Two initiatives, one international and the other national, have been put forward presumably to try and reverse athletics’ fortunes both in terms of public enthusiasm for and participation in our sport, both of which are seriously on the wane across the globe.
The first comes from the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) and the other from United Kingdom Athletics (UKA). In 2010 the IAAF is totally revamping the top tiers of its World Athletics Tour with the introduction of a Diamond League; UKA are hoping to introduce inter-city matches of short duration that will put the sport back on the map. The key element in both cases is whether the aim is to rekindle public interest rather than athletics being its usual self-indulgent self.
One of the factors in the decline in popularity of the major Olympic sport has been the stark contrast between the glamorous top competitions and the remaining levels of the sport. In favoured countries there is just one major international event that attracts the public; the rest of the fare is usually very lengthy and turgid. In Britain we are very fortunate in having two meetings lined up for the Diamond League that will be televised by the BBC but below that the level of competition gets progressively worse; the public doesn’t just not turn up to meetings, it doesn’t even know about them. My impression is that it’s the same across the globe with the possible exceptions of the USA and Jamaica with their intensive scholastic and university competitions.
What the IAAF doesn’t seem to recognise in its enthusiasm for its new competition is that by having central contracts with top international athletes it is hoovering up more stars who will not appear in their own countries. That was partly acceptable when the major grand prix meetings appeared on terrestrial television as they did in the golden era of the sport but it is quite another matter when the vast majority of meetings only appear in the outer reaches of satellite, pay-to-view television. That is why the role of IMG in selling the global television rights is so vital to the success of the Diamond League.
Part of the problem in recent years has been the repetitive nature of many events, American sprinters beating American sprinters and African runners beating African runners, all usually wearing the same new Nike vest. It was forcibly raised by TV representatives at a workshop on the One-Day meetings in Monaco four years ago but the penny seems to be taking an inordinately long time to drop. Even the magic of Usain Bolt would begin to pale for TV audiences if all his races became foregone conclusions.
On the plus side it is good news that all events will be catered for across the whole series with field event athletes and throwers in particular receiving an equal share of the $420,000 prize money available at each meeting and being able to win, along with their track peers, the top prize of a 4 carat diamond (worth $80,000) for gaining most points across the twelve or fifteen meetings series.
We really need to know a lot more detail about the proposed British inter-city competition, with a pilot this year and a launch in 2010, before due comment can be made but really the same criteria for the success of the Diamond League applies. Will the competition be sponsored thus giving it financial clout and publicity? Will it attract our top stars? And if it does will it attract television? Without the oxygen of publicity it will just be another valiant effort almost literally played out behind closed doors, like the current inter-city indoor matches and regional championships and league athletics. In my stint as Media spokesman for the sport I continually heard people bemoaning the fact that the public did not support their endeavours. I had a stock question in reply: Who knows? Almost invariably it transpired that no one did.
Globally and domestically there is not enough athletics competition going on. In the northern hemisphere summer the general public is aware of athletics from about mid-June to mid-August, too short a time span to create enthusiasm or even passing interest. Until that situation is addressed we will not move forward in any significant manner.
After the Ball
The Diamond League is good news for Britain which will be staging two of the meetings. It has also surely helped to finally settle the post-2012 debate on the downsized Olympic stadium, which will now become the national athletics stadium with a 25,000 seat capacity. Without it our capital city would have been almost alone in Europe in not having an athletics stadium worthy of the name.
The crowds that sweep to the now obsolete Crystal Palace will ensure that big meetings in East London are well supported but UK Athletics and England Athletics must guarantee that top meetings regularly go there throughout the track season.
The sport has done little, with an ongoing silence, to counter the speculation about the stadium’s future. Precious little has been heard from either UKA or England about their competition plans for post-2012. Luckily English soccer’s aversion to having a track around a pitch has killed off most of the conjecture but definite plans should be outlined as soon as possible
The UK and England Championships should be permanent annual fixtures; there should be other international events (perhaps a revival of the hugely popular floodlit meetings) and certainly opportunity must be made for young athletes to have their moments on the Olympic track. If accommodation requirements can be met surely it would be an ideal permanent venue for the English Schools?
Huge crowds of 40 to 50 thousand used to pack the old White City stadium half a century or so ago when, of course, other attractions were in short supply. Those days are well gone. But the new stadium can be the catalyst for revival. It is interesting to note that all the major sports have their headquarters and their major stadia in the capital, at Wembley, Wimbledon, Lords and Twickenham and British athletics must seriously consider moving its headquarters to what will always be known as the Olympic stadium. It would be a sign, worryingly missing to date, of serious intent by the sport.
A few words to the Wise
How wise of the IAAF Council to step back from the brink, accept legal advice and not attempt to ban Dwain Chambers for bringing the sport into disrepute through certain passages in his drugs memoir,masquerading as an autobiography. To have done so would have opened up a Pandora’s Box of legalities and prolonged the media agony of a sport in the grip of its own zealotry.
The Council could be wiser still if it now decided put its collective emotions aside, put its house in order as far as drug taking and punishment is concerned and ensure that there is consistency across the sport by setting rules that everyone - athletes, federations and promoters - must adhere to. Allowing the application of so called individual consciences creates loopholes and makes for bad law.
Monday, 23 March 2009
Tuesday, 17 March 2009
Racing Demons
At the Seoul Olympics in 1988 the sprinter Ben Johnson, who had won gold in the 100 metres, tested positive for an anabolic steroid, was immediately stripped of his medal, his world record and unceremoniously bundled back to Canada midst a global media frenzy.
He became demonized. Humankind always seems to need an embodiment of what it loves or hates and as far as athletics and indeed sport was concerned Johnson perfectly fitted the bill for “cheating”. He was banned, vilified and hauled before the Dubin Enquiry in Canada and the nation expected public recantation and remorse. Other Canadian athletes were caught up in the Dubin net and confessed to drug taking. It was a dark time for Canadian athletics. But Johnson would not do what everyone wanted and creep away into the night. He attempted a comeback; it was unsuccessful. Sport was mightily relieved when he finally retired; it could pretend that the nightmare had never happened.
Fast forward two decades and we now have demonized Dwain, the new European indoor champion and record holder, the third fastest man over 60 metres in the history of the sport. The extraordinary thing about his case is that after testing positive Chambers was ‘sentenced’ to a 2 year ban for THG, served his time, tried out other sports and then decided to return to athletics for a second time in 2008, two and a quarter years after he was eligible to do so.
I say for a second time because what seems to have been forgotten midst the holier-than-thou chest beating and wailing is that he actually returned from his ban in 2006, ran second in the European Cup and, more significantly, competed in the Gateshead Grand Prix in June. So what had changed by February 2008 to make his second coming such a global cause celebre and to have him banned by European promoters and constantly vilified?
It was his association with the sensational revelations surrounding the Bay Area Laboratory Cooperative (BALCO), the jailing of Marion Jones for perjury, the insidious winks and hints from BALCO owner Victor Conte, the disclosures about world record holders Tim Montgomery and Justin Gatlin and baseball legend Barry Bonds. For the second time in two decades athletics had been dragged through the mud. In the eyes of many Chambers is a living personification of all that. And because he too will not creep away into the night the demonization continues apace, fuelled by avaricious tabloids.
