Usain Bolt to join Dooneen AC?

thirtyfoot

http://www.independent.ie/national-news/olympics-star-wants-irish-bolthole-1546219.html

The mouthwatering prospect of seeing Usain Bolt running the 60m in the Open Munster Indoor Championships in January in the red of Dooneen is a step closer. Rumours are that Marian AC are close to a deal with Asafa Powell while Bekele says the Cork County Cross-Country and an Olympic Marathon are two titles he craves and news of this has sent Leevale and Togher into a bidding war to bring the Ethiopean to Cork. We'll have to wait and see.

On a slightly more serious note, getting top athletes here for holding camps, low key races prior to London '12 would be a great idea.

RoyMcC

You're doing it again :pac:

Tingle wrote: »

On a slightly more serious note, getting top athletes here for holding camps, low key races prior to London '12 would be a great idea.

Surely The Irish Sports Council and their associated bodies (including AAI) have got plans in hand to offer appropriate training facilities to teams competing in London in 2012? The necessary refurbishment and upgrading would of course benefit local sportspeople as well.

HaileGeb

We cant even provide our best home grown athletes with adequate facilities to prepare properly for major championships! E.G. Martin Fagan., Mary Cullen, Roisin McGettigan, Gillick etc have all fled the nest!

I'm sure Lightening would appreciate the weather though!!!!

RoyMcC

True. But even the likes of Jersey & Guernsey have allocated a budget for upgrades of pre-existing facilities and are targeting (via the organising body) possible sporting associations that will be looking for training camps at that time. Maybe the IRC are doing likewise. It would be poor to let the buzz of 2012 pass Ireland by.

cfitz

HaileGeb wrote: »

We cant even provide our best home grown athletes with adequate facilities to prepare properly for major championships! E.G. Martin Fagan., Mary Cullen, Roisin McGettigan, Gillick etc have all fled the nest!

I think it's over-simplifying it a bit to say that a lack of facilities caused Fagan, Cullen, and McGettigan to leave. They left long ago, and lack of adequate facilities probably wasn't the main reason for their departure.

thirtyfoot

HaileGeb wrote: »

We cant even provide our best home grown athletes with adequate facilities to prepare properly for major championships! E.G. Martin Fagan., Mary Cullen, Roisin McGettigan, Gillick etc have all fled the nest!

Fagan, McGettigan and Cullen were all US based from college (weren't they?) so they hardly fled the nest. Gillick, Cuddihy, Hession, O' Rourke probably fled the nest to avail of different coaching setups and more competitive training groups. Yes, the indoor facilities in Loughborough, Grangemouth and Bath beat Santry or Nenagh but surely if Gillick could have had a group in Dublin with 2 or 3 other 45 men he may have stayed. Maybe direction (through a director of athletics:( for example or a high performance committee maybe:rolleyes:) could be given to our top athleles to group together and train together with our top coaches (follow the Chamney/Reale lead) instead of going solo or overseas. Take our top 8 400 male runners and they have 7 different coaches. Geography aside, it would be good if at least half trained together. Comes back to "centres of excellence" or "super clubs" where resources, both facilities and coaching, would be pooled. Thats what the Jamaicans do - Asafa Powell's training group can have up to 50 athletes in it, they do ok because of it.

cfitz

Tingle wrote: »

Fagan, McGettigan and Cullen were all US based from college (weren't they?) so they hardly fled the nest. Gillick, Cuddihy, Hession, O' Rourke probably fled the nest to avail of different coaching setups and more competitive training groups. Yes, the indoor facilities in Loughborough, Grangemouth and Bath beat Santry or Nenagh but surely if Gillick could have had a group in Dublin with 2 or 3 other 45 men he may have stayed. Maybe direction (through a director of athletics:( for example or a high performance committee maybe:rolleyes:) could be given to our top athleles to group together and train together with our top coaches (follow the Chamney/Reale lead) instead of going solo or overseas. Take our top 8 400 male runners and they have 7 different coaches. Geography aside, it would be good if at least half trained together. Comes back to "centres of excellence" or "super clubs" where resources, both facilities and coaching, would be pooled. Thats what the Jamaicans do - Asafa Powell's training group can have up to 50 athletes in it, they do ok because of it.

Well it looks to me like we have the models there - look at DCU and Ferrybank. Maybe we don't need it to be within an AAI structure. If a top coach gets together with a shrewd financial person, then surely groups like these can come about. Sure it will be tough with the smaller pools of talent and all the usual complaints - facilities, competition, etc. But I'm sure it wasn't easy for the likes of Br Colm, Greg McMillan and all the other elite groups around the world either.

If you've got the vision get out there and build it!

thirtyfoot

cfitz wrote: »

If you've got the vision get out there and build it!

Good point. But it does take time, I think it can be helped and with such small numbers might be better controlled centrally by the governing body. Thats why the upcoming appointment will be crucial.

I've got a training group that is the most haphazard motley crew of athletes that have ended up together by accident in the main and without any structure or clear career path. I think the same could be said of most training groups in the country (although I do ask and enquire with other coaches as best I can). The Irish Athletic Coaches Assoc could be a step in the right direction on that front. In the meantime, we'll all keep ploughing on, head down and not sharing the knowledge (or even talking):)

cfitz

Tingle wrote: »

Good point. But it does take time, I think it can be helped and with such small numbers might be better controlled centrally by the governing body. Thats why the upcoming appointment will be crucial.

I've got a training group that is the most haphazard motley crew of athletes that have ended up together by accident in the main and without any structure or clear career path. I think the same could be said of most training groups in the country (although I do ask and enquire with other coaches as best I can). The Irish Athletic Coaches Assoc could be a step in the right direction on that front. In the meantime, we'll all keep ploughing on, head down and not sharing the knowledge (or even talking):)

Associations and Governing Bodies probably could make things easier but I don't think it's an impossibility without them. I definitely agree that these things take time. In my mind, it's unrealistic to expect our top athletes to come home to train in some new group that could fall apart within months. You have to build from the ground up - you can't expect a training group to be near as good in its first two years as it will be in five or six years time.

Running Bing

Out of interest how do elite training groups like McMillan sustain themselves? Are they non-profit and solely reliant on sponsorship or is their some sort of business model in place?

cfitz

Babybing wrote: »

Out of interest how do elite training groups like McMillan sustain themselves? Are they non-profit and solely reliant on sponsorship or is their some sort of business model in place?

I think McMillan Elite is non-profit. They have a number of sponsors including Adidas. Greg McMillan has a company called McMillan Running, he does online coaching. Perhaps profits from McMillan Running are invested in McMillan Elite. There's plenty of info about how they operate on the website http://www.mcmillanelite.com/.

Hype

I heard Usain Bolt wants to come train in Limerick