You are given €1 Million to spend on developing the sport.... How do you spend it?

ecoli

Hypothetical situation for those who feel that the threads are getting a little repetitive:rolleyes:

So where do you spend it?

Athlete Funding?
Coaching?
Facilities?
Media Exposure?
Hit Vegas and put it all on black in order to try get a bigger investment?;)

ger664

Salary €900,000
Solicitor's retainer €100,000 so I get to keep my salary for doing nothing.

couerdelion

I decide who is Irelands best medal prospect for the Olympics and offer them a 50k bonus if they medal. I then spend another 50k promoting the athelete to kids aged 6-13 encouraging them to join an athletics club and become the next "Irelands best medal prospect".

I then spend €100k training volunteers coaches in how best to train kids u13 and put another €100k aside for futher training for when these kids start to hit 15-16.

€300k is then used to help fund a youth academy for the best 13-16 year olds in the country who graduate from the previous scheme and the rest distributed amongst the clubs to organise the training for these kids.

2028 aim = 3 athletics medals.

mithril

http://www.rte.ie/sport/news/2012/0328/315338-government-unveil-30million-funding-for-sport/

Well the government have 30 million to spend, (for all sports, not just athletics), and will be prioritizing small grants to community projects in disadvantaged areas, and the minister's constituency of Mayo.

Mr.Crinklewood

Invest all the money in getting a future Irish winner of Wimbledon, purely to annoy the English.

thirtyfoot

€1m is not a lot to leave a legacy. I would say this though to get most from your money.

Appoint two world class coaches - a middle distance and a sprints. Pay them both $150k a year for 5 years. Before appointing, request domestic coaches to apply to be part of the 'Elite Coach Mentoring Programme'. Select 5 coaches (and their groups) in both areas. The appointed World Class coaches would work with these 5 groups over the 5 years. Meeting with each coach/group at least once a fortnight. There would be monthly group sessions. The world class coach would have overall responsibility for these athletes and their coaches. The benefits of this:

• Anything up to 80 athletes would have access to a World Class coach for 5 years
• 10 domestic coaches would have access to a world class coach for 5 years
• When the 5 years are up, you would have 10 domestic coaches who would have come on leaps and bounds
• After 5 years, you would have 10 centres of excellence led by domestic coaches

In other words, a legacy.

Clearlier

I like thirtyfoot's ideas but given that there is a limited pot of hypothetical money my instinct would be to focus on a smaller area than the whole country. Call it a pilot region. I would do what thirtyfoot suggests but on a smaller scale and I'd put the rest of the money into coaching at grassroots level.

Within that small area I would want to

• link up with a number of schools possibly as few as 8 initially.
• set up a league to offer regular opportunities to compete.
• offer regular coaching
• coach the coaches
• make a big noise about the new league

Once the initial pilot area is set up you can then look to expand. You will have used the pilot to find out the most efficient and effective way to do things. It would be important too to work with the other sports as best as you can. Tailor the training so that it can replace a rugby/GAA/soccer training session. Have the people controlling those sports view athletics as a partner not a competitor.


It's all a bit pie in the sky - the reality is much harder than it looks and we'd do well to learn from rugby who have spent a lot of time, effort and money getting into non-rugby playing schools but I think that fundamentally we need to put in a place a supply line of athletes that can be developed into elite performers as well as developing an elite coaching infrastructure.

T runner

I think the examples of Australia and East germany (albeit drug assisted) show that a good trawl of the population will return results.

I think 1 million might go some way to put in some structures for this trawling process.

The talent needs to be trawled at schools level. Structures should focus on a clear path from schools to senior level.

That means school athletes must be members of a club. i.e anyone training for a school team signs up for a club. This may mean modifying competitions (your run for club and school in same champs race?). But there must be a clear progression and commonality in competition and organsiation between school level and senior. Schools benefit from expert training in clubs. Athletes remain in clubs and dont fall through net after school is finished. Benefit for clubs obvioulsy and benefit nationally as the pool is greater and therefore the talent is. It is not a big leap to national conciousness as a major domestic sport and thereabouts also would lie an argumnet for more serious funding

In our school we had one club runner amongst all our XC teams. After school finished we had still one club runner and he was the only one of all of us still running or involved in athletics.

