When the Blind lead the Blind

The blindness of those currently running the governing bodies of British athletics to the current disillusionment, frustration and inevitable anger of voluntary administrators, coaches and officials is matched only by that of the quangos who govern them. It means that the promised great new dawns for the sport frequently handed down from on high have remained ephemeral. Ten years of disenfranchisement have taken a severe toll. The enthusiasm and innovative entrepreneurship of volunteers that were once a hallmark of British athletics have been sucked dry by a bureaucracy that doesn’t perceive that athletics has a soul let alone understand the nature of it.

Whether UK and England athletics will be ready to deal with the enthusiastic aftermath of the London Olympics is already questionable just under three years before 2012.

The recent cynical emasculation of the voluntary regional councils by those who run England Athletics displays the contempt with which they view experienced volunteers. Funding has been cut off making the councils more impotent than they were before. In the very north of England (and it may very well be the same elsewhere) important competitions and other programmes for the benefit of athletes have had to be cancelled through a lack of funding.

There has been no explanation of why, just a few years after they were heralded as the right way forward for the sport the professional offices of the nine regions were abruptly shut down creating an unsavoury game of musical chairs for jobs in a hastily concocted new hierarchy. But what’s new? Those that run British and English athletics are so comfortably entrenched that they see no need whatsoever to account for their actions to the rank and file of the sport.

Illustrations of that entrenchment can be seen in the literal farce of the2008 England AGM when nobody knew who was supposed to turn up and in the end only eight did. The recent explanation on the England website as to why the incumbent chairman will be unopposed to serve a further term beggars belief. There was one other candidate but it was decided that he or she did not meet the criteria laid down by three people: the Chief Executive of UKA, a member of Sport England and the Chairman of the England Athletics National Council. So, in a supposedly democratic Britain, you have to apply to even be considered as a candidate, meeting criteria laid down by a tightly knit group of the Establishment. Thomas Paine you should be living at this hour.

In what, I suppose, could be considered his acceptance speech, the incumbent chairman said that he was “delighted to have been part of the successes and development of the sport over recent years.” This is pure PR-speak. Those of us with rather less rose-tinted spectacles wonder what successes and what development he is referring to.

Is success measured by the fact that, despite avowals to bring about change in its structure he has managed to avoid introducing, at board and council level, any ethnic or gender diversity, retaining a cosy all-white, all-male, middle-aged hierarchy in a total contradiction of Sport England’s policy? Or that England has been successful in steering clear of tackling the most urgent developmental task facing the sport: producing a radical, exciting new competition structure for all levels of athletic competence? Or that the organisation has succeeded in having no policy to stem the increasing haemorrhaging of athletes, officials and coaches? Suddenly the expression Drop Out doesn’t just refer to teenagers.

It is the failure to grasp the simple fact of the old adage that you can lead a horse to water but you cannot make him drink that is UKA’s and England’s most serious problem. Top to bottom dicta from those whose management experience outweighs their knowledge of the sport are treated with scepticism. What has developed over the last decade is a tendency for most coaches, administrators and officials (and therefore most clubs) to decide solely to do their own thing. There is a definite “thanks but no thanks” attitude to policies dreamt up without prior widespread consultation.

Communication to the sport from the two major organisations is woeful. Leave aside the fact that athletics no longer generates any interest to sports editors it is worrying that nobody, except for a chosen few and not always then, knows what is going on or what their future intentions are. The target age for the UKA website appears to be between fourteen and seventeen. The England website (including, extraordinarily, messages from the now cashless, impotent regions) tells us little. There is no forum left where the rank and file administrators and coaches can meet with the mostly unelected few to discuss the state of the sport and its future. Hence the fact that so many volunteers are metaphorically in dark cinemas heading for the Exit signs because they do not like the film.

The present administrators clearly had no idea of the poisoned chalice that was being handed down to them. Ten years of virtual carnage of the coaching scheme, of creating tick-a-box organisations obsessed with quantity rather than quality, of observing an obsequious complaisance to the paymasters have taken an enormous toll. And the voluntary sector, in failing to supervise its finances adequately, must also take its share of the blame.

It is responsible on two counts. Firstly by bankrupting the British Athletics Federation in 1997 and then compounding the deed by refusing to even contemplate the institution of a registration scheme that would give athletics some independent financial control over its affairs and partly unshackle it from the quangos’ iron grip. A conservative figure of 100,000 athletes registering to compete at £30 per annum would bring in £3 million that could be shared amongst the nine English regions to carry out much needed work. It would give some power to the voluntary sector who, given its record, would need to provide tightly controlled and well audited business plans. I can hear two howls of dismay already: firstly from the club stalwarts who think government owes them a constant free lunch and secondly from the current professionals who would see some of their power ebbing away.

For the last decade and counting we seem, as Shakespeare put it, to have been “wedded to calamity”. Spending millions on a chosen few athletes whilst the rest of the sport languishes in relative penury has been an act of blind lunacy that has come home to roost. But then when the blind lead the blind you inevitably blunder into disaster.