This coming June the Gateshead Grand Prix will be held again but, as things stand, Chambers will not be there. He is the same athlete with the same sins that competed in 2006; it’s the same promoter and the same federation. The IAAF tells me: “There is no "ban" by Euro meetings - there is a recommendation NOT to invite doped athletes. They can’t ban anyone - only the IAAF can do that.” So why is UK Athletics welcoming back Dwain Chambers on the one hand (and revelling in his success) but banning him from its two lucrative televised meetings on the other? Who’s in charge, UKA or its promotions arm, Fasttrack?
I have asked UKA these questions but they have disdained to reply. We now have organizations that are no more than cabals under our sports quangos, cabals who believe that their actions are not the business of the sport as a whole.
The question as to who is the final arbiter as far as our grand prix meetings are concerned becomes even more pertinent with the news that Gerard Janetzky, the promoter of the opening Golden League meeting of 2009, the DKB-ISTAF meeting in Berlin, has decided that enough is enough and invited Chambers to compete at his meeting, on 14 June.
“I’m surprised Chambers is viewed as the root of all evil,” Janetzky said, putting it in a nutshell. “There have been plenty of athletes who were allowed to start after sitting out their ban, so why should Chamber’s punishment be worse?”
But Chambers seems determined on keeping himself a pariah. Firstly his book about his time as a doped up sprinter hit the stands around the same time as he was winning a gold medal for Britain. Secondly it has transpired that he is keeping in contact with Conte and taking his advice. Who is advising this man? Is anyone advising him? My argument is not about Chambers but about justice and underhand attempts to circumvent the law.
Chambers is a lost soul in the wilderness and if British Athletics is to continue to revel in his success it must do more to help him. It could begin by scourging the hypocrisy in its midst, and let him compete in its televised meetings.
The IAAF bemoans the fact that it did not have a rule, when Chambers returned to the sport, that specified that all his ill gotten gains from athletics (put at $200,000) when he was on drugs, must be paid back before he could compete again. With the Euromeets ban this would effectively mean a lifetime ban. The world governing body needs to make its mind up. If it wants a lifetime ban for drug taking then it should institute one and test it in the courts.
John Rodda
I was deeply saddened to read of the death of John Rodda, who wrote on athletics for the Guardian between 1960 and 1992. John was the doyen and most respected of athletics writers. His contacts with the sport were at the very highest level as those of us, on the other side of the fence as it were, all too frequently discovered.
I had known John for many years but we came into closer and more frequent contact during my decade- long tenure as Media spokesman for the sport. Those were the halcyon days of the 80s and early 90s when British athletes ruled Europe and in some events the world. John was an exceptional writer; his work was incisive and imbued with tremendous knowledge. His finest journalistic moment came in 1968 and had nothing to do with athletics. He was in Mexico City for the Olympics when hundreds of student demonstrators were gunned down just before the Games opened. John was the only Guardian correspondent in Mexico and his dispatches from the capital showed that he would have been a top journalist no matter what the field.
He wrote a history of the Olympics with the IOC President, Lord Killanin; he served on the IAAF Press Commission for many years; he covered ten Olympic Games for his paper; he helped Seb Coe make a report to the IOC; he assisted Andy Norman make a presentation to an IAAF Congress that changed the face of international athletics; he knew Olympic politics inside out. John was not only a reporter on athletics but a lover of the sport as well.
His other sporting love was boxing, which he also covered for his paper, writing on some of the great title fights of the second half of the 20th century.
My best memory of John is of the European Championships in Helsinki in 1994. I was walking through the grounds of the Athlete’s Village when my mobile rang. A familiar voice greeted me and then said: “Can you confirm that a British athlete has tested positive?” I couldn’t so I said that I would get back to him. I turned heel and went back to the restaurant where team manager Verona Elder and team doctor Malcolm Brown were in very close conference. They stopped talking. “I know,” I said, “what you’ve been talking about.” It was the celebrated case of Solomon Wariso and a supplement called Up Your Gas and John had obtained yet another scoop.
John’s retirement lunch was held at the celebrated Ivy Restaurant in London. One of the gifts presented to him was a photograph of him sitting next to the then IAAF President, Primo Nebiolo, who was obviously desperately trying to talk himself out of a probing question. The expression, peering over his reading glasses, on John’s face was wonderfully sceptical. He loved athletes but was rightly suspicious of most administrators.
When you think of John it is of a remembrance of times past, of an era when athletics was always in the news. Those days are gone but we will long remember him as, in the very best sense, a fine gentleman.
He became demonized. Humankind always seems to need an embodiment of what it loves or hates and as far as athletics and indeed sport was concerned Johnson perfectly fitted the bill for “cheating”. He was banned, vilified and hauled before the Dubin Enquiry in Canada and the nation expected public recantation and remorse. Other Canadian athletes were caught up in the Dubin net and confessed to drug taking. It was a dark time for Canadian athletics. But Johnson would not do what everyone wanted and creep away into the night. He attempted a comeback; it was unsuccessful. Sport was mightily relieved when he finally retired; it could pretend that the nightmare had never happened.
Fast forward two decades and we now have demonized Dwain, the new European indoor champion and record holder, the third fastest man over 60 metres in the history of the sport. The extraordinary thing about his case is that after testing positive Chambers was ‘sentenced’ to a 2 year ban for THG, served his time, tried out other sports and then decided to return to athletics for a second time in 2008, two and a quarter years after he was eligible to do so.
I say for a second time because what seems to have been forgotten midst the holier-than-thou chest beating and wailing is that he actually returned from his ban in 2006, ran second in the European Cup and, more significantly, competed in the Gateshead Grand Prix in June. So what had changed by February 2008 to make his second coming such a global cause celebre and to have him banned by European promoters and constantly vilified?
It was his association with the sensational revelations surrounding the Bay Area Laboratory Cooperative (BALCO), the jailing of Marion Jones for perjury, the insidious winks and hints from BALCO owner Victor Conte, the disclosures about world record holders Tim Montgomery and Justin Gatlin and baseball legend Barry Bonds. For the second time in two decades athletics had been dragged through the mud. In the eyes of many Chambers is a living personification of all that. And because he too will not creep away into the night the demonization continues apace, fuelled by avaricious tabloids.
This coming June the Gateshead Grand Prix will be held again but, as things stand, Chambers will not be there. He is the same athlete with the same sins that competed in 2006; it’s the same promoter and the same federation. The IAAF tells me: “There is no "ban" by Euro meetings - there is a recommendation NOT to invite doped athletes. They can’t ban anyone - only the IAAF can do that.” So why is UK Athletics welcoming back Dwain Chambers on the one hand (and revelling in his success) but banning him from its two lucrative televised meetings on the other? Who’s in charge, UKA or its promotions arm, Fasttrack?
I have asked UKA these questions but they have disdained to reply. We now have organizations that are no more than cabals under our sports quangos, cabals who believe that their actions are not the business of the sport as a whole.
The question as to who is the final arbiter as far as our grand prix meetings are concerned becomes even more pertinent with the news that Gerard Janetzky, the promoter of the opening Golden League meeting of 2009, the DKB-ISTAF meeting in Berlin, has decided that enough is enough and invited Chambers to compete at his meeting, on 14 June.
“I’m surprised Chambers is viewed as the root of all evil,” Janetzky said, putting it in a nutshell. “There have been plenty of athletes who were allowed to start after sitting out their ban, so why should Chamber’s punishment be worse?”
