1 and do my job. Let's see how long the sport lasts then,"

"He says I’m out of touch with reality but he was not there at Flavio’s hearing."

"I was the one who was there. He does not know all the evidence.

"Where was he when it was all going on? Back in London I suppose.

"I have known Flavio for 15 years..

"We are not happy with the bad publicity we’ve had. We'd prefer it hadn't happened but the sport is still strong.

"CVC have been great and they are happy with what I am doing."

Although billionaire Sorrell, whose companies pay £200m a year in tax alone, is a board member he is only an advisor to CVC who has influence but no authority.

He slated Ecclestone for saying "Hitler got things done" but the F1 boss said he was misquoted.

Sorrel then weighed in on Saturday claiming Ecclestone was pardoning cheating by trying to get his old friend off lightly.

But Ecclestone was the one who criticised Briatore for his cheat plan saying "he could have been sending that young driver to what could have been his death."

www.mirror.co.uk/sport/motorsport/2009/09/27/bernie-ecclestone-says-sack-me-if-you-dare-115875-21704865/