Neither Steve Cram or Brendan Foster are journalists, but as Olympians they should be able to offer cogent comment and opinion on "their" sport. Don't hold your breath.
Like many former participants, whose livelihoods depend on propagating the image of a particular branch of sport, they have mastered the art of fudge and tend to vanish whenever anything remotely controversial crops up. As has been noted here before, specialist cricket and cycling writers fall into the same category.
The news that multi-bemedalled Olympic sprinter Marion Jones had been sent down for six months by a judge in New York for lying about steroids abuse coincided with Saturday's coverage of a cross country event in Edinburgh, hosted by Cram and Foster. A golden opportunity, you would have thought, for a spot of analysis.
In fact, their take on the Jones case lasted about 20 seconds, about a tenth of the time allotted to the news that Foster had just turned 60 and certainly far less than numerous plugs for the Great North Run in October.
Foster is chief executive of Nova International, the sports marketing company that organises the race; Cram commentates on it for the BBC. What little good name athletics has left, you could say, is important to both men.
Jones, her drug-taking and her prison sentence was an irritation - and one they all but ignored.
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I'm sure the BBC would have to have a word with either of these 'commentators' if they made any cogent comment about Jones - and then maybe their income would suffer - heaven forbid they should jeopardise that for a few expert points about their sport. Cram has blogged on the Guardian about Jones, but it's more a whinge than anything else. Who will speak out?
Huw, www.runflux.com
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