But Chambers seems determined on keeping himself a pariah. Firstly his book about his time as a doped up sprinter hit the stands around the same time as he was winning a gold medal for Britain. Secondly it has transpired that he is keeping in contact with Conte and taking his advice. Who is advising this man? Is anyone advising him? My argument is not about Chambers but about justice and underhand attempts to circumvent the law.
Chambers is a lost soul in the wilderness and if British Athletics is to continue to revel in his success it must do more to help him. It could begin by scourging the hypocrisy in its midst, and let him compete in its televised meetings.
The IAAF bemoans the fact that it did not have a rule, when Chambers returned to the sport, that specified that all his ill gotten gains from athletics (put at $200,000) when he was on drugs, must be paid back before he could compete again. With the Euromeets ban this would effectively mean a lifetime ban. The world governing body needs to make its mind up. If it wants a lifetime ban for drug taking then it should institute one and test it in the courts.
John Rodda
I was deeply saddened to read of the death of John Rodda, who wrote on athletics for the Guardian between 1960 and 1992. John was the doyen and most respected of athletics writers. His contacts with the sport were at the very highest level as those of us, on the other side of the fence as it were, all too frequently discovered.
I had known John for many years but we came into closer and more frequent contact during my decade- long tenure as Media spokesman for the sport. Those were the halcyon days of the 80s and early 90s when British athletes ruled Europe and in some events the world. John was an exceptional writer; his work was incisive and imbued with tremendous knowledge. His finest journalistic moment came in 1968 and had nothing to do with athletics. He was in Mexico City for the Olympics when hundreds of student demonstrators were gunned down just before the Games opened. John was the only Guardian correspondent in Mexico and his dispatches from the capital showed that he would have been a top journalist no matter what the field.
He wrote a history of the Olympics with the IOC President, Lord Killanin; he served on the IAAF Press Commission for many years; he covered ten Olympic Games for his paper; he helped Seb Coe make a report to the IOC; he assisted Andy Norman make a presentation to an IAAF Congress that changed the face of international athletics; he knew Olympic politics inside out. John was not only a reporter on athletics but a lover of the sport as well.
His other sporting love was boxing, which he also covered for his paper, writing on some of the great title fights of the second half of the 20th century.
My best memory of John is of the European Championships in Helsinki in 1994. I was walking through the grounds of the Athlete’s Village when my mobile rang. A familiar voice greeted me and then said: “Can you confirm that a British athlete has tested positive?” I couldn’t so I said that I would get back to him. I turned heel and went back to the restaurant where team manager Verona Elder and team doctor Malcolm Brown were in very close conference. They stopped talking. “I know,” I said, “what you’ve been talking about.” It was the celebrated case of Solomon Wariso and a supplement called Up Your Gas and John had obtained yet another scoop.
John’s retirement lunch was held at the celebrated Ivy Restaurant in London. One of the gifts presented to him was a photograph of him sitting next to the then IAAF President, Primo Nebiolo, who was obviously desperately trying to talk himself out of a probing question. The expression, peering over his reading glasses, on John’s face was wonderfully sceptical. He loved athletes but was rightly suspicious of most administrators.
When you think of John it is of a remembrance of times past, of an era when athletics was always in the news. Those days are gone but we will long remember him as, in the very best sense, a fine gentleman.
Wednesday, 18 February 2009
Men Only 2 (Gwenda Ward)
Tony has invited me to follow up on his last Blog, and I’m happy to do so. When he referred to ‘those trying to establish gender equity holistically in British athletics’, he was referring, largely, but not exclusively, to me.
Debates about the best ways to get action have been quite frequent in our house. Tony has always said that I’ve been too soft, too amenable; that I’ve let the athletics authorities off the hook by not telling them plainly why and how they are wrong. But I’ve always said that the only effective way to get change is to work with, not against the organisations, an engendered difference of opinion in itself, I guess! He also says that they've given me the run around and, on reflection, that is all too true.
Anyway, I’ve networked, debated, proposed, joined working groups and committees, got elected to IAAF women’s committee, got co-opted to my regional council (not elected, mind, the clubs' brotherhood doesn't want my sort), written and researched and networked again. In 2002 I was asked by UKA to write a module and resource, “Coaching the Female Athlete”, now a self-funded website (womenontrack.org) currently linked to the England site, and in 2003 was invited to head the gender sub-group as part of Sport England/UKA’s Valuing Diversity Project.
But, dear athletics friends, none of this has worked and I’ve hit the wall. My way has not and will not work, you can lead the horse to water etc etc... I’ve made dozens of suggestions and offers, all in response to insiders’ acknowledgement of a problem, but nothing is followed up, invited calls and emails not answered, decisions perpetually avoided.
Yes, OK – in spite of my record in the field, (and the fact that no-one has ever told me that I am wrong in my analysis or approach), it could be me that is the problem!
But there are still some very experienced and knowledgeable women employed in England Athletics who I know have strong views about discrimination and inappropriate treatment against female athletes, coaches and decision-makers. Have they been asked by their bosses to come up with a strategy? No, of course not. Furthermore it seems they are very wary of standing up to be counted because of a real fear of losing their job in the almost inevitable next restructuring. It’s now obvious to me that the current athletics establishment is both unable and unwilling to address gender equity and nothing I, or anyone else outside our paymasters UK Sport or Sport England, can say will make any difference.
Its not that the strategists and managers don’t see a problem; it’s rather that the possible answers are too challenging and require an analysis of their own attitudes, assumptions and behaviour and those over whom they preside. That, of course, is not in any of the plans and certainly doesn’t suit the style. Any action for equity, they assume, must be added on, not integrated- a big mistake.
It’s OK to see women themselves as the problem. Programmes to promote “Leadership for Women” seem just about acceptable in some quarters, but of course that is a total misunderstanding of the issue. Women per se do not lack leadership, though they may well execute it differently to men. But, alongside any other disempowered group, they DO adapt their behaviour and expectations in the light of what they observe and experience, i.e., negative feedback, either direct or subtle, and negligible opportunities for themselves or progress by other women.
Frequently, disadvantaged groups also internalise these negative judgments, so that self-esteem drops, followed by commitment and performance, creating a self-fulfilling prophesy. If the context is voluntary, the undervalued sectors vote with their feet, enabling the predominant group to stay self-satisfied and in control. That’s exactly the situation that we face in athletics.
No, the leadership issues lie, not with women but within the organisational hierarchy who, because of their homogeneity and lack of intellectual curiosity on psycho/social issues, unwittingly and unintentionally perpetuate the very factors that excluded women to start with.
Here’s an example: I have recently been told by the head of coaching development for England Athletics that I am “not the right person to lead on coaching the female athlete”. Now, on one level I see his point. I have not spent years coaching and am only a fast-tracked Level 2 coach. But as an ex-Olympian, I have done other things in the sport, especially in this important field, as is self evident. Since ceasing to compete, apart from researching and promoting gender issues, I have held down various jobs in teaching and social care (specialising in work with at risk young people and their families, parenting and domestic abuse), brought up two sons, supported my husband’s career and run a home – typical athletics woman, really.
