Athletes ‘could not get any worse’
By Tom Knight
(Filed: 06/07/2006)
If any sport should be galvanised by the celebrations surrounding London’s hosting of the 2012 Olympic Games, it is athletics, where performances will be closely monitored over the next six years.
Dave Collins, the UK athletics performance director appointed 16 months ago, knows the sport must improve on its Sydney and Athens achievements if the British team are to justify the millions of pounds of funding and finish fourth in the London medals table. “We are making changes,” he said. “Things never happen as quickly as I’d like.”
Ahead of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, even the Chinese have accepted that athletics medals will be hard to come by.
Results in Beijing will determine the level of support that British athletes will receive in the crucial years before 2012.
Yet with six years to go, the omens for British champions in Stratford’s Olympic Stadium do not look promising. British athletes had their worst ever showing at last summer’s World Championships in Helsinki, and the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne, in March, underlined the work still to be done.
Only last week Britain’s women were relegated for the second time in three years from the Super League of nations at the European Cup in Malaga.
Collins said: "Have we bottomed out in terms of performance? Yes. Things couldn’t get any worse.
"We’re seeing signs of improvement, which may seem an odd thing to say after what happened in Malaga.
“The sport has promising youngsters and we have to make sure we get everything right in terms of preparation, which is the central theme of the contracts being introduced from this year. If I wasn’t positive about the prospects, I’d give up now.”