Pisco Sour

Schools naturally would be the way to go, but one thing that must be taken seriously is how to make the sport appeal to kids. It needs to be sold to kids. Most kids want to play soccer, gaa, rugby, and unless athletics is made more appealing to kids then it will always play second fiddle to the bigger sports. How to make it more appealing? It's a tough one. Maybe a interschools competition could be introduced for younger kids that focuses more on camaraderie and the team aspect in a competitive but fun environment as opposed to individual performances. Have various relay type events of various distances: 8x200m relay, 5x600m, 10x50m etc. The distance doesn't really matter, and it doesn't necessarily have to be on a track all the time. The whole thing could be built around the team, with that being the only result that matters, and develop the bonding and enjoyment that the other sports offer kids.

As others have mentioned, the sport needs to work with the likes of Rugby, GAA, Soccer, much like what is done in the USA with sprinting and American Football.

Good thread. Interesting replies.

RoyMcC

I like the thirtyfoot coaching model, with the proviso that the elite coaches need to be incentivised and kept on a rolling contract to ensure results are obtained. If they don't perform them then they're replaced.

It's no good without athletes though and, as T Runner says, there really has to be better schools links to grab a greater percentage of the sporty youngsters that gravitate to GAA, rugby etc. Example - I'm just now coaching a 16-year old lad recently arrived in the Island from Dublin. At Blackrock College he trained for rugby six days a week. He wanted to throw javelins but got very little encouragement.

OK Blackrock might be a tough nut to crack but a strong and well-resourced Dublin Athletics Board ought to be able to make inroads into the schools via the clubs.

So I'll back thirtyfoot and T Runner with my €1m.

sconhome

I'd put it all on account in Amphibian King for lots and lots of free shoes (the right ones of course) for everyone.

notsofast

thirtyfoot wrote: »

€1m is not a lot to leave a legacy. I would say this though to get most from your money.

Appoint two world class coaches - a middle distance and a sprints. Pay them both $150k a year for 5 years. Before appointing, request domestic coaches to apply to be part of the 'Elite Coach Mentoring Programme'. Select 5 coaches (and their groups) in both areas. The appointed World Class coaches would work with these 5 groups over the 5 years. Meeting with each coach/group at least once a fortnight. There would be monthly group sessions. The world class coach would have overall responsibility for these athletes and their coaches. The benefits of this:

• Anything up to 80 athletes would have access to a World Class coach for 5 years
• 10 domestic coaches would have access to a world class coach for 5 years
• When the 5 years are up, you would have 10 domestic coaches who would have come on leaps and bounds
• After 5 years, you would have 10 centres of excellence led by domestic coaches

In other words, a legacy.

Agree with the suggested structures. However, if you split athletics into 5 broad categories, sprints/hdls, middle dist, jump, throws and walks, your investment would only cater for 2 of these.
A quick reckoning of the 2011 AAI Juvenile star awards (from the current issue of Irish Runner ) shows that of the 29 award winners
8 were for sprints/hdls, 5 middle dist, 7 jumps, 6 throws and 3 walks.

€1m is not enough to take on 5 world class coaches.

earlyevening

Junkets, fact finding missions, michelin star restaurants, chauffer airport transfers, office on Merrion Sq, gold plated pension....

F**k it, I'd need 10 million.

ChickenTikka

I'd go with the approach of developing the sport in the schools -

- Offering scholarships in the primary school teacher training colleges in order to develop the interest and knowledge amongst new primary school teachers. If this were based on high achievers in athletics, all the better.
- Extending the RDO remit or appointing new ones so that we have paid parttime/fulltime coaches covering groups of secondary schools.
- Pushing the idea of a team-based competition (on lines of National League) in the secondary schools

Donelson

Giant advertising campaign for high performance athletics, if you can convince people they want it, they will them spend their time and money trying to get it. This creates a virtuous circle....