‘British athletics’ strength in depth is just shocking. It needs a revamp’

RayCun

(paywalled)

An alarming lack of coaches and misguided priorities at the top of the sport are driving rising stars abroad, Rick Broadbent hears
Goldie Sayers is an 11-times national javelin champion and an Olympic medallist, so she knows how to make a point. With a flourish that her songwriter father, the late Pete Sayers, would have been proud of, she surveyed the coaching system in Britain and said: “They are spending so much money on the icing when they haven’t got a cake.”

She was speaking in the wake of the accusation by veteran coaching guru Malcolm Arnold that UK Athletics (UKA) is a “show-business company” that has neglected its coaches. Arnold, whose alumni include Jason Gardener — an Olympic champion who is president of UKA — has chosen to step down. The training centre at Bath University, which helped Dai Greene to the 400m hurdles world title in 2011, has also lost its funding. “Athletes always have this discussion,” Greene, who now trains in Loughborough, said. “There seem to be more people in the office in Birmingham than coaches.”

Sayers is another elite performer to echo the view that priorities have been misaligned. “We’ve got to the situation where every single support service is funded — the physio, the psychologist, the nutritionist — but the one person who makes the biggest difference, the coach, is not being paid. I’m so passionate about this. There are not many coaches in my event. I’ve been in my sport 20 years and there’s been no improvement — in fact it’s probably the worst it’s been in that time.”

As the sport heads to the World Championships in London in August, for which more than 500,000 tickets have been sold, UKA chiefs can point to a medal target met in Rio as evidence of success. If rising stars such as Adam Gemili and Katarina Johnson-Thompson have chosen to work with foreign coaches overseas, as Mo Farah and Greg Rutherford have done, it is a free world.

Others are less comfortable with the exodus. Dave Collins, UKA’s performance director at the 2008 Olympics who is now working with Chelsea FC’s academy, said: “If you are interested in the long-termism of the sport then you have to build a strong coaching base here.”

However, the most successful British coach of recent times is not employed by UKA. Toni Minichiello saw his job made redundant after coaching Jessica Ennis-Hill to Olympic gold at London 2012. Since she won a silver medal in Rio there have been no efforts to retain him.

WHERE BRITAIN’S TOP STARS TRAIN

• Mo Farah Oregon, USA
• Greg Rutherford Arizona, USA
• Katarina Johnson-Thompson Montpellier, France
• Adam Gemili, Tiffany Porter Arnhem, Netherlands
• Sophie Hitchon Loughborough/California
• Laura Muir Glasgow

“I think the view of the hierarchy of UKA is British coaching is not very good,” he said. “But they’ve not done anything to develop it. I agree with Malcolm about the ‘show-business’ thing. It’s all about the commercial end. Athletics in Britain has lost contact with the people who do athletics on a daily basis.

“Somebody turns up and is really gifted. You see them on the track but they’re gone in two or three years because the coach is not well-enough equipped.”

Going abroad is a solution for some of the top performers, but Minichiello says not everyone can afford that. “Anybody in Britain who doesn’t have the money can’t follow that path, so you’re short-changing 98 per cent of the sport because you’ve not addressed coaching.”

Sayers says she could go to almost any school in the country and spot a child who could become an international thrower. She says that she gets emails from many who have done well and asked where they can go for coaching. “I can’t really help them,” she said. “There are hardly any coaches in the technical events and it’s impossible to improve.

“It needs a huge shake-up. It’s common sense. If I said to the man on the street that an Olympic middle-distance runner was being coached by a volunteer they’d think that was staggering. They need to up the education of coaches and make it a career because it is in other sports. They would get a huge return on that investment, but all this money is being spent in the wrong areas.”

If I said to the man on the street that an Olympic middle-distance runner was being coached by a volunteer they’d think that was staggering
Despite her success, Sayers says that there have been no overtures to tap into her experience, which she believes is symptomatic of a wider malaise. “The sport has done nothing to encourage ex-athletes into coaching,” she said. “My level of knowledge in javelin-throwing is probably the best in the country but nothing has been done to keep me. I know so many athletes who would make great coaches but they drift out of the sport. You would not get that huge brain drain in any other sport.”

UKA can justifiably say that something must be working when the Olympic team had their best medal haul since 1988. The counter-argument is that Farah, Rutherford and Ennis-Hill have papered over cracks by winning eight of 13 Olympic medals at the past two Games.

“When you look at the strength in depth it’s shocking,” Sayers said. “The numbers at the competitive level are terrible. I don’t actually think we did well at the Olympics given Russia was not there. The sport has never been richer and never been at a lower level. Look at athletes going abroad. That speaks volumes. They don’t go where the best physio is — they go where the best coach is.”

Minichiello says that the coaching qualifications in athletics are not fit for purpose, and that you can get one after two days sitting in a classroom. He also blames Charles van Commenee, the Dutchman who quit as head coach in 2012, for “undermining British coaches”.

Collins was replaced by Van Commenee, despite last year’s post-drug medal upgrades showing that he actually met his medal target at the 2008 Olympics. He said: “From the day I walked in I was under pressure from lots of directions to hire big-name foreign coaches which, in my opinion, would not work.”

By the time Peter Eriksson was brought in as Van Commenee’s replacement, the landscape had changed. The Swede, who quit in 2013 and was Canada’s head coach in Rio, told The Times: “I thought the system in the UK was very good. You have way more coaches than in Canada. Athletes train all over the world now, but the problem is when people try to sales-pitch their ability to coach better than others and just blow smoke.” Whether Canada values coaches is also questionable, given that Eriksson has just been sacked after leading Canada to their best non-boycotted Olympics since 1932.

