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    As Wimbledon Begins, an Era of Sports Free of Bans and Boycotts Ends

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    For decades, sports has avoided punishing athletes for the actions of their countries. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has put an end to that.LONDON — For roughly three decades, making sure athletes participated in the biggest events regardless of the world’s never-ending military and political battles has been a nearly sacrosanct tenet of international sports.Wars broke out. Authoritarian nations with egregious records on human rights hosted major events. There were massive doping scandals. And through it all, boycotts and bans on participation all but disappeared from the sports landscape.That principle — staging truly global competitions and not holding athletes responsible for the world’s ills — began to crumble after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It will be on hiatus starting Monday, when Wimbledon opens without the world No. 1, Daniil Medvedev, and the rest of the tennis players from Russia and Belarus, who have been barred from participating.World Athletics, track and field’s world governing body, has also barred Russian and Belarusian athletes from its championships next month in Eugene, Ore., the biggest track and field event outside of the Olympic Games.The bans represent a drastic shift after years of resisting letting politics interfere with individual athletes’ participation in sports. They are also a departure from the decisions that various sports organizations made earlier this year to limit punishments to banning Russian and Belarusian teams or any flags or other symbols of the countries from competitions.What changed? China’s authoritarian government has stifled free speech and other human rights, and its treatment of the Uyghurs has been deemed genocide by multiple governments, yet it was permitted to host the Olympics in February. Why were Russian and Belarusian athletes pariahs by March?Experts in international sports say that the so-called right-to-play principle ran headlong into the most significant package of economic sanctions placed on a country since the end of the Cold War. That shifted the calculus for sports leaders, said Michael Payne, the International Olympic Committee’s former director of marketing and broadcast rights.“For years, people would point at sports and athletes and demand boycotts, and sports could say, ‘Hang on, why are you singling us out but going on with the rest of your trade?’” Payne said. “But if you have full economic and political sanctions against a country, then I’m not sure that sports should still sit it out.”Daniil Medvedev of Russia, the world’s No. 1 men’s tennis player, will not be permitted to play Wimbledon this year.Cati Cladera/EPA, via ShutterstockThe leaders of tennis in Britain ultimately decided they could not. In April, acting at the behest of the British government, the All England Lawn Tennis Club, which runs Wimbledon, and the Lawn Tennis Association, which oversees the other annual spring and summer tournaments in England, announced the ban, explaining they had no other choice.“The U.K. government has set out directional guidance for sporting bodies and events in the U.K., with the specific aim of limiting Russia’s influence,” said Ian Hewitt, the chairman of the All England Club. “We have taken that directional guidance into account, as we must as a high-profile event and leading British institution.”He said the combination of the scale and severity of Russia’s invasion of a sovereign state, the condemnation by over 140 nations through the United Nations and the “specific and directive guidance to address matters” made this a “very, very exceptional situation.”The move is broadly popular in Britain, according to opinion polls, but it has received significant pushback from the men’s and women’s tennis tours. They condemned it as discriminatory and decided to withhold rankings points for any victories at the tournament.On Saturday, Novak Djokovic, the defending champion at Wimbledon, called the barring of players unfair. “I just don’t see how they have contributed to anything that is really happening,” he said.One Russian-born player, Natela Dzalamidze, changed her nationality to Georgian so she could play doubles at Wimbledon. Last week, the United States Tennis Association announced that it would allow players from Russia and Belarus to compete at its events, including the U.S. Open, this summer, but with no national identification.“This is not an easy situation,” Lew Sherr, the chief executive of the U.S.T.A. told The New York Times this month. “It’s a horrific situation for those in Ukraine, an unprovoked and unjust invasion and absolutely horrific, so anything we talk about pales in relation to what is going on there.”But, Sherr added, the organization did not receive any direct pressure or guidance from government officials.Tennis has been juggling politics and sport a lot lately. Steve Simon, the chief executive of the WTA, last fall suspended the tour’s business in China, including several high-profile tournaments, because of the country’s treatment of Peng Shuai.Peng, a doubles champion at Wimbledon in 2013 and the French Open in 2014, accused a former top government official of sexually assaulting her. She then disappeared from public view for weeks. She later disavowed her statements. Simon said the WTA would not return to China until it could speak independently with Peng and a full investigation took place.Sebastian Coe, center, president of World Athletics, said sports must take a stand on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.Peter Cziborra/Action Images Via ReutersIn explaining the decision to bar Russian and Belarusian athletes from its world championships, Sebastian Coe, the president of World Athletics, acknowledged in March that the move went against much of what he has stood for. He has railed against the practice of politicians targeting athletes to make political points when other sectors continue to go about their business. “This is different,” he said, because the other parts of the economy are at the tip of the spear. “Sport has to step up and join these efforts to end this war and restore peace. We cannot and should not sit this one out.”Michael Lynch, the former director of sports marketing for Visa, a leading sponsor of the Olympics and the World Cup, said the response to Russia’s aggression is natural as sports evolve away from the fiction that they are somehow separate from global events.Just as the N.B.A. and other sports leagues were forced to embrace the Black Lives Matter movement after the murder of George Floyd and the shooting of Jacob Blake, international sports will have to recognize that they are not walled off from the problems of the world, he said.“This genie is not going back in that bottle,” Lynch said. “We will continue to see increased use of sports for cultural change, for value change, for policy change. It’s only going to happen more and more.”Sports’ sanctions against Russia could be the beginning of the end of largely unfettered global competition. Who gets to play and who doesn’t could depend on whether the political zeitgeist deems an athlete’s country to be compliant with the standards of a civilized world order.Should Israeli athletes worry because of their country’s much-criticized occupation of the West Bank? What about American athletes the next time their country kills civilians with a drone strike?“This a slippery slope,” David Wallechinsky, a leading sports historian, said of the decision to hold Russian and Belarusian athletes accountable for the actions of their governments. “The question is, Will other people from other countries end up paying the price?”This month, some of the world’s top golfers were criticized for joining a new golf tour bankrolled by the government of Saudi Arabia, a repressive government responsible for the 2018 murder of Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi dissident and columnist for The Washington Post. Looming a little more than two years from now are the next Summer Olympics, in Paris. Who will be there is anyone’s guess.“I do think Ukraine has rightly galvanized the West and its allies, but I also believe that sport will emerge as a connector instead of a tool of division,” said Terrence Burns, a sports consultant who in the 2000s advised Russia on its bids to secure hosting rights for the Olympics and the World Cup during a different era. “But it will take time. And during that time, athletes, for better or worse, will pay a price.”Christopher Clarey More