Speed

In 1973 Andy Carter stormed to an AAA Championship 800m win at London’s Crystal Palace in 1:45.12, slicing a full second off the UK record. Thirty six years on his time would, to date, head the 2009 UK rankings.

Mel Watman wrote of him: “His attitude is refreshing, he does not like slow races and usually avoids them by imposing a fast pace.” Here was a 'can do' runner of the type we are sadly lacking today.

His attitude is exemplified by his run at the 1971 European’s in Helsinki. In the final, despite having had attacks of asthma and tonsillitis earlier in the season, he was full of aggression leading at halfway in 51.3; after slipping to fourth he stormed back and took the bronze. He finished fifth in the 1972 Olympics and won the European Cup in 1973. Significantly, as we shall see, he also ran 48.0 secs for 400 metres.

Only three British athletes this century have beaten Carter’s time. We haven’t had a global finalist since 1993. Solihull we have a problem.

Steve Ovett beat Carter’s record in 1978 and a year later Sebastian Coe set a new world record of 1:42.33. In 1981 he amazed athletics by taking it to unimaginable heights with 1:41.73.

Peter and Seb Coe transformed the world of 800 metre running. Peter’s work, as a recent Blog discussed, will surely form the basis of the, as yet, elusive 1:39 man. The problem is that the lesson that Seb and Peter taught us in Britain has palpably been forgotten. Speed is the essence in the event; not that of a Usain Bolt but of a Johnson and Warriner.

What Seb also demonstrated with his two world records was that a British athlete could set extraordinary times. When he ran 1:41.73 he was around 18 metres ahead of the next fastest Brit ever, Steve Ovett and 26 metres ahead of Andy Carter. This was phenomenal and when middle-distance runners got their breath back we entered a golden era of British two lap running.

In the eighties and early nineties Steve Cram and Peter Elliott ran below 1:43, three others below 1:44. Medals came our way. Following Ovett’s Olympic win in 1980, Coe won silver in 1980 and 1984; Coe, McKean and Cram won a clean sweep of medals at the 1986 European’s; Cram won Commonwealth gold in 1986; Elliott won silver at the 1987 World’s; McKean won the European in 1990 and the World Cup in 1991 along with a string of European Cup victories. Indoors Coe,Harrison,Sharpe,Heard and McKean all won European titles and the latter won the World Indoor in 1993. But, once the Scot left the scene we have been but a pale shadow of our former selves.

How can this be in such a relatively short space of time? The lesson that we have forgotten is that world class times at 800 metres are the products of extended sprints.

Seb ran a 4 x 400 metre relay leg in 45.5; in his fastest world record run he completed the first lap in 49.7, a differential of 4.2 seconds. Now assuming a more reasonable differential of 3.5 seconds it means that a current British runner hoping to sustain a first lap of 51 seconds should be capable of 400 metres in 47.5. Of the current UK top six, those who have raced 400m at all are running in the late 48 to 49 second range. Only the second ranked Darren St. Clair and Sam Ellis have run closer to 47 seconds. Peter Coe believed that a world class 800 metre runner should be able to run between 46 and 46.5 seconds.

Although he never advocated moving 400 metre runners up to 800 he recognised that 400 metre training had to be part of the armour of the 800 metre runner. He had to attain repeatable 400 metre sprinting speed.

“There is no way you can escape from speed in middle distance running, including 5000m,” Peter said. “So you should never get too far away from it in training.”
He felt that once the developing athlete has achieved a high level of cardio respiratory efficiency he can reduce the volume of steady distance to that which will maintain the condition. He believed that there is more time spent in steady winter running than is necessary. But in the present day, isn’t that still the conventional wisdom?

I conjectured in 1:39 Man that, as 800 metre running became faster with sub-50 secs opening laps the anaerobic/aerobic ratio would move more towards that of the 400 metres (75:25). All such ratios, of course, assume that the distance is covered at the athlete’s best running speed, i.e. as fast as he is able. So if a runner runs 49 secs for an opening 400m but is capable of 45 secs then obviously the ratio 75:25 would not apply. The closer to his personal best he runs then the nearer to that ratio he can get. The question then surely is: is he doing the necessary training to sustain the momentum into the second half? In a recent race in Monaco Michael Rimmer went with the pacemaker and reached the bell in circa 49 seconds. His second lap was around 60 seconds. It was a hard way to discover that presently he cannot sustain such a fast lap.

British coaches and athletes today seem content with mediocrity. This century the number of runners under 1:47 in the top ten is 38, the number over, 62. There is an aberration as well. In 2006 the ratio was 9:1 in favour of runners under 1:47. This was thanks to a British Milers Club (BMC) paced race in Watford where three runners – Hill, Rimmer and Ellis, all broke 1:46; two more, Watkins and Coltherd, both ran under 1:46.5. It was heralded as a moment of truth, the breakthrough the event had been waiting for, the plateau for faster times. It didn’t happen.