Indeed, when Maggie Still, who formerly headed up coach education for UKA, asked me to write the Coaching the Female Athlete” module I said “I don’t think I’m the right person to do that!” But no one else was willing, so I took it on, on the basis that it was fascinating and that I was collecting views, research and experience as a baseline for further debate and feedback from coaches themselves. Much of the material, and this is the key point,(Mr Wheater, please note) is not about traditional sport science which, being a product of the male dominated culture in sport, undervalues psychological and relationship issues and inadequately addresses biological gender difference, hence the problem we started with! The roots of gender disadvantage (Mr Wheater, please note) lie in cultural norms, assumptions, attitudes and behaviour, which in turn shapes the knowledge which is seen as relevant or not relevant to any given enterprise. Therefore I believe that my professional background provides more helpful tools with which to observe, analyse and assist practising coaches and female athletes than a pure coaching background would have provided. Undoubtedly this could be done better, but the fact of the matter is that it wouldn't otherwise have been done at all.
So, mainstream coaching still has little to say about gender, and female drop-out continues apace. This is, in microcosm, the brick wall that women in athletics face: "different approach, different experience, can’t be right, not what we want, thanks all the same". This seems to be a bit too ironic and challenging for the management to take on board and it is why I say now, with deep sadness, that gender equity in our lovely sport can only deteriorate, with the parallel increased disadvantage for female athletes of all ages.
Debates about the best ways to get action have been quite frequent in our house. Tony has always said that I’ve been too soft, too amenable; that I’ve let the athletics authorities off the hook by not telling them plainly why and how they are wrong. But I’ve always said that the only effective way to get change is to work with, not against the organisations, an engendered difference of opinion in itself, I guess! He also says that they've given me the run around and, on reflection, that is all too true.
Anyway, I’ve networked, debated, proposed, joined working groups and committees, got elected to IAAF women’s committee, got co-opted to my regional council (not elected, mind, the clubs' brotherhood doesn't want my sort), written and researched and networked again. In 2002 I was asked by UKA to write a module and resource, “Coaching the Female Athlete”, now a self-funded website (womenontrack.org) currently linked to the England site, and in 2003 was invited to head the gender sub-group as part of Sport England/UKA’s Valuing Diversity Project.
But, dear athletics friends, none of this has worked and I’ve hit the wall. My way has not and will not work, you can lead the horse to water etc etc... I’ve made dozens of suggestions and offers, all in response to insiders’ acknowledgement of a problem, but nothing is followed up, invited calls and emails not answered, decisions perpetually avoided.
Yes, OK – in spite of my record in the field, (and the fact that no-one has ever told me that I am wrong in my analysis or approach), it could be me that is the problem!
But there are still some very experienced and knowledgeable women employed in England Athletics who I know have strong views about discrimination and inappropriate treatment against female athletes, coaches and decision-makers. Have they been asked by their bosses to come up with a strategy? No, of course not. Furthermore it seems they are very wary of standing up to be counted because of a real fear of losing their job in the almost inevitable next restructuring. It’s now obvious to me that the current athletics establishment is both unable and unwilling to address gender equity and nothing I, or anyone else outside our paymasters UK Sport or Sport England, can say will make any difference.
Its not that the strategists and managers don’t see a problem; it’s rather that the possible answers are too challenging and require an analysis of their own attitudes, assumptions and behaviour and those over whom they preside. That, of course, is not in any of the plans and certainly doesn’t suit the style. Any action for equity, they assume, must be added on, not integrated- a big mistake.
It’s OK to see women themselves as the problem. Programmes to promote “Leadership for Women” seem just about acceptable in some quarters, but of course that is a total misunderstanding of the issue. Women per se do not lack leadership, though they may well execute it differently to men. But, alongside any other disempowered group, they DO adapt their behaviour and expectations in the light of what they observe and experience, i.e., negative feedback, either direct or subtle, and negligible opportunities for themselves or progress by other women.
Frequently, disadvantaged groups also internalise these negative judgments, so that self-esteem drops, followed by commitment and performance, creating a self-fulfilling prophesy. If the context is voluntary, the undervalued sectors vote with their feet, enabling the predominant group to stay self-satisfied and in control. That’s exactly the situation that we face in athletics.
No, the leadership issues lie, not with women but within the organisational hierarchy who, because of their homogeneity and lack of intellectual curiosity on psycho/social issues, unwittingly and unintentionally perpetuate the very factors that excluded women to start with.
Here’s an example: I have recently been told by the head of coaching development for England Athletics that I am “not the right person to lead on coaching the female athlete”. Now, on one level I see his point. I have not spent years coaching and am only a fast-tracked Level 2 coach. But as an ex-Olympian, I have done other things in the sport, especially in this important field, as is self evident. Since ceasing to compete, apart from researching and promoting gender issues, I have held down various jobs in teaching and social care (specialising in work with at risk young people and their families, parenting and domestic abuse), brought up two sons, supported my husband’s career and run a home – typical athletics woman, really.
Indeed, when Maggie Still, who formerly headed up coach education for UKA, asked me to write the Coaching the Female Athlete” module I said “I don’t think I’m the right person to do that!” But no one else was willing, so I took it on, on the basis that it was fascinating and that I was collecting views, research and experience as a baseline for further debate and feedback from coaches themselves. Much of the material, and this is the key point,(Mr Wheater, please note) is not about traditional sport science which, being a product of the male dominated culture in sport, undervalues psychological and relationship issues and inadequately addresses biological gender difference, hence the problem we started with! The roots of gender disadvantage (Mr Wheater, please note) lie in cultural norms, assumptions, attitudes and behaviour, which in turn shapes the knowledge which is seen as relevant or not relevant to any given enterprise. Therefore I believe that my professional background provides more helpful tools with which to observe, analyse and assist practising coaches and female athletes than a pure coaching background would have provided. Undoubtedly this could be done better, but the fact of the matter is that it wouldn't otherwise have been done at all.
So, mainstream coaching still has little to say about gender, and female drop-out continues apace. This is, in microcosm, the brick wall that women in athletics face: "different approach, different experience, can’t be right, not what we want, thanks all the same". This seems to be a bit too ironic and challenging for the management to take on board and it is why I say now, with deep sadness, that gender equity in our lovely sport can only deteriorate, with the parallel increased disadvantage for female athletes of all ages.
Monday, 16 February 2009
Men Only
“Equity underpins the basic premise of Sports England’s work.” Who says? Well, Sport England does, of course. It is also crystal clear about what should happen within sporting organisations:
“An organisation that is more diverse and reflects the community it serves in terms of staff make-up at management, executive, officer and volunteer level is likely to be more innovative and able to respond better to the varied needs of all members of that community.”
Which begs the question why are we, in athletics in Britain, being governed by a male dominated hierarchy? And what is Sport England, athletics’ paymaster, doing about it? Apparently turning a blind eye. Certainly in only two of the above categories do women fill any significant (but by no means majority) role. At decision making executive, officer and volunteer level they are conspicuous by the sparseness of their presence.
And when they are present on a council or committee they are more than likely to come across abusive male chauvinism. Following the Blog on the history of athletics administration in Britain I received an e-mail from a woman administrator who wrote that she, operating in many walks of life, has never “encountered such blatant sexism as I have encountered in athletics.” She goes on:
“I have by turns have been patronised and bullied and whenever I have spoken out I have been met with blank gazes of incomprehension. The bullying was not taken seriously and I was just told to get a thicker skin.... there seems to be a reluctance to change what is a very male club.”
