Following is David Train's letter to his MP. Any support can be sent to
, or preferably via your own MP.

You can find details of your MP he

http://www.psr.keele.ac.uk/area/uk/mps.htm

and send a message from here (even find out who is your MP using your
PostCode):

http://www.writetothem.com/


-------------------------------------------------------

Date: Tue, 1 Nov 2005 12:59:20 EST
From:
Subject: Canoeing's 'drugs coach'
To: , , ,

Cc: , ,
, , ,
, , ,
,

Peter Luff MP.,
House of Commons,
London SW1A OAA
1st November 2005
Dear Peter,


Canoeing’s ‘drugs coach’

Those who oppose the appointment now plan to petition the London Games chief,
Lord Coe, and the British Olympic Association chair Lord Moynihan to press
for his removal. “If UK Sport are serious about their drugs policy he will
be dismissed forthwith,� says one club chairman, Dr Alan Bennett.

....but in this case they may have a point, as Ivanov’s employment in the
current anti-drugs climate by the British Canoe Union seems at best naive and
at worst a serious error of judgement.

Alan Hubbard: Independent on Sunday
30th October 2005

I am writing to ask you to immediately approach Lord Coe and Lord Moynihan,
and if need be to raise the matter in parliament, over the issue of the
appointment of a Bulgarian born coach, by the British Canoe, who has called
for the legalisation of drugs, and why the body responsible for drugs, UK
Sport is supporting this appointment. I believe it to be a national
disgrace that they should do so.

In the last few days I have written to Seb Coe and Colin Moynihan and I
enclose the letters, together with other information and the articles by Alan
Hubbard. As you know, I have had a battle with the whole Olympic
sport’s, and British Canoe Union’s, establishments, since 1997, over
their appeasement policy of going along with setting up an East German, top
down, command and control system, run, by a largely knowledgeless, highly
paid, imported management class, blindly using an outdated arbitrary target
management system, to please their political masters.

I warned, in my contribution to the Oxford Union debate, that to impose a
totalitarian system on Olympic sport, in the blind pursuit of medals, would
lead to cheating, bullying, blackmail, lying, spin, smear, and intimidation,
being used against athletes, coaches and clubs, by a management class,
redundant from day one. Now it has happened, and Fladbury, as always
are in the vanguard of the fight against this morally corrupt system, which
is now destroying our sport, and is about to destroy the main Olympic sport
of athletics.

Earlier this year the people of Fladbury rose up against the ill advised
remarks of Seb Coe, in the Fladbury versus Coe debate. We saw it as a
creative competition and set out the differences - Fladbury, being ‘Train
and Take Part and WE ALL WIN’, against the elitist Coe line that ‘Only
first place will do’ . To his great credit, Seb listened, and when it
came to the crunch, used the Fladbury philosophy, with its twin aims of
inspiring all to take part, and winning medals by continual improvement, to
win the London 2012 bid.

But accepting the Fladbury philosophy and winning the bid is the easy bit.
The hard bit is putting it into practice, and it is instances like this,
which will determine how serious we really are about putting theory into
practice.
Seb must be inspired to once again listen to the voices from Fladbury and
the growing number of clubs in canoeing and athletics, who now recognise
that there is something seriously wrong with this totalitarian system first
put in place by Sir Rodney Walker when chair of Sport England.

At many clubs in Britain we have been putting these ideas into practice for
years - they lie deep in out culture. Achieving Seb’s twin aims can
never be achieved by the creation of this new bureaucracy we call UK Sport,
but only by the will of the people who love and lead their sports. In the
case of canoeing, and athletics, our culture has always been a bottom up,
club based, rather than a top down system, and going, as it does, with the
grain of human nature, should be built on, rather than being destroyed by
highly paid knowledgeless, state bureaucrats. Our sports has historically,
also had a highly democratic structure, which was a means of stopping
managerial bullying,. In canoeing it has been steadily eroded by a
state created management class looking solely after its own needs and
athletics is now being bullied to follow the same disastrous path.

There are those who wish to gain power to tell us what to do and there are
those who wish to gain power to create an environment where young people can
grow and develop to their maximum potential - which, for some, will mean
Olympic golds. We must have, at the top of Olympic sport, leaders of the
latter type, and they do not come from a bureaucratic management class, such
as we now have at UK Sport. It is sometimes difficult for those, not too
deeply involved, to grasp the wider implications of all of this, and it is
often the case that we have to wait for some incident to focus on, which
then becomes the catalyst for change. I believe that this case can provide
such a catalyst, and if Seb Coe and Colin Moynihan grasp the opportunity,
then the whole of British sport and society will be the winners.
Totalitarianism has no part to play in British sport or society, and the
time has come for us to bring it to a halt.

The issue is now clear. The only choice people have to make is whether they
back British coaches and clubs who have expressed, throughout their lives,
the very best of British sporting values, or those who still express the very
worst values of the totalitarian systems of the former Eastern Bloc. The
coaches of Fladbury have made their decision - they will never come under the
command of any foreign coach who believes that drug taking should be made
legal - even if it means that we come out of Olympic sport, and close the
Fladbury Paddle Club, that has served Britain, and Mid Worcestershire, with
honour, for thirty three years.

We do not want any of the young people of your constituency of Mid
Worcestershire ever to be tainted by by being associated with such values.
Neither will we ever accept Fladbury paddlers, or coaches, being bullied,
blackmailed, lied to, or intimidated, by servants of the state. Only by
doing that, can we keep democracy alive in sport, and ensure our future
freedoms. I would hope that as our MP you would take that message to Lord
Coe, Lord Moynihan, and parliament.

Here, at the site of the Battle of Evesham we have drawn our line in the sand
on the ethics of Olympic sport. If the Lord’s Coe and Moynihan wish to
join in this latest battle for English freedom we would be delighted to have
them at our side. Otherwise, we must turn to the parliament, and the
people of Britain to save the soul of Olympic sport. As our Member of
Parliament I ask you to lead the way, and I am sure that you will be only
too delighted to do so on behalf of the people of Mid Worcestershire.

My very best wishes,

Good paddling,


David W. Train.

Lord Coe, Lord Moynihan, Rt Hon Tessa Jowell MP., Ken Livingstone Mayor of
London. Sue Campbell. BCU., BOA Sir Rodney Walker.



--