There is another factor that coaches should ponder. The top performances of the three men, McIlroy, Hill and Rimmer who have attained the UK all-time top 25 this century have proved transient. McIlroy (who ran fourth in the European Championships of 2002) ran only twice below 1:46 following his best of 1:44.65 in 2005. He retired last year bitter at the lack of support he had received. Hill has run below 1:46 only once since his lifetime best of 1:45.10 (2006). It is too early to judge Rimmer for he only set his best last season and this year, as his coach Norman Poole told me, he has had a recurrence of asthma.

And what of Sam Ellis, the bronze medallist in the European’s in Goteborg in 2006? His only excursion below 1:46 has been the aforementioned BMC race at Watford. He has cruelly suffered both from injury and in 2006 misguided advice regarding future coaching.

What the running of McIlroy, Hill, Ellis and Rimmer has shown is that the tap of talent hasn’t been turned off as some believe but has been left dripping. To continue the analogy it needs a new washer. What coaches must ask themselves is: am I training athletes correctly for what is fast becoming an extended sprint? Am I stuck in old approaches to the event?

Should we treat the 800 metres more specifically and uncouple it from the 1500?
Some critics will say that all this talk of the 800 being an extended sprint is nonsense. They feel such a suggestion is heresy. They reasonably point to the fact that Coe, Ovett, Cram and Elliott were all highly successful at 1500m.

However a study of their major races at both distances shows that 800 metre races were not a priority. Only Coe ran an equal number of 800 and 1500/1 mile world class races during his long career. Ovett virtually abandoned it after his Olympic win; Cram’s ratio is 3:1 in favour of 1500m/1 mile, Elliott’s 2:1. What these great runners would have achieved had they concentrated, like Tom McKean, on racing two laps would make an interesting debate. McKean (47.60 for 400) never ran a serious 1500 in his life.

Investigation of this sick patient is urgently required. It should be carried out by the British Milers Club whose formation came about in 1963 because of the dire state of British miling. The current 800m situation is no less atrocious.

We need to interview our leading athletes and coaches; we need to know the basis of their training (not for any recrimination but for knowledge); we need to know about attitudes to racing; we need frank discussion between coaches and athletes about training methods; we need to talk to the greats of the past. Until we have the facts we cannot move forward. The short-term aim should be a modest one: to have three runners in the 800 in 2012 and at least one in the final. Achieve that and we can move on and up from there.

1:39 man

It is almost thirty years since the Englishman, Sebastian Coe, first ran under 1:42 for the 800 metres; only two other men, the Kenyan born Dane, Wilson Kipketer (1997) and the Brazilian, Joaquim Cruz (1984), have equalled the feat.

Coe’s world record of 1:41.73 set in 1981 lasted sixteen years before Kipketer first equalled and then eclipsed it in 1997. His time of 1:41.11, set at an IAAF Grand Prix meeting in Köln still stands twelve years on. The question is why has such fast running been at a premium in all that time?

Coe, Kipketer and Cruz came to their destinies from different backgrounds. Coe was born in London but reared and nurtured to greatness, by his father-coach Peter, in the northern steel city of Sheffield. His Olympic achievements are legendary. Kipketer, who was just ten when Coe set his second world record, was born in the Nandi Hills on the edge of the Great Rift Valley, birthplace of many great Kenyan runners. In 1990, to better his athletics career, he moved to Copenhagen where he met his first personal coach, the Pole Slanomir Novak. Cruz, son of a steel worker, was born near Brasilia, showed promise as a youngster, went to the legendary University of Oregon and won Olympic gold in 1984. That year he ran 1:41.77.

Physiological ultimates in athletic performance have been grist to the mill of much statistical discussion since the dawn of modern athletics. When, in 1886, Walter George ran 2:01.8 for the first half of his 4:12.8 mile there was speculation about the possibility of a 4 minute mile but it was often dismissed as being physically impossible. It took a while but the feat finally arrived 68 years later.

A New Zealand statistician, Hugh Morton, once forecast that 1:42 for 800m would be broken in 1984 and that sub-1:40 would be achieved in 2020. He projected an ultimate performance of 1:33.0!

But can we be so certain that sub-1:40 will ever be achieved? Not only have there been very long gaps between recent world records but the pace of 800 metre running appears to be slowing. Three runners eclipsed 1:43 in the 80’s and eight in the 90’s. Another eight have achieved that feat since 2000 but only two since 2003.
How will a sub-1:40 world record be run? What clues do we have as to the make-up of the man who will achieve it? Is our persistence in considering the 800 metres a purely middle-distance event, inexorably tied to the 1500 metres, thwarting progress?
If it was to be run at even pace it would require two laps of 49.99. But we know of course that such even pace is probably not an option. The vast majority of world records have been set with a faster first lap; only two, by the Americans Jim Ryun in 1966 (880y) and Dave Wottle in 1972 were achieved with a negative split.