The facts bear her out. Compared with the number of participating women athletes the percentage of women administrators, officials and particularly coaches is woefully small. If the treatment that is meted out to my correspondent is typical (which I think it is) then this can hardly be surprising. There are other instances: one male misogynist in one England region took to e-mailing his splenetic views on gender equity; on one of David Moorcroft’s nationwide tour meetings prior to the setting up of UK Athletics (UKA) two very unpleasant men reduced a young woman, brought in to assist with the changeover, to tears; Shelley Newman, in an interview with me, told of the verbal bullying by her one-time coach; more recently reports have surfaced of a well-known coach adversely commenting to an athlete on her physical appearance and finally there is the case of a leading coach sleeping with his athlete.
What is disturbing is what my correspondent calls the incomprehension of those in charge, an incomprehension which has made the task of those trying to establish gender equity holistically in British athletics seem very much like those of Sisyphus. In more modern parlance those men who run UK and England athletics just don’t get it.
Some see parity in competition (which has only taken 80 years after all) as the closure of the subject. Others pay lip service to gender but manana rules when it comes to action. They cannot comprehend that there is something very much amiss when only one woman (non-executive) sits on the Board of UK Athletics and the only woman on the Board of England Athletics is the professional finance director.
Two of the nine regional councils of England, all of whom are currently in limbo, are male only organisations; there is one woman chairperson out of nine; there are only 13 (17%) women out of 77 regional council members, seven of whom were not elected but co-opted. They were not elected because the election process was highly biased (as it was after amalgamation in 1991) in favour of the already male members of the club. The litany of sexual discrimination goes on.
Even if we step away from the ivory towers of national athletics management for a moment there is the serious matter of the education of those male coaches who coach women athletes, many of whom believe that men and women can be trained in exactly the same way and proceed to do so. Prevention of the female triad (osteoporosis, amenorrhea, and disordered eating) should be key factors in coach education from the lowest grade; so should the causes of acute female drop-out from our sport at the ages of 15 and 16 where the accepted wisdom of the cause is, to coin a phrase, “boyfriend trouble.” It does not seem to dawn on male coaches that they may actually in some instances be the problem. Finally there is the probability that women athletes require, in many cases, a different psychological approach by coaches in order for them to reach their potential. Is any of the above part and parcel of coach education as presently constituted? No it is not.
There are those who smugly say that women show little interest in the positions that are on offer, do not get themselves nominated and do not wish to take on too much coaching responsibility. But women can see a glass ceiling as well, if not better, than anyone because they’ve had a lot of practice. They sense when they’re not welcome and vote with their feet.
The International Association of Athletic Federations (IAAF) has long recognised the problem. It set up a women’s committee and then followed up by ensuring that at least two women sat on its Council, the sport’s overall decision making body. Then it ensured that at least two women sat on each committee and commission. Not ideal but a start. UK Athletics and its constituent bodies have ignored the recommendation of the IAAF that they should form a women’s committee; clearly they feel that a vibrant, questioning group of women in its midst would be just too much to bear.
I could never understand why the late, and mostly unlamented, doyen of women’s athletics, Dame Marea Hartman, frequently referred to me as a “friend of women’s athletics.” I could never fathom what it was that I had done to earn such a soubriquet. It is only in more recent years watching those who understand the important issue of gender in athletics battle impotently with those who don’t that the penny dropped. It wasn’t what I had done that somehow impressed Marea it was what I hadn’t done: I had never treated or written about women administrators or coaches as second-rate athletics citizens, which today seems to be totally de rigueur throughout the sport. Jobs for the boys rules OK.
“Equality for women,” wrote the journalist Polly Toynbee, “demands a change in the human psyche more profound than anything Marx dreamed of.” Too profound for those who run British athletics from top to bottom that’s for sure. They should be ashamed of themselves.
“An organisation that is more diverse and reflects the community it serves in terms of staff make-up at management, executive, officer and volunteer level is likely to be more innovative and able to respond better to the varied needs of all members of that community.”
Which begs the question why are we, in athletics in Britain, being governed by a male dominated hierarchy? And what is Sport England, athletics’ paymaster, doing about it? Apparently turning a blind eye. Certainly in only two of the above categories do women fill any significant (but by no means majority) role. At decision making executive, officer and volunteer level they are conspicuous by the sparseness of their presence.
And when they are present on a council or committee they are more than likely to come across abusive male chauvinism. Following the Blog on the history of athletics administration in Britain I received an e-mail from a woman administrator who wrote that she, operating in many walks of life, has never “encountered such blatant sexism as I have encountered in athletics.” She goes on:
“I have by turns have been patronised and bullied and whenever I have spoken out I have been met with blank gazes of incomprehension. The bullying was not taken seriously and I was just told to get a thicker skin.... there seems to be a reluctance to change what is a very male club.”
The facts bear her out. Compared with the number of participating women athletes the percentage of women administrators, officials and particularly coaches is woefully small. If the treatment that is meted out to my correspondent is typical (which I think it is) then this can hardly be surprising. There are other instances: one male misogynist in one England region took to e-mailing his splenetic views on gender equity; on one of David Moorcroft’s nationwide tour meetings prior to the setting up of UK Athletics (UKA) two very unpleasant men reduced a young woman, brought in to assist with the changeover, to tears; Shelley Newman, in an interview with me, told of the verbal bullying by her one-time coach; more recently reports have surfaced of a well-known coach adversely commenting to an athlete on her physical appearance and finally there is the case of a leading coach sleeping with his athlete.
What is disturbing is what my correspondent calls the incomprehension of those in charge, an incomprehension which has made the task of those trying to establish gender equity holistically in British athletics seem very much like those of Sisyphus. In more modern parlance those men who run UK and England athletics just don’t get it.
Some see parity in competition (which has only taken 80 years after all) as the closure of the subject. Others pay lip service to gender but manana rules when it comes to action. They cannot comprehend that there is something very much amiss when only one woman (non-executive) sits on the Board of UK Athletics and the only woman on the Board of England Athletics is the professional finance director.
Two of the nine regional councils of England, all of whom are currently in limbo, are male only organisations; there is one woman chairperson out of nine; there are only 13 (17%) women out of 77 regional council members, seven of whom were not elected but co-opted. They were not elected because the election process was highly biased (as it was after amalgamation in 1991) in favour of the already male members of the club. The litany of sexual discrimination goes on.
Even if we step away from the ivory towers of national athletics management for a moment there is the serious matter of the education of those male coaches who coach women athletes, many of whom believe that men and women can be trained in exactly the same way and proceed to do so. Prevention of the female triad (osteoporosis, amenorrhea, and disordered eating) should be key factors in coach education from the lowest grade; so should the causes of acute female drop-out from our sport at the ages of 15 and 16 where the accepted wisdom of the cause is, to coin a phrase, “boyfriend trouble.” It does not seem to dawn on male coaches that they may actually in some instances be the problem. Finally there is the probability that women athletes require, in many cases, a different psychological approach by coaches in order for them to reach their potential. Is any of the above part and parcel of coach education as presently constituted? No it is not.
There are those who smugly say that women show little interest in the positions that are on offer, do not get themselves nominated and do not wish to take on too much coaching responsibility. But women can see a glass ceiling as well, if not better, than anyone because they’ve had a lot of practice. They sense when they’re not welcome and vote with their feet.
The International Association of Athletic Federations (IAAF) has long recognised the problem. It set up a women’s committee and then followed up by ensuring that at least two women sat on its Council, the sport’s overall decision making body. Then it ensured that at least two women sat on each committee and commission. Not ideal but a start. UK Athletics and its constituent bodies have ignored the recommendation of the IAAF that they should form a women’s committee; clearly they feel that a vibrant, questioning group of women in its midst would be just too much to bear.
