the times | Monday July 27 2020 1GM 59
Sport
Battle of the Brits mixed-team exhibi-
tion, organised by his brother Jamie,
and will likely play only doubles to en-
sure a light workload ahead of his
return to official competition.
He experienced pain in his shins after
his run to the semi-finals of the Battle of
the Brits singles tournament last
month but has since recovered.
“I’m still trying to build up to get
ready for New York,” Murray said. “ItThis week’s event explained
Union Jacks (captained by Judy
Murray and Greg Rusedski) Dan
Evans, Andy Murray, Jan Choinski,
Ryan Peniston, Anton Matusevich,
Jamie Murray, Lloyd Glasspool,
Heather Watson, Katie Boulter, Jodie
Burrage, Naomi Broady, Alicia
Barnett, Olivia Nicholls
British Bulldogs (captained by
Anne Keothavong and Leon Smith)
Kyle Edmund, Cameron Norrie, Liam
Broady, Aidan McHugh, Alastair
Gray, Joe Salisbury, Dominic Inglot,
Johanna Konta, Harriet Dart, Emma
Raducanu, Maia Lumsden, Eden
Silva, Beth Grey
Venue National Tennis Centre,
Roehampton
Dates Today-Sunday
Format 60 matches will be played
over the course of the event in
singles, doubles and mixed doubles.
Victories will earn points on an
increasing scale as the week
progresses
TV coverage Live on BBC iPlayer
from 11.50am every dayTwo books have just been published
that, between them, will offer a fasci-
nating perspective on the Russian dop-
ing scandal.
David Walsh, the Sunday Times chief
sports writer, tells the extraordinary
story of Yuliya Stepanova and Vitaly
Stepanov, the courageous couple who
had to flee Russia with their young son
after exposing widespread corruption
in sport. It is entitled The Russian Affair:
The True Story of the Couple who Un-
covered the Greatest Sporting Scandal.
The other is written by Dr Grigory
Rodchenkov, the former director of
Russia’s national anti-doping laborato-
ry who also turned whistleblower and is
now separated from his family and in
hiding in the US. The Rodchenkov Affair
is due for release this week.
Extracts of Rodchenkov’s autobio-Russia used ships to beat dope testers
graphy, which were published yester-
day in the Mail on Sunday, make for in-
teresting reading, even if it comes as no
surprise to hear that the Russians have
been doping for decades. It was one of
the harsh realities of the Cold War; one
that had a devastating effect on some of
the athletes.
Even so, Rodchenkov makes some
remarkable claims, including the sug-
gestion that the Soviet Union’s absence
from the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics
was not a political boycott but a
decision fuelled by concerns about ad-
vances in drug-testing techniques.
The truth is drug testing in the 1980s
was entirely inadequate and plenty of
cheats prospered. And the testing re-
gime at LA was not as robust as it per-
haps should have been. It later emerged
that medical records from the Games
were either stolen or destroyed, the LA
organisers having refused a request by
the International Olympic Committee
to provide a secure storage facility.Rodchenkov says the Politburo with-
drew the team from LA after the Ameri-
cans refused to allow a Soviet ship to
enter US waters. That vessel, he claims,
was to have a secret testing facility to
check whether their athletes would
beat the American testing operation.
Rodchenkov says he ran a similar
ship for the 1988 Olympics in Seoul.
Not that Soviet athletes were alone in
avoiding detection at those Games,
however successful the testers proved
in catching Ben Johnson.
Over the years, dopers have been
protected. Rodchenkov says Johnson
tested positive at the Goodwill Games
in Moscow in 1986, but the result was
covered up.
Dark times for sure, with cheating
enabled as much by a lack of testing as
corrupt officials. But athletes still cheat,
as we are seeing all too regularly in
Kenya, and they will continue to do so
for as long as they think they can beat a
system that remains under-resourced.Drugs in sport
Matt Lawton
Chief Sports CorrespondentCLIVE BRUNSKILL/GETTY IMAGESwould be good for
me to get some
competitive
matches in for
sharpness and
stuff, but there’s a
lot of tennis this
week and I don’t
want to take any
risks with the
tournaments in the States just a fewweeks away. Right now I’m training on
the court four days a week.”
Johanna Konta has also joined Mur-
ray in offering her commitment to the
US Open. The British No 1 had
originally entered next week’s Palermo
Open — which will mark the resump-
tion of the WTA tour — but she is
reassured by the health and safety
efforts of tournament organisers in the
United States and will likely make her
return to official action in the same
draw as Serena Williams at the Lexing-
ton Open, from August 10.
“If the US Open is intending to go
ahead and does go ahead, then I
definitely want to play,” Konta said. “I
am just looking to be as
sensible as I
can at my end.
I know every
tournament
that does go
ahead will try
their best to
keep everyone
safe.