Why is this? From Professor A V Hill onwards physiologists have stressed that the fastest times will be set by running at even pace and may well explain why most records have been set in paced record attempts (but not why the prospective record breaker always asks for a faster opening lap). However, in competitive races, as the great American authority Kenneth Doherty pointed out, runners are never obliging enough to allow an even-pace exponent a clear run to the finish! Thus, post-war, only two men’s 800 records have been set in Olympic competition.

Five of the runs below 1:42 (including the last four men’s world records) have seen sub-50 opening laps, the fastest being by Kipketer in his second world record run in Zürich with 48.3. Undoubtedly future world records will require such a pace and 1:39 man will have to consider carefully the speed at which he races the opening lap: too slow - no immortality; too fast - utter disaster. Precise and unerring pace judgement will be a vital characteristic of our barrier breaker.

Now we’re into the realm of what Tim Noakes in his great book Lore of Running calls the “physiology of oxygen transport.” Up until now the consensus has been that 800 metre running is very roughly one-third anaerobic to two-thirds aerobic but as we approach the era of 1:39 man it seems to me that a more equal ratio might apply, as in the 400 metres.

Adopting more of a 400 metre approach to the 800 might well be required if runners are to overcome the 1.12 seconds that separate the present world record from the 1:40 barrier. Depending upon the individual the opening lap will be between 48 and 49 seconds, which will most certainly mean that the runner will need a sub-46.0 secs performance to his name. Kipketer’s best for 400m is 46.85; Coe’s split of 45.5 in a relay leg at the European Cup of 1979 was the fastest of the team but it is a sobering thought that, as I write, only eighteen European one lap specialists have bettered 46 seconds in 2009.

Split Differentials In 5 Fastest 800m Runs
Name	Record	400m Splits	Differentials
Coe	1:41.73	49.7/52.03	2.33
Cruz	1:41.77	49.7/52.01	2.37
Kipketer	1:41.73	49.61/52.12	2.51
Kipketer	1:41.24	48.3/52.94	4.64
Kipketer	1:41.11	49.3/51.81	2.51

Top international 400/800 metre runners have been thin on the ground down the decades. The greatest male exponent in history is the Cuban, Alberto Juantorena, the double Olympic champion of 1976. In 1997 he set a world 800 metre record of 1:43.44 in Rieti, Italy; his splits were 51.4/52.0 (0.6), almost even pace. In winning gold in Montreal he set his fastest 400 metre time of 44.26 with estimated splits of 21.8/22.46 (0.66).

In 1985 Juantorena admitted to an audience at the Athletics Congress of the USA that he did not know why his Polish coach, Sigmund Zabiezowskay, introduced “the necessary means to also run the 800 metres”. Clearly the fact that injuries the Cuban suffered in 1974 which needed surgery both in that year and early 1975 required changes in training emphasis. What the Pole did was introduce more of a mix of 800 metres and 400 metres training. This saw, for instance, an increase in volume both at runs over 1000 metres and 200 metres with the necessary adjustments to times.

Very few top 400 metre runners have converted successfully to 800 metres, (though Billy Konchellah, World champion 1991 who ran 45.38 and Paul Ereng, Olympic champion 1992 who ran 45.6 are obvious exceptions) and this maybe is the reason why the world record currently appears so unassailable. Peter Coe always stressed that the training that he promulgated was strictly for Seb but the underlying principles are for everyone and will apply even more so in the future.

“The speed of an 800 metre runner,” Peter said, “has to be equivalent to a good 400 metre runner. It does not have to be world class but it must be close to national standards and I would suggest a 400m time of 46-46.5 seconds....It is repeatable fast 400 metre speed that can be called upon and more than once at any stage of the race and it must be sustainable speed.”

1:39 man will have followed the Coe dictum: “If speed is the goal, then never get too far from it.” He will also be mentally tough enough to believe that the feat is possible.

Until we shake off our 1500 metres mentality to the 800, the present world record will probably remain sacrosanct.

“Most runners,” Peter said, “come off high mileage and go to speed work. What I am suggesting is that there is more time spent in steady winter running than is necessary.

“If we accept that the world class 800/1500m man needs repeatable 400m sprinting speed then we must see that this training will provide the necessary strength to achieve it....I believe that it is rather late to start thinking about it when the training speeds up a bit in the spring”.

When I hear one of our 800 metre (or even 400 metre) runners on television trot out the mantra “I haven’t started my speed work yet” in the middle of July, I think of dear old Peter, on high, angry and frustrated and I half expect to see a bolt of lightning strike the centre of the arena.

For the world of two-lap running it’s time to move the event on, probably back to the future.