I could never understand why the late, and mostly unlamented, doyen of women’s athletics, Dame Marea Hartman, frequently referred to me as a “friend of women’s athletics.” I could never fathom what it was that I had done to earn such a soubriquet. It is only in more recent years watching those who understand the important issue of gender in athletics battle impotently with those who don’t that the penny dropped. It wasn’t what I had done that somehow impressed Marea it was what I hadn’t done: I had never treated or written about women administrators or coaches as second-rate athletics citizens, which today seems to be totally de rigueur throughout the sport. Jobs for the boys rules OK.
“Equality for women,” wrote the journalist Polly Toynbee, “demands a change in the human psyche more profound than anything Marx dreamed of.” Too profound for those who run British athletics from top to bottom that’s for sure. They should be ashamed of themselves.
Monday, 9 February 2009
Of Rights and Wrongs
Where does the self-created Euromeets Consortium, composed of the promoters of the major European athletics meetings, obtain the right to deny the British public seeing its fastest sprinter in action? Why does the International Association of Athletic Federations (IAAF) refuse to take action against a policy that infringes its (and those of the World Anti Doping Agency - WADA) code regarding doping? Why does UK Athletics allow its promotions’ arm Fast Track to deny its fastest sprinter the competition he needs to achieve medals internationally? How does the BBC regard the non-appearance of the country’s top sprinter on its screens? What does Aviva (the major British athletics sponsor who has invested £40 million in athletics up until 2012) think about media attention being diverted from their meetings as long as Dwain Chambers is elsewhere? You have to ask the question: who is running athletics and you have to suspect, to quote a British idiom, that the tail is wagging the dog.
The attempts by various organisations to circumvent the rules of WADA and the IAAF by introducing caveats and by-laws to suit their moral judgment is doing enormous damage to athletics in particular, cementing its reputation as a drug-ridden sport. For every time a former banned athlete appears at a notable meeting it sets up what Chaucer called a “wepe, and wynge and waille”, sparking huge debate which overshadows any publicity given to the event itself.
The Euromeets Consortium, a shadowy group with, it appears, unlimited power, lives in an opaque bubble. Year after year its members serve up the same athletics fare seemingly oblivious to the fact that the days when they attracted large audiences on European terrestrial television are long gone; now they scramble for coverage from satellite companies mainly because the viewing public has become totally bored with what they see. This out-of-touch body feels it has the right to practice restrictive practices but the fact that their meetings are part of the wider IAAF World Athletics Tour, with its million dollar jackpot, surely negates that point of view. Indeed it could be said that the IAAF is conniving in a restrictive practice because former banned athletes cannot compete for its lucrative prize. Yet it takes no action.
The Consortium obviously collectively feels that it holds, along with the British Olympic Association (BOA), with its lifetime ban, the moral high ground on drug taking in sport. They do not. They do not because by circumventing the universally accepted WADA rules by instituting their own by-laws they are flouting natural justice. And you can be sure that the proposed four year ban won’t satisfy their lust for greater punishments and more draconian abuses of athletes’ human rights with the “whereabouts clause”. And UK Athletics, anxious not to be found wanting, has joined the club by adding a ‘quarantine’ year to whatever universal ban is implemented, so that an athlete can prove, in an as yet unspecified manner, their ‘commitment to drug-free sport’.
The problem of drug abuse in sport is compounded by the fact that it is a highly emotive issue. To those who would like to see it become a criminal offence there is, seemingly, no greater crime. Organisations like the Euromeets Consortium and the BOA are trying to bring in lifetime bans by the backdoor. They are like the Wild West cowboys at Tombstone who would rather put a bullet through the heart of any man who cheated at cards than accept the ruling of the sheriff.
At the centre of all this is the much maligned Dwain Chambers. It is now annoying some that he is still attracting media attention, deviating the press away from our major televised meetings (who have actually banned him). The maligners just wish that he would creep away so that British athletics can resume its serene downward path. You have to remember, however, that all the brouhaha over Chambers’ reappearance in the sport this time last year came about because of UK Athletics totally misguided (through not knowing the rules) attempts to stop him running and its inefficiency in not testing him once his ban was over.
British athletics’ misfortune is not so much that Chambers took performance-enhancing drugs but that he got caught up in the biggest drug controversy in sport, the Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative (BALCO) scandal in the United States. It is, of course, compounded by the fact that of all those British athletes who have served bans and returned to the sport he has been the most successful.
We are now just a few weeks away from this whole controversy boiling over again at the time of the European Indoor Championships in Torino when a biography of Chambers is also timed to be published. There is a strong likelihood that he will become champion and the television pundits and athletics press (what’s left of it) will have the proverbial field day with the European Indoor champion being banned from European meetings.
What those who publicly lament Chambers’ return to the sport must realise is that he has every legal right to compete and he is not going to oblige them by returning to oblivion. If they are to douse the fires of controversy, that they abhor, then they have to accept that fact, understand that they are consolidating the public view that athletics is a drug-ridden sport and cease their “wepe and wynge and waille” every time he appears so that other successful British athletes can get the publicity that they deserve.
The attempts by various organisations to circumvent the rules of WADA and the IAAF by introducing caveats and by-laws to suit their moral judgment is doing enormous damage to athletics in particular, cementing its reputation as a drug-ridden sport. For every time a former banned athlete appears at a notable meeting it sets up what Chaucer called a “wepe, and wynge and waille”, sparking huge debate which overshadows any publicity given to the event itself.
The Euromeets Consortium, a shadowy group with, it appears, unlimited power, lives in an opaque bubble. Year after year its members serve up the same athletics fare seemingly oblivious to the fact that the days when they attracted large audiences on European terrestrial television are long gone; now they scramble for coverage from satellite companies mainly because the viewing public has become totally bored with what they see. This out-of-touch body feels it has the right to practice restrictive practices but the fact that their meetings are part of the wider IAAF World Athletics Tour, with its million dollar jackpot, surely negates that point of view. Indeed it could be said that the IAAF is conniving in a restrictive practice because former banned athletes cannot compete for its lucrative prize. Yet it takes no action.
The Consortium obviously collectively feels that it holds, along with the British Olympic Association (BOA), with its lifetime ban, the moral high ground on drug taking in sport. They do not. They do not because by circumventing the universally accepted WADA rules by instituting their own by-laws they are flouting natural justice. And you can be sure that the proposed four year ban won’t satisfy their lust for greater punishments and more draconian abuses of athletes’ human rights with the “whereabouts clause”. And UK Athletics, anxious not to be found wanting, has joined the club by adding a ‘quarantine’ year to whatever universal ban is implemented, so that an athlete can prove, in an as yet unspecified manner, their ‘commitment to drug-free sport’.
The problem of drug abuse in sport is compounded by the fact that it is a highly emotive issue. To those who would like to see it become a criminal offence there is, seemingly, no greater crime. Organisations like the Euromeets Consortium and the BOA are trying to bring in lifetime bans by the backdoor. They are like the Wild West cowboys at Tombstone who would rather put a bullet through the heart of any man who cheated at cards than accept the ruling of the sheriff.