“Everything is
pointing in the
direction that the
US Open is going
to go ahead. They
have been quite
vocal that they are
pushing forwards.
Basing my opinion
on all the
information that is
there, I think it
probably will [go
ahead].”Both Murray and Konta, right, will warm up for the US Open at
this week’s Battle of the Brits team event in RoehamptonStatesjustafewc
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on US Open
Tennis
Stuart Fraser Tennis Correspondent
due to start on August 14. The three-
times grand-slam champion, now
ranked No 129 in the world, will instead
play in the Western and Southern
Open from August 22, which has been
moved from Cincinnati to the US
Open’s Flushing Meadows site, and is
prepared to make his comeback to the
ATP tour in qualifying rather than
taking a main draw wild card.
“My feeling is that some sports have
obviously come back and seem to have
done pretty well,” Murray said. “In
football, for example, I know there
hasn’t [yet] been any international
travel to go with that but the players
seem to have coped with the protocols
they’ve got in place pretty well.
“The issue for us is the trav-
el so, yeah, we’ll probably be
a bit apprehensive getting
over there. We’re getting
tested before we arrive,
so hopefully once we get
there, the players, the
staff and everyone are in
this secure bubble and
everything will be fine.
That is my hope.
“I was thinking about maybe
travelling somewhere beforehand
to get in a bit of hot-weather training
but then you’re increasing your risk of
catching the virus, which then means
you can’t potentially train or travel for a
couple of weeks, which could then put
playing a grand slam in doubt. So there
are things like that, where I’ve had to
change my thinking.
“Hopefully the US Open can go
ahead and it’s OK. But if not, I’m also
OK with that. It’s not like I’m saying it
must go ahead. So long as it’s safe for the
players, then we need to try to get back
to competing when it’s safe to do so.”
Murray, 33, is appearing in this week’sAndy Murray has confirmed that he
will play in the US Open next month
despite concerns from other sports-
people regarding the health situation in
the United States.
Rafael Nadal is among several tennis
players to have expressed reluctance
over travelling to New York for the
tournament from August 31 to Septem-
ber 13. In golf, Lee Westwood, the
former world No 1, is skipping next
week’s US PGA Championship because
of safety concerns.
Murray, however, is comfortable
with the measures that US Open
officials have introduced as
part of a biosecure bubble,
including no spectators,
designated accommoda-
tion and regular corona-
virus testing and tem-
perature checks. It will
be his first appearance in
a singles grand-slam
event since the 2019 Aus-
tralian Open and only his
third in the past three years, a
period in which he has twice under-
gone surgery on his right hip.
Asked if he thought that the US
Open will go ahead, Murray replied:
“Yes, as it stands. We have to try to
prepare that way. We were pretty
sceptical about it four or five weeks ago
but mentally at some stage you need to
start preparing and planning for it. I’m
planning to try to be there in shape for
the US Open. If it wasn’t happening, my
schedule for practising and my rehab
would all be a bit different.”
Murray has been forced to change his
initial plans because of the cancellation
of the Washington Open, which was
from a culture shock
way that players in Europe are often
not. Opting not to risk a 50/50 offload
may not be negative, but it isn’t the
Kiwi way. Gatland played his rugby in
New Zealand but he is the epitome of
a northern hemisphere coach, if not
risk-free then risk-averse.
His approach has made him a
winner in Europe and an extremely
competitive Lions head coach, with a
win in Australia before a major step
up to draw the series in New Zealand
in 2017. If next year’s tour to South
Africa goes ahead as planned in July
and Ausgust, Gatland will seek a
Lions record of two series wins and a
draw. It would be the best Lions
coaching record.
But would that automatically
elevate Gatland to the pantheon of
great coaches? His record with Wales
in Europe is outstanding, his results
against the southern hemisphere less
so. And now he is struggling to
impose his beliefs on how games can
be won in a country where the
overwhelming priority is how it
should be played.
In the final two rounds of Super
Rugby Aotearoa the Lion King faces
the most successful of all southern
hemisphere teams, the Crusaders, in
Hamilton before finishing up with a
trip to the Hurricanes – who ended a
seemingly eternal Crusaders winning
home run on Saturday.
Nine consecutive defeats is a
distinct possibility. Such a record isn’t
easy for any coach to gloss over, let
alone the Lions coach. Gatland’s
players are struggling with his
conservative European ways, he with
the freewheeling New Zealand
approach. If the Chiefs want an
immediate win, they need to loosen
their game. If the Lions want to win
in South Africa, they must be as tight
as any Gatland game plan has ever
been. As Eddie Jones also said last
week, coaching is anything but easy.559
Days since Murray’s last
appearance in a grand-
slam event, a five-set loss
to Roberto Bautista Agut
in the first round of the
2019 Australian
Open