References
Progression of World Best performances and official IAAF records/Ed: Richard Hymans/ IAAF
Lore of Running/Tim Nokes MD/Leisure Press
The IAAF Symposium of Middle and Long Distance Events/IAAF -1983

Trials and Tribulations

I watched the British World Championship Trials on television. It was a most depressing experience. It was doubly depressing because the television pundits seemed to be watching another, rose-tinted meeting entirely rather than the one that was appearing on my screen. Did Colin Jackson really say that Tyson Gay (9.77), Asafa Powell (9.88) and Usain Bolt (9.86) would now be looking over their shoulders because Simeon Williamson had clocked 10.05 into a 1.8mps wind? Sure it was a great run and sure it was worth a sub-10 clocking in more positive conditions but will they be as apprehensive of Williamson as they will be of the other four who have already achieved that clocking along with themselves? I think not and to give him his due neither does Simeon.

Every TV interview began with the words, “so, you’re off to Berlin,” as if it were some sort of prize holiday. Very sadly that will, in many instances, be the case.
It was a British league meeting masquerading as a World Championship Trial and the atmosphere appeared to match it. The competitors seemed to exude no sense of urgency; the spectators hardly warranted the epithet of a crowd. The weather didn’t help and neither did the extraordinary timetable.

The only podium contender on show on the form displayed in Birmingham was the ebullient Heptathlete Jessica Ellis. Christine Ohuruogu and Phillips Idowu both won their events but neither inspired confidence the latter confining himself to taking just one jump and shaking hands afterwards with fellow competitors. For someone who may have to be the first jumper to exceed 18 metres in eleven years to win gold in Berlin he seemed casually over-confident.

Ohuruogu lies 22nd on the 2009 world ranking list and though her trade mark is to come good swiftly at major championships you can be sure that Sanya Richards has at last learnt the lessons of Osaka and Beijing. The American has the four fastest times in the world this year, all below 50 seconds and she has seven performances faster than the Olympic champion’s current 2009 best of 51.14 secs.

Olympic silver medallist Germaine Mason duly won the high jump but was 7 centimetres short of the qualifying height. Currently the British high jumpers are 11 centimetres down on the world’s leading height.

In the men’s events most of the winning performances were first achieved (in the equivalent AAA championships) in the 70s whilst in the 10000 metres and long jump you have to go back a decade further. In the 5000 metres you have to return to another era entirely when the race equivalent was 3 miles to find that in 1957 Derek Ibbotson ran faster, in rain and on soft cinders, at the White City. Where was Brendan Foster with his usual pertinent trenchant comments on such dismal endurance performances?
It may be said of course that the middle-distance events at Birmingham were, because of a deterring wind, tactical. But these were the World Championship trials for God sake, where qualifying times had to be achieved.

The women competitors showed a sense of urgency as if they knew what the meeting was supposed to be about. Reputations were made and reputations were dented but come August 23 there is little doubt that our women competitors will have continued their current ascendency over the men.

The TV commentaries were full of stories of athletes either currently injured or coming back from injury. With so many athletes absent the meeting was a litany of disaster and an indictment of a decade of sporting quangos’ control of our sport.
I also spent a day and a half at the English Schools Championships in Sheffield with England’s greatest young talent on show. There were some truly amazing performances but if history is any criteria these are young men and women whose names we shall not see in a few years time. Why? Because there seems to be no system to ensure that such talent continues to thrive in the sport or even to continue within it. The millions futilely spent on attempting to gain short term medal glory so beloved of UK Sport and our politicians would achieve much more if it was invested in the long-term future of the young stars on show in Sheffield and those who won so brilliantly at the recent World Youth Championships.

The two day Grand Prix meeting at London’s Crystal Palace may reverse this doomsday scenario and the sun will suddenly blaze down on our Berlin prospects. Our Beijing medallists may sweep into majestic form, there will be open top bus parades and everyone will be vindicated. I hope so but I’ll not hold my breath.