UKA says that more young people are now joining athletics clubs than ever before. Minichiello said: “They are also getting less quality tuition than ever before. That’s insanity. The sport needs a revamp.”

The system now is to have Loughborough University as the national hub. Greene, who left Arnold in 2015, is one athlete based there, with his Swedish coach, Benke Blomkvist. “The facilities are excellent but I’d like to see more athletes here,” Greene said. “It’s never easy for athletes to go abroad to train, but if Benke had not come here to help me out I would probably have gone overseas too.”

As a stalwart of the British scene, Greene is well placed to view the next generation and says that it is wrong to pin hopes on two or three young stars. “You can’t say, ‘Jess has gone but don’t worry because Kat [Johnson-Thompson] will win straight away,’ ” he said. “We have probably been spoilt in the last five years and we need to get more coaches in so that next generation thrives after the London boom. British Athletics have the money and they need to find a way to upskill coaches.”

Sacksian

It's a good read but the headline is a bit distracting. I think the issue is more to do with putting in place a professional coaching structure in the UK, rather than with strength in depth per se. There's a similar debate to be had here too.

RayCun

Yeah, it seems to be a bunch of things thrown into one story.

You could have the same discussion here of course - why is Derval O'Rourke paid to work with a bunch of rugby players, rather than paid to coach sprint hurdles? Same for other retired athletes. Is there enough for them to do to support a regular position?

It's not surprising that elite athletes travel abroad for coaching. If you are a British triple jumper, for example, I don't think there is a big pool of elite triple jumpers in the UK. (could be wrong?) If you want to work with a specialist coach, and in a group of people at your level or better, chances are you'll have to travel to a different country to find them. (And maybe a German pole vaulter goes to the UK to find a group pole vaulting group to work with). Distances are shorter these days.

Myles Splitz

I think for the most part the problem with coaching structures is not just a UK/Ire issue but a more global sporting issue to be honest. Good coaches for the most part are judged by the success of athletes available to them moreso than how far they have brought that athlete. With the UK it is slightly unique given the huge investment being put into the "marginal gains" while ignoring paying the likes of Minichiello but if you look outside the big Shoe Company sponsored groups in the states most coaches are being paid by colleges rather than the sport itself.

For all the investment in facilities and athletes over the last few years to help improve standards I think that there is a trick being missed.

Athlete funding is beneficial to support an athlete to get the very best from themselves no doubt but from a strictly economical sense it is probably not the best option for investment for a few reasons

- With athlete funding there comes a expectations on the athlete to perform at all times whether injured,ill etc. Not starting a race becomes a more beneficial in terms of funding than a poor performance (which sometimes is needed to manage expectations.

- Investment in coaching offers more in terms of a return of investment given the lifespan of a coach can be 3-4 times that of an athlete as well as the funding allowing coaches to help numerous athletes. Also having a options after retirement that can mean an athlete doesn't have to sacrifice the most employable years of their life with no option of a career in the sport after competing will immediately impact the sub elite group.

Complaints are continually made about the gap between Athletics and Road Running yet often it is the road running masses who are actually supplying runners with a wage as opposed to the clubs and NGB that they have dedicated their most employable years to (Rob Denmead, Catriona McK, Mick Clohisey, Vinny Mulvey, Gary O Hanlon and Emmett Dunleavy who have gone into private coaching)

Perhaps the solution is working between clubs and NGB to support even a part time wage for clubs (perhaps 10% of yearly membership going towards a coach being matched by AAI) could yield as much improvement in raising standards across the board as the same money being invested elsewhere.

In an ideal world having even a part time funded coach at every club with over 50 members I feel would make a huge impact in overall in standards as well as the standard of coaching at grass roots level by having one person who could help with up-skilling volunteer coaches.

RayCun

funnily enough, I was approached by a dark side club this week looking for a paid, part-time running coach. (PM me if you're interested )

I think it's difficult though. We could, for example, pay one of our coaches to coach part-time. But if we pay them for one day a week of coaching, then either they fit that around their full-time job, or they don't have a full-time job.

Also, introducing money into the situation changes the relationship in a lot of ways. The coach becomes dependent on the club. The people in the club know the coach is dependent, so they'd be reluctant to say, "hmm, this coach isn't working out, we should get someone else instead". People in the club would see themselves as entitled to demand more, because they're paying, more than what they're paying is worth. The coach would be more inclined to think "I've already put in my 8 hours this week, feck it"

The transition from amateur to professional is hard to make in small steps, I think

Sacksian

That's an excellent post, Luke -but I'd also agree with Ray regarding how messy it'd get. I think the professional coaches would have to be employed by AI and not attached to specific clubs.

If they're not already, I'd like to see AI do with seniors what they're doing with the junior development squads for endurance on a provincial basis, are those coaches paid?

Sidepoint - I've said it loads of times before but I don't think we're short on talent at juvenile level, it's just keeping younger people interested once they hit their 20s and the social side of things is crucial to that.

If we only have 50-100 (or whatever it is) juniors doing 8/15 in all of Dublin, most are going to get lost because it's 1 in one club and 2 in another, so what about clubs trying to train together for certain groups/distances with the professional AI coaches?

There was a post on twitter from Melbourne Track Club, I think it was, with 00s of guys doing km reps - reminded me of the morning sessions you hear about on the steps in Meskel Square in Addis Ababa!