At the centre of all this is the much maligned Dwain Chambers. It is now annoying some that he is still attracting media attention, deviating the press away from our major televised meetings (who have actually banned him). The maligners just wish that he would creep away so that British athletics can resume its serene downward path. You have to remember, however, that all the brouhaha over Chambers’ reappearance in the sport this time last year came about because of UK Athletics totally misguided (through not knowing the rules) attempts to stop him running and its inefficiency in not testing him once his ban was over.
British athletics’ misfortune is not so much that Chambers took performance-enhancing drugs but that he got caught up in the biggest drug controversy in sport, the Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative (BALCO) scandal in the United States. It is, of course, compounded by the fact that of all those British athletes who have served bans and returned to the sport he has been the most successful.
We are now just a few weeks away from this whole controversy boiling over again at the time of the European Indoor Championships in Torino when a biography of Chambers is also timed to be published. There is a strong likelihood that he will become champion and the television pundits and athletics press (what’s left of it) will have the proverbial field day with the European Indoor champion being banned from European meetings.
What those who publicly lament Chambers’ return to the sport must realise is that he has every legal right to compete and he is not going to oblige them by returning to oblivion. If they are to douse the fires of controversy, that they abhor, then they have to accept that fact, understand that they are consolidating the public view that athletics is a drug-ridden sport and cease their “wepe and wynge and waille” every time he appears so that other successful British athletes can get the publicity that they deserve.
Wednesday, 28 January 2009
Fear of Africans
Writing in the Canadian magazine Athletics (December 2008) that doyen of British running coaches, Frank Horwill, reported that three years ago the then Endurance Director of British athletics, Alan Storey (no longer in that position) opened a symposium by declaring: “We will never close the gap on the Africans in distance running.”
Frank does not record whether the symposium immediately broke up, thus becoming the shortest in running history, but he does reflect that it is not surprising that the decline in British men’s endurance running continued under Storey’s watch.
This rang a bell with me. Forty plus years ago in Modern Distance Running I quoted the famed Hungarian coach, Mihaly Igloi reflecting on his days as a runner back in the 1920’s.
“To us,” Igloi wrote, “record breakers like the Finns Paavo Nurmi and Hannes Kohlemainen seemed singularly gifted and equipped: their performances out of reach of normal mortals. These records, said Hungarians, were the products of special components, not of any particular training systems, and were helped by climatic and other conditions in Scandinavia. We, it was alleged, did not have the same natural ability or the same conditions – so our athletes did not search for ways to improve.”
Fast forward seventy or eighty years and here is a British coach echoing the same sentiments. Igloi tells us that he and other athletes soon rejected such nonsense. He went on to coach three wonderful runners, Sándor Iharos, László Tabori and Istvan Rozsavolgyi, who had collectively set ten world records in just fifteen months in 1955-56 and whose undoubted Olympic destinies were shattered by the brutal invasion of their country by the Soviet Union just days before the Melbourne Games. Igloi emigrated and was highly successful in the United States.
The decline in European and British endurance running over the last few decades has been staggering. Olympic gold is the raison d’être of today’s politicians and sporting bureaucrats. Sadly Europe’s distance runners have been, to say the least, remiss in such provision. In the past twenty years Europe has supplied just 6 gold medallists out of the 36 available. In overall medals won the situation is much worse, just 14 out of 108 were won by Europe, a paltry 13% and two of the fourteen were of African origin.
In 1984 with 4 Olympic medals out of a possible 18 the African runners were coming; by 1988, with 11 they had arrived. In Beijing with 16 they were in total control. The only European runner to take a medal was of Algerian origin.
Compared with yesteryear standards have plummeted. Taking 1988, 1998 and 2008 as our yardstick of two decades and the tenth best performance in each event as an indication of overall health, 2008 produced the worst European performances in every event and the worst British performances in four out of the six (with the remaining two just a few tenths off being worst).
Horwill cites Professor Tim Noakes’ two variations, in his book Lore of Running, between European runners and their East and North African counterparts. Firstly, African runners devote one-third of their training to work between 80 and 100% of VO2 max; Europeans devote just 10%. Secondly, the height/weight ratio (a major factor in distance running) of the East African is superior.
There are also cultural differences. Running is a trade for hundreds of Kenyan runners. It is a way of extricating themselves and their families from the grim realities of agricultural life in that East African country. The 1990 ATFS Annual listed the winners of 85 marathon races for 1989 with only 3 (3.5%) being won by Kenyan runners. In 2007 the list had grown to 157 races with an astonishing 70% being won by Kenyans. Of the other 2007 listed major road races 65% of the winners were from Kenya.
So we know why the Africans are so good: running as a way of life from an early age; superior training, often three times a day; benefits from 60% of training time being at altitude; a good deal of training devoted to working at between 80 and 100% VO2 max and strong financial incentives to be successful. But why are the Europeans currently so bad even compared with their forbearers?
At the Atlanta Olympics I stood next to a well-known British coach watching the men’s 10000 metres unfold. The winner was Haile Gebreselassie in 27:07.34. There was a grunt of satisfaction from the coach when a British athlete ran in tenth, almost a minute behind. “Second in Europe,” was his satisfied comment as he went off to proffer congratulations. Back then I knew that we (and by we I mean Europeans as well as British) were in trouble.
But was Alan Storey uttering an unmentionable thought that is buried deep in the collective psyche of European runners and coaches? Do they see the exploits of Bekele, Gebreselassie, Tergat et al as being “out of the reach of normal mortals”? Is this why some British coaches ignore such exploits to lower their thinking and their runners’ ambitions to declining European standards? Is the problem more psychological than technical or physiological? Can African distance runners be challenged?
Occasionally Caucasians will emerge to do so, men like Craig Mottram, Alan Webb and earlier Bob Kennedy but the European challenge has been sparse, mostly coming from Spain. You have to return to what I have termed the “golden decade” of British athletics, the eighties, to find performances that would match those of African runners, especially at 800 and 1500 metres and when you study that period, when Coe, Cram and Ovett ruled the global roost of middle-distance running and David Moorcroft missed breaking 13 minutes for 5000m by a whisker, you find an interesting phenomenon.
To get into the British Olympic team in both 1980 and 1984 at 1500 metres was some herculean task. In 1980 there was automatic selection for Seb Coe and Steve Ovett; the third spot went to an emerging Steve Cram. Four years later the task was even harder with Coe and Cram globally ranked second and third and Ovett just over a second behind the latter. Did British middle-distance runners resign themselves to second best status? Did they consider the trio’s performances to be out of the reach of normal mortals? Were they psychologically shattered? Hell, no; in 1984 Britain had six men in the world top twenty at 1500 metres (Graham Williamson with his 3:34.13 would have made the Olympic team of every other country except Britain); similarly we had four at 800 metres. They rose to the challenge of their peers. As a result eleven of the top all-time British performances at 800 metres were set in the late 70s and the 80s, only three so far this century; at 1500m the tally is eight and two.
Not surprising then that the new UK coaching supremo, Charles van Commenee, appointed Ian Stewart, an uncompromising 5000 metre runner of the seventies, who won 5000m bronze at the Munich Olympics, to replace Storey. He will be supported by men like Coe, Cram, David Bedford and Brendan Foster as well as two of our finest women athletes, Paula Radcliffe and Liz McColgan. Initiatives have been tried in the past with generally disappointing results, including (as Horwill pointed out) establishing a centre of excellence at a college institution. It will be interesting to see if Stewart, also the promoter of UK televised meetings, will resurrect the 10000 metres to its rightful place at the UK Trials and Championship meeting as a precursor to reviving that neglected event.