No Throws

Britain’s Head Coach Charles van Commenee whilst satisfied with the UK overall performance of third at the inaugural European Team Championship in Portugal described our performances in the throws and women’s jumps as “appalling.” It is a familiar ancient refrain.
Seemingly, since time immemorial, such lamentations about Britain’s field events have been expressed. We have always been aware of our deficiencies. When Walter Knox, the first ever salaried Chief Coach, was appointed by the AAA in 1914 he decided to give his main attention to field events. Because of the First World War his tenure was very short lived and we had to wait for 34 years before a similar appointment was made. When he returned from the Berlin Olympics in 1936 the 400m silver medallist Godfrey Brown strongly criticised our field event performances and bitterly attacked the AAA for being so dilatory in tackling the problem.
When Geoffrey Dyson launched his coaching scheme in the late 1940s one of the express aims was to improve field events; when I (and others) launched a national league for clubs in 1969 it was in the hope that field event standards would improve. Neither has worked. After sixty years there is a woeful shortage of field event coaches and after forty years there are still pathetic field event performances overall in league events at all levels.
Every country has its traditional weak events and Britain is no exception but our continuing low standards in jumps and throws should surely by now have warranted an in-depth investigation? Is it, for instance, that ethnically we in Britain cannot match the size and power of the Slavic peoples? Or is it that when we can match them such men and women gravitate towards sports, such as rowing and rugby, that are either more lucrative or more satisfying or both, than athletics?
Since the introduction of lottery funding there has always been a strong gravitational pull towards the more successful running events, especially the sprints. Millions of pounds have been spent and wasted in a mostly elusive quest for gold. It is a world where the rich have got richer in terms of lottery support and the poor have got poorer. What UK Sport’s one-suit-fits-all lottery policy fails to recognise is that in throwing events, in particular, athletes mature more slowly than their sprint counterparts. Unfortunately over the past decade the ends of all this spending have not justified the means and field event athletes and the decreasing band of coaches have become disincentivised. What, they ask, is the point?
In the women’s high jump the current UK record of 1.95m was first set twenty-seven years ago. Since the introduction of lottery funding only one woman, Susan Moncrieff, has been selected once to compete at a global championship. In the 2009 England regional championships a total of 15 women competed in the three competitions. Only one exceeded 1.85m (first achieved by a British woman in 1971); four exceeded 1.75m (first achieved forty-five years ago). Six jumped 1.65m or lower (a height achieved by Dorothy Odam at the 1948 Olympics, jumping off loose cinders into a sandpit using a scissors technique). The questions are: are our best coaches technically capable of taking athletes beyond 1.95m and are they capable of recognising talent when they see it?
In the men’s Hammer only one thrower has represented Britain at a global championship since the introduction of World Class Performance in the late nineties. In the women’s triple jump and shot put no one has represented Britain (nor look like doing) since the retirements of Ashia Hansen and Judy Oakes.
Most of our field events, especially the throws, are dead in the water. Our top proponents receive scant, if any, support. Philippa Roles (who actually was selected for Beijing in the discus) had to drive a suburban train in order to support her lifestyle and do athletics.
This year UK Athletics have adopted the IAAF entry standards for Berlin. In two events, the women’s high jump and Hammer, the UK record would have to be broken to achieve the A standard. In the men’s Hammer only one UK athlete, Martin Girvan, has ever achieved the A standard (in 1984). The litany goes on.
In its introductory blurb about the World Youth Championships UKA says that it “aims to provide experience for aspiring under 18 athletes.” Unless you’re a jumper or thrower that is. Of a paltry total of 19 athletes in Sudtirol there are just one male jumper and two female throwers. It is difficult to understand why the federation instead of choosing the IAAF entry standard adopted much harsher selection standards for the World Youth Championships, only aiming to take those who could finish in the top eight. In other words it has adopted a policy that will surely disencentivise potentially promising young athletes (and their coaches) especially in the field events. The highest differential came in the men’s Hammer with a 14.2% difference between the UKA and IAAF standard, both the women’s and men’s javelin standards, however, run that close.
Even when our throwers (with obvious exceptions) get to a major championship they do not perform well. Leaving aside the excellent javelin exploits of Backley, Hill, Whitbread and Sanderson, the number of top eight finishers since 1948 in each of the other events can easily be counted on the fingers of one hand. We’ve all watched in despair as British throwers seemingly freeze in the circle and perform well below their season’s best in qualifying rounds. There is seemingly little or no mental preparation for the task in hand. A cosy league fixture one week and facing the world’s best the following is too daunting a task.
So how can UK Athletics attempt to end almost a century of mostly despairing field event performances? Here are a few ideas:
(1) It needs to follow the endurance example and be advised by those who have been steeped in jumping and throwing almost all of their lives. They already have the excellent Bob Weir in charge of the heavy throws, and he should be joined on a panel that will draft a future policy document by the likes of Steve Backley, Jonathan Edwards, Steve Smith, Judy Oakes, Fatima Whitbread, Tessa Sanderson, jumpers and throwers who have performed excellently at the highest level.
(2) It needs to publish details of all Level 3 and 4 coaches in the various field events and their locations so that barren areas in the country can be identified.
(3) It needs to launch a campaign within the sport to recruit jumps and throws coaches, targeting former internationals and looking urgently at the professionalization of coaching to make such an exercise worthwhile for those taking part.
(4) It needs to arrange Jumps and/or Throws internationals for seniors and juniors against other European countries.
(5) It needs to put together a programme of support for those identified as having the necessary potential to reach international standards.
(6) It needs to review the sizes of implements used by those in the junior age groups.
(7) It needs to tell the various senior and junior league organisers that their meetings will not be sanctioned unless qualifying standards in field events are instituted forthwith.
(8) It needs to encourage the setting up of specialist clubs, like the Hammer Circle, in all eight field events.
(9) It needs to insist that more field events are staged at our televised meetings.
(10) It needs to ensure that entry standards for the various championships are always those of the IAAF and EAA.
One thing we can all surely be agreed upon: it isn’t rocket science.

