In the Name of Fairness
/Why some of the best athletes are excluded, just for being themselves
Annet Negesa competes in the 2011 World Championships in Daegu, South Korea (Photo courtesy Annet Negesa)
“The history of modern sports governance is a history of unintended consequences.”
On the surface, competing as a runner seems straight forward: the winner of a race is the fastest person from point A to point B, and to progress, you just have to be a better runner than everyone else. Right?
Turns out, it’s not so simple. Fairness is a surprisingly complicated concept.
On this episode we bring you the story of two athletes — a “ghost runner” from the U.K. named John Tarrant, and a phenom from Uganda named Annet Negesa — and we explore how rules meant to ensure fairness can end up excluding some of the best athletes from competitions.
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John Tarrant, known as the “Ghost RUnner,” races unofficially in the Comrades Race in 1968 (Photo courtesy Bill Jones)
This story was reported and produced by Sheeba Joseph and Joseph Hawthorne.
Sheeba is Out There’s audience growth director and an independent producer. She’s working on another story about Annet Negesa, which is slated to run on a podcast called The Long Game, which is a co-production of Foreign Policy and Doha Debates.
Joseph is a producer Campside Media’s new podcast, Eclipsed, a weekly narrative history podcast that re-investigates important events from the past that were overshadowed.
To learn more about the Ghost Runner, check out his biography, Ghost Runner: The Tragedy of the Man They Couldn't Stop by Bill Jones.
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