The problem, however, is Europe wide and it is not just athletes that need targeting but coaches as well, for fear begets fear. New attitudes are required and psychological assistance to attain positivism. If we are to bring about a renaissance in events that once thrilled crowds across the continent the best European coaching talent and sports psychologists must combine their expertise.
Former European Council member Luciano Barra argued in IAAF New Studies in Athletics that dramatic falls in viewing figures for athletics events in major European countries are mainly due to the decrease in European endurance standards.
"The less the audiences see athletes from their own countries," Barra wrote, "doing well in the showcase running events, the less likely they will be to tune in again."
The fear is endemic,the problem acute. The longer we prevaricate the worse it will be.
Frank does not record whether the symposium immediately broke up, thus becoming the shortest in running history, but he does reflect that it is not surprising that the decline in British men’s endurance running continued under Storey’s watch.
This rang a bell with me. Forty plus years ago in Modern Distance Running I quoted the famed Hungarian coach, Mihaly Igloi reflecting on his days as a runner back in the 1920’s.
“To us,” Igloi wrote, “record breakers like the Finns Paavo Nurmi and Hannes Kohlemainen seemed singularly gifted and equipped: their performances out of reach of normal mortals. These records, said Hungarians, were the products of special components, not of any particular training systems, and were helped by climatic and other conditions in Scandinavia. We, it was alleged, did not have the same natural ability or the same conditions – so our athletes did not search for ways to improve.”
Fast forward seventy or eighty years and here is a British coach echoing the same sentiments. Igloi tells us that he and other athletes soon rejected such nonsense. He went on to coach three wonderful runners, Sándor Iharos, László Tabori and Istvan Rozsavolgyi, who had collectively set ten world records in just fifteen months in 1955-56 and whose undoubted Olympic destinies were shattered by the brutal invasion of their country by the Soviet Union just days before the Melbourne Games. Igloi emigrated and was highly successful in the United States.
The decline in European and British endurance running over the last few decades has been staggering. Olympic gold is the raison d’être of today’s politicians and sporting bureaucrats. Sadly Europe’s distance runners have been, to say the least, remiss in such provision. In the past twenty years Europe has supplied just 6 gold medallists out of the 36 available. In overall medals won the situation is much worse, just 14 out of 108 were won by Europe, a paltry 13% and two of the fourteen were of African origin.
In 1984 with 4 Olympic medals out of a possible 18 the African runners were coming; by 1988, with 11 they had arrived. In Beijing with 16 they were in total control. The only European runner to take a medal was of Algerian origin.
Compared with yesteryear standards have plummeted. Taking 1988, 1998 and 2008 as our yardstick of two decades and the tenth best performance in each event as an indication of overall health, 2008 produced the worst European performances in every event and the worst British performances in four out of the six (with the remaining two just a few tenths off being worst).
Horwill cites Professor Tim Noakes’ two variations, in his book Lore of Running, between European runners and their East and North African counterparts. Firstly, African runners devote one-third of their training to work between 80 and 100% of VO2 max; Europeans devote just 10%. Secondly, the height/weight ratio (a major factor in distance running) of the East African is superior.
There are also cultural differences. Running is a trade for hundreds of Kenyan runners. It is a way of extricating themselves and their families from the grim realities of agricultural life in that East African country. The 1990 ATFS Annual listed the winners of 85 marathon races for 1989 with only 3 (3.5%) being won by Kenyan runners. In 2007 the list had grown to 157 races with an astonishing 70% being won by Kenyans. Of the other 2007 listed major road races 65% of the winners were from Kenya.
So we know why the Africans are so good: running as a way of life from an early age; superior training, often three times a day; benefits from 60% of training time being at altitude; a good deal of training devoted to working at between 80 and 100% VO2 max and strong financial incentives to be successful. But why are the Europeans currently so bad even compared with their forbearers?
At the Atlanta Olympics I stood next to a well-known British coach watching the men’s 10000 metres unfold. The winner was Haile Gebreselassie in 27:07.34. There was a grunt of satisfaction from the coach when a British athlete ran in tenth, almost a minute behind. “Second in Europe,” was his satisfied comment as he went off to proffer congratulations. Back then I knew that we (and by we I mean Europeans as well as British) were in trouble.
But was Alan Storey uttering an unmentionable thought that is buried deep in the collective psyche of European runners and coaches? Do they see the exploits of Bekele, Gebreselassie, Tergat et al as being “out of the reach of normal mortals”? Is this why some British coaches ignore such exploits to lower their thinking and their runners’ ambitions to declining European standards? Is the problem more psychological than technical or physiological? Can African distance runners be challenged?
Occasionally Caucasians will emerge to do so, men like Craig Mottram, Alan Webb and earlier Bob Kennedy but the European challenge has been sparse, mostly coming from Spain. You have to return to what I have termed the “golden decade” of British athletics, the eighties, to find performances that would match those of African runners, especially at 800 and 1500 metres and when you study that period, when Coe, Cram and Ovett ruled the global roost of middle-distance running and David Moorcroft missed breaking 13 minutes for 5000m by a whisker, you find an interesting phenomenon.
To get into the British Olympic team in both 1980 and 1984 at 1500 metres was some herculean task. In 1980 there was automatic selection for Seb Coe and Steve Ovett; the third spot went to an emerging Steve Cram. Four years later the task was even harder with Coe and Cram globally ranked second and third and Ovett just over a second behind the latter. Did British middle-distance runners resign themselves to second best status? Did they consider the trio’s performances to be out of the reach of normal mortals? Were they psychologically shattered? Hell, no; in 1984 Britain had six men in the world top twenty at 1500 metres (Graham Williamson with his 3:34.13 would have made the Olympic team of every other country except Britain); similarly we had four at 800 metres. They rose to the challenge of their peers. As a result eleven of the top all-time British performances at 800 metres were set in the late 70s and the 80s, only three so far this century; at 1500m the tally is eight and two.
Not surprising then that the new UK coaching supremo, Charles van Commenee, appointed Ian Stewart, an uncompromising 5000 metre runner of the seventies, who won 5000m bronze at the Munich Olympics, to replace Storey. He will be supported by men like Coe, Cram, David Bedford and Brendan Foster as well as two of our finest women athletes, Paula Radcliffe and Liz McColgan. Initiatives have been tried in the past with generally disappointing results, including (as Horwill pointed out) establishing a centre of excellence at a college institution. It will be interesting to see if Stewart, also the promoter of UK televised meetings, will resurrect the 10000 metres to its rightful place at the UK Trials and Championship meeting as a precursor to reviving that neglected event.
The problem, however, is Europe wide and it is not just athletes that need targeting but coaches as well, for fear begets fear. New attitudes are required and psychological assistance to attain positivism. If we are to bring about a renaissance in events that once thrilled crowds across the continent the best European coaching talent and sports psychologists must combine their expertise.
Former European Council member Luciano Barra argued in IAAF New Studies in Athletics that dramatic falls in viewing figures for athletics events in major European countries are mainly due to the decrease in European endurance standards.
"The less the audiences see athletes from their own countries," Barra wrote, "doing well in the showcase running events, the less likely they will be to tune in again."
The fear is endemic,the problem acute. The longer we prevaricate the worse it will be.
Tuesday, 2 December 2008
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