Fings Ain't Wot They Used T'be

If proof were still needed that men’s endurance events in Britain are now in paralysis a glance at the all-time lists will suffice. Performances set in the opening decade of the 21st century comprise just 12.2% of the top twenty all-time lists for men’s events from 800m to the 50k walk. This is fractionally worse than the percentage of performances from the 1970s that are still extant there.
It is generally believed that European endurance is in the same parlous state but using the same criteria performances set this century by the continent’s endurance athletes comprise 47.2% of its all-time lists.
The great and the good of British endurance running down the years have recently met to cogitate on this. Ian Stewart, 5000m bronze medallist at the Munich Olympics (a man who, in 1975, won a European indoor 3000m title one weekend and an IAAF world cross-country one the next) has been handed the poisoned chalice of creating a revival back to more halcyon days. Whether he can successfully combine this task with that of promoting the televised events remains to be seen.
It is an indication of these sad running times that our current top male marathon runner, Andi Jones, with 2:15:20 running just five seconds faster than Paula Radcliffe’s best, complains of not being considered for the World Championships in Berlin. It is enough to make Jim Peters stir angrily in his grave.
A number of questions pose themselves: do we still have the natural talent; is our coaching good enough; do our athletes compete enough; is periodisation to blame; is ‘fear of Africans’ a factor; do our runners neglect speed?
Do we still have the natural talent? The emphatic answer is, no. Using the same criteria over five endurance events for the Under 20 athletes the situation is fractionally worse. Just 11% of the all-time top twenty performances by junior athletes have been set this century; worse still only 11% were set in the 1990s which means that only around one fifth of our best junior all-time performances have been run in the past nineteen years. In other words our reservoir of talent has dried up over two decades. There are dwindling fields in county and regional championships; there has been a steady decline in schools’ interest in athletics over a quarter of a century; our junior competitive structures are woeful involving hours of travelling to depressing league meetings often of pathetic standard.
Is our coaching good enough? There is no doubt that over the past decade or so endurance coaching (and therefore running) has been badly led and mismanaged and only the necessary cull after the Beijing Olympics gives any cause for hope. For our endurance runners to be told by one of the supposedly top coaches that “the Africans will never be beaten,” beggars belief, but it happened. There are too many coaches now operating who feel that attending a weekend course to gain the Level 2 award transforms them into highly qualified experts who require no further knowledge. All of this will take time to repair.
Do our athletes compete enough? Our summer season has barely begun and the one in the US is almost over, except that their best athletes now leave for competitions in Europe prior to the World Championships in Berlin. We have long had a culture in Britain of our best athletes “coming out late”, some even delaying a serious appearance until the championships/trials itself. The leading world performance at 800 metres as I write is 1:43.09 by Abubaker Kaki of Sudan set in early May. Five men have run under 1:44. Similarly the top British performance so far is 1:46.31 by Michael Rimmer with only six men below 1:48. Will Kaki and co be in contention come Berlin? Almost certainly. Britain? The last 800m finalist that we had in a global championship came in 1993 in Stuttgart. Are there lessons to be learnt here?
The man lying 20th on the all-time list for the marathon is Bill Adcocks who set his performance of 2:10:48 twenty-one years ago. Only three British men have run faster than Bill this century. In 1968 he finished fifth in the Mexico City Olympics run at altitude. That year he ran four marathons plus a host of other road races and track 10000 metres. To miss a weekly race for Adcocks, Hill, Alder, Kilby et al was something of a personal disaster. Racing was their raison d’être. “We were,” Bill once said to me, “learning our trade.” This notion of such regular, week-in, week-out competition was criticised by the former head of endurance, Alan Storey and although this sense of preciousness didn’t begin under his watch he continued to perpetuate it.
Should blame be laid at the concept of ‘periodisation’? There is much argument about this theory of training introduced by the Russian Professor L P Matveev and eagerly seized upon by western enthusiasts. It now seems to be generally accepted that although it might have suited Eastern European runners in the fifties and sixties international modern competition structures now make it obsolete. But are some of our coaches still rigidly adhered to the theory with disastrous consequences?
I have dealt with fear of Africans in an earlier Blog. Their total dominance of endurance events, their ability to maintain an almost metronomic tempo of fast running over twenty-five laps is disheartening to many runners. There was a similar belief in the 20s and 30s of the last century concerning the great Finns and although it is fairly certain that they would have continued such domination at the 1940 Olympics had they been held it is equally certain that it would not have continued ad infinitum. For all the theorising in western coaching no one has come up with ideas to counter the African success. Perhaps training as hard as they do would be a start.
Speed. That seemingly elusive quality (rather more speed-endurance than pure speed) that is ignored by so many coaches and so many athletes. It has been my good fortune to listen and talk to over the years to some our greatest endurance coaches: “The need is for repeatable speed always available on demand, ”said the late Peter Coe; “Speed has always been the dominant influence in my approach,” says John Anderson; “Speed is the essence,” says Wilf Paish. British coaches and athletes ignore it at their peril.
But in the end it is down to good coaching. And good coaching is about what it always has been: perpetual learning. I talked with former National Coach for Wales, Jim Alford shortly before he died at the grand old age of 90. He was coaching until the end of his life at the Tooting Bec track in London (when he got tired the athletes brought an armchair out for him). “I’m still learning all the time,” Jim said to me, “as a coach you never stop learning.” That is why it is encouraging to hear Kevin Tyler, UKA’s new coaching director from Canada, say, “ we interviewed over 50 of the world’s top coaches and without exception they identified mentoring and informal learning as the two most important factors in their development.”
Picasso said: “Bad artists copy; good artists steal.” This applies also to the world of ideas in coaching. When Cerutty brought to fruition the huge talent of Herb Elliott on the dunes at Portsea the world rushed to sand hills to copy him; when Lydiard had 800m runner Peter Snell running the marathon distance in training everyone began Long Slow Distance (LSD). As Bruce Tulloh once wrote runners are always looking for “something that will turn them from scrubbers to supermen, if not overnight, at least by next Saturday.” But the basics and terminology are now intrinsic and good coaches adapt the fundamentals to suit their ideas and their runners’ needs. They are always attentive to what is going on in their sphere and, like Picasso, have no compunction in stealing such ideas and maybe developing them further.
Where have we gone wrong? It is 21 years since our men won a medal at an endurance event at a global championship, two decades of perhaps believing that the triumphs of the golden era were the gifts of the Gods and would return. No longer can we believe that; no longer can we believe (and worse still announce) that every new bright talent is the next Coe or Cram. But we do need some derring do on the track, some courage to move towards the front in races and not, seemingly inevitably, towards the rear. Our coaches must awaken from their moribund slumber of despair and plan and prepare for a new dawn and as they do so whisper to themselves the million dollar question: why can’t our men run more like our women?

