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VCB And Blind Believers
Published: Friday | June 21, 201313 Comments
By Orville Higgins
Over the course of the past week, two things hit home forcefully. One was the undying love and affection held by the Jamaican people for Veronica Campbell-Brown. Since news of her adverse analytical finding emerged, people have been expressing not just shock, but complete disbelief, that she could have had anything to do with banned substances.
They were not prepared to believe that she was capable of doing anything like that. I have always felt that the picture of Veronica, with the 'crown of thorns' on her head, crying on the podium in Athens when she won the 200 metres, may well be the single most emotional moment in our sporting history. So I know she was always a darling of the Jamaican crowd.
What I didn't know was the extent to which people could lose all semblance of rationality when they were dealing with their idol. On radio this week, I have tried to be balanced, asking the questions that any reasonable journalist would ask.
Why did she not seek a medical exemption for whatever she was accused of taking? Why, in her release, is she apologising to all and sundry, if she is convinced she did no wrong? Why has she not come and spoken directly to her legion of fans? What took her so long to send out a release? (A full four or five days after we heard the A sample was positive.) Why is she, or her management team, refusing to go into any details about anything to do with the case?
These are good questions, but I have been taken to town for asking them. On my radio show, I would say 90 per cent of the callers felt I was being anti-Veronica. One man said publicly that I was acting like the chief prosecutor! I was puzzled at first, until I realised that during this very emotional period, they didn't want me to be a sports journalist, they didn't want me to be on radio trying to be balanced, to look at the whole thing dispassionately.
Dismissing all possibilities
In most other circumstances, they liked that side of me, but with Veronica, they wanted me to be a fan. They wanted me to be a Jamaican supporter, joining the queue of people dismissing all possibilities that she could do anything of the kind.
The more logical I tried to sound, the more I implored people to be objective and just examine the facts as we understood them, the more I got pilloried. I came across, I was told, as being cold, when all I was doing was what good journalists were supposed to do - ask the obvious, though tough questions.
I tried to get people to prepare for the worst, that there is indeed a real possibility that Veronica Campbell-Brown could, in fact, be sanctioned for using banned substances. Nobody wanted to hear that. I could understand that from an emotional public, but yet again I was amazed, and indeed amused, at some of my own colleagues in media.
I was disappointed (or was I really?) when I heard other people who host sports programmes on radio (notice, I didn't say sports journalists) dismissing the very thought that Veronica could be guilty.
On Tuesday, Claude Bryan, the head of her management team, was on KLAS FM. The interview lasted approximately half an hour, and on three different occasions he made mention that they had a tough fight ahead. I tried to get people to realise that the reason he felt there were, indeed, difficult times ahead, is because he must have been aware that it's going to be hard to explain, or justify, how banned substances ended up in her urine sample.
If Veronica is, indeed, sanctioned for using banned substances, listen for the spin doctors. They will question the testing procedure, the lab where the sample was sent, the competence of the drug officer. They will come up with stories about how she is being set up for whatever reason, anything but accept that she may indeed be guilty.
In that time, they will also be severe on people like me who saw Veronica as a human being with all the potential frailties, rather than as an infallible being. For Veronica's sake, and indeed for mine, I hope she 'buss her case'.
Orville Higgins is a sportscaster and talk-show host on KLAS FM.
Published: Friday | June 21, 201313 Comments
By Orville Higgins
Over the course of the past week, two things hit home forcefully. One was the undying love and affection held by the Jamaican people for Veronica Campbell-Brown. Since news of her adverse analytical finding emerged, people have been expressing not just shock, but complete disbelief, that she could have had anything to do with banned substances.
They were not prepared to believe that she was capable of doing anything like that. I have always felt that the picture of Veronica, with the 'crown of thorns' on her head, crying on the podium in Athens when she won the 200 metres, may well be the single most emotional moment in our sporting history. So I know she was always a darling of the Jamaican crowd.
What I didn't know was the extent to which people could lose all semblance of rationality when they were dealing with their idol. On radio this week, I have tried to be balanced, asking the questions that any reasonable journalist would ask.
Why did she not seek a medical exemption for whatever she was accused of taking? Why, in her release, is she apologising to all and sundry, if she is convinced she did no wrong? Why has she not come and spoken directly to her legion of fans? What took her so long to send out a release? (A full four or five days after we heard the A sample was positive.) Why is she, or her management team, refusing to go into any details about anything to do with the case?
These are good questions, but I have been taken to town for asking them. On my radio show, I would say 90 per cent of the callers felt I was being anti-Veronica. One man said publicly that I was acting like the chief prosecutor! I was puzzled at first, until I realised that during this very emotional period, they didn't want me to be a sports journalist, they didn't want me to be on radio trying to be balanced, to look at the whole thing dispassionately.
Dismissing all possibilities
In most other circumstances, they liked that side of me, but with Veronica, they wanted me to be a fan. They wanted me to be a Jamaican supporter, joining the queue of people dismissing all possibilities that she could do anything of the kind.
The more logical I tried to sound, the more I implored people to be objective and just examine the facts as we understood them, the more I got pilloried. I came across, I was told, as being cold, when all I was doing was what good journalists were supposed to do - ask the obvious, though tough questions.
I tried to get people to prepare for the worst, that there is indeed a real possibility that Veronica Campbell-Brown could, in fact, be sanctioned for using banned substances. Nobody wanted to hear that. I could understand that from an emotional public, but yet again I was amazed, and indeed amused, at some of my own colleagues in media.
I was disappointed (or was I really?) when I heard other people who host sports programmes on radio (notice, I didn't say sports journalists) dismissing the very thought that Veronica could be guilty.
On Tuesday, Claude Bryan, the head of her management team, was on KLAS FM. The interview lasted approximately half an hour, and on three different occasions he made mention that they had a tough fight ahead. I tried to get people to realise that the reason he felt there were, indeed, difficult times ahead, is because he must have been aware that it's going to be hard to explain, or justify, how banned substances ended up in her urine sample.
If Veronica is, indeed, sanctioned for using banned substances, listen for the spin doctors. They will question the testing procedure, the lab where the sample was sent, the competence of the drug officer. They will come up with stories about how she is being set up for whatever reason, anything but accept that she may indeed be guilty.
In that time, they will also be severe on people like me who saw Veronica as a human being with all the potential frailties, rather than as an infallible being. For Veronica's sake, and indeed for mine, I hope she 'buss her case'.
Orville Higgins is a sportscaster and talk-show host on KLAS FM.