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      DK Metcalf Learns Football Speed Doesn't Equal Track Speed

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      DK Metcalf, the All-Pro Seattle receiver, finished last in his heat on Sunday in his first 100-meter race against professional sprinters.WALNUT, Calif. — DK Metcalf launched slowly from the starting blocks, faded over 100 meters and learned in 10.363 seconds on Sunday that elite football speed does not translate easily to elite track speed.An All-Pro receiver for the Seattle Seahawks, Metcalf is impressively fast for a football player. He delivered one of the most memorable plays of the last N.F.L. season, exceeding 22 miles an hour while wearing his helmet and pads to chase down an Arizona defensive back who intercepted a pass.But in what he said was his first 100-meter race, Metcalf finished last in his preliminary heat against second-tier professional sprinters and did not qualify for the final at the Golden Games, a tuneup for next month’s United States Olympic track and field trials.“These are world class athletes; they do this for a living,” Metcalf said after finishing 15th out of 17 competitors in two preliminary heats in cool, overcast conditions. “It’s very different from football speed, from what I just realized.”Still, he challenged himself against top athletes from another sport after only two or three months of sprint training and did not embarrass himself. And he did finish ahead of two competitors in the preliminary heats. Cravon Gillespie won the final in 9.96 seconds.Why do this? Metcalf was asked. “Why not?” he replied.None of the four best American 100-meter runners participated in the race in a stadium without fans because of pandemic-related restrictions. It hardly mattered. Metcalf’s time was notable for an N.F.L. receiver but not for an elite sprinter. It did not rank among the fastest 20,000 performances ever in the 100 meters, according to an all-time list compiled by World Athletics, the sport’s governing body.There remains a vast gulf between football speed and world-class sprint speed. Compared to Usain Bolt’s world record of 9.58 seconds, Metcalf’s time was nearly eight-tenths of a second slower, which might as well be an hour in an event often decided by hundredths of a second.Metcalf running to score a touchdown in 2019.Scott Eklund/Associated PressNor did Metcalf challenge the national high school record of 10.00 seconds, often considered the threshold for world-class speed. Most importantly, he did not reach his goal of 10.05 seconds, the time needed to gain automatic entry into the Olympic trials in Eugene, Ore.Other competitors welcomed Metcalf to the meet held at Mt. San Antonio College. For his football celebrity, which drew interest to a sport that gains little attention apart from the Olympics. For his willingness to compete against professional sprinters. And for the lesson delivered that running 100 meters is a far more technical endeavor than simply running as fast as you can from the start line to the finish line.“Fans have been egging this on for a long time, that our speeds are comparable; they’re not,” said Noah Lyles, who could potentially win the 100 meters (personal best 9.86 seconds) and 200 meters at the rescheduled Tokyo Olympics in July and August.Sure, there have been some extremely fast football players. Most notably, Bob Hayes, a Hall of Fame receiver for the Dallas Cowboys, won the 100 meters at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. But most football players “don’t have any clue” about elite sprinting, said Mike Rodgers, a 2016 Olympian and a gold medalist on the United States 4×100-meter relay team at the 2019 world track and field championships.Football players seldom run the length of the field in a straight line. And their 40-yard dash times — Metcalf ran that distance in 4.33 seconds at the 2019 N.F.L. combine for prospective players — are widely discounted in track circles. There is no reaction to a starting gun to precisely gauge speed. At a fan exhibit at the 2019 Super Bowl, the retired Bolt casually matched the N.F.L. combine record of 4.22 seconds while running in sweats and sneakers.Metcalf, who is 6-feet-4 inches and weighs 229 pounds, was a superb hurdler in high school, but did not run track at the University of Mississippi. His lack of formal training at 100 meters was evident on Sunday.“There is as much strategy running 100 meters as running a marathon,” Lyles said.No one can accelerate for a full 100 meters. Speed must be distributed strategically. The mechanics of the event require a low, explosive start from the blocks. Sprinters must avoid popping up too quickly and losing momentum or braking by striking the ground too far in front of their bodies.Then comes the acceleration phase. Speed is a function of the length and frequency of strides. Top speed is reached at about 60, 70 or 80 meters. The challenge becomes trying to hold as much speed as possible while decelerating to the finish line.The outcome of a 100-meter race is essentially an optical illusion. The winner is not speeding up the fastest but slowing down the slowest.“You can only for five or six seconds produce maximum contraction” of the muscles, said Olivier Girard, an exercise physiologist who studies sprinting at the University of Western Australia. “After that, the energy-producing system is not as efficient. That’s why we cannot maintain the top speed and have to slow down.”Asked if he would run another 100, Metcalf demurred. When someone else asked what was next for him, he smiled and said, “Football. It’s time for minicamp.” More