Innovation

Watching (on television, in the dry) Usain Bolt splash his way to an astounding 150 metres world best time of 14.35 secs in a rain-soaked Manchester a few weeks ago was, for everyone, some experience. It certainly was for his fellow competitors who looked completely awe-struck at the finish. Marlon Devonish, who finished a distant second in the race, said in the understatement of the season so far: “I think Usain is in a different league right now.”
But this Blog isn’t about Bolt it’s about innovation and the good news is that some of the hierarchy of the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) were present to witness the event. They must know in their hearts that track and field worldwide is in deep trouble as far as popularity goes and that radical approaches are needed if our sport is to undergo a renaissance.
Bringing certain events out on to the streets is one way of re-galvanising public interest. It’s not new; there have been town square pole vault competitions around Europe for many years and in a recent interview Seb Coe enthused about a shot put competition held in a Stockholm market square, that attracted 5000 enthusiastic spectators the night before the DN Galan track meeting. And there must be some way to integrate the street athletics series for youngsters promoted and organised by Linford Christie and Darren Campbell into any future similar programmes.
Innovation must be in the air for we also have the inaugural Super 8 inter-city meeting in Cardiff on June 10. This is an idea with enormous potential for every section of the sport. What club athletics in Britain has failed to grasp for years is the fact that six hour long meetings combined with up to six hours of travelling is not the way to attract young people to (or to keep older people in) our sport. Super 8 lasts for just two hours, covers eleven events for both men and women and has eight cities battling it out. Attractively presented and properly promoted, especially locally, this could be an awakening for track and field on a local level. Providing the people of Cardiff (where the prototype is being held) know about it, it will surely be a great success.
Next year, if the prototype is successful (as it surely must be with international athletes taking part and with Sky television giving it coverage) the competition will go nationwide with cities being invited to bid for franchises and this is where some uncertainty creeps in and a number of questions need to be answered. The most pertinent concerns finance because without sufficient backing the idea will struggle. But this is not the time to ask too many pertinent questions but to wish the concept well and await reaction.
There is, however, a difference between innovation and turning the sport into a circus and there are many who are concerned that the new European Athletics Team Championship is about to do just that. The European Athletics Association (EAA) has long been under the misguided assumption that the declining popularity of the European Cup competition was down to its structure and over ten years ago began reducing the number of attempts allowed in field events in the erroneous belief that such a gesture would be welcomed by television. But television never ever showed a complete set of jumps and throws anyway so it was a futile gesture. The decline in the popularity of the European Cup was that it offered no financial incentives to those taking part and so many of the continent’s top stars stayed away. The complications of the new competition are too numerous to include here and at the risk of being tagged a purist I forecast that the competition, like Jeux Sans Frontiéres (Its a Knock Out), just might entertain an unknowledgeable audience but will not impress a knowledgeable one.