Hi everyone, I wrote a little review of this talk here:
http://www.charliefrancis.com/community/showthread.php?t=11022
Below is a copy of Dave’s personal notes that can be found on the UK Athletics Website here:
http://www.ukathletics.net/vsite/vnavsite/page/directory/0,10853,4854-171027-188245-nav-list,00.html
The notes on the UKA website have tables etc but I have reposted it here because I think some people will be interested in this talk.
Explanatory notes to accompany presentation
Slide 1 – New Directions for UK Athletics
UK Athletics Performance Director Dave Collins hosted a series of public meetings on 17-27 October 2005 to explain how the new Performance Pathway will help athletes deemed capable of achieving podium / top eight placings at the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing and / or the 2012 Olympic Games in London.
Slide 2 – Condolences to our French colleagues
WHY the need for action?
I start here with sincere apologies to anyone from France – especially the rugby union players from that wonderful country who beat me regularly during my playing years. Paris 2012 T-shirts were on sale at half-price within half an hour of London winning the IOC vote – and I was starting to get phone calls saying: ‘That takes the pressure off you on the way to Beijing, doesn’t it? The Government have got to fund athletics fully now all the way through to 2012, haven’t they?’
The truth is that, no, the Government don’t have to, because people’s perceptions are that this sport is under-performing; that we are not necessarily a good investment; that there are other sports in which successes are more likely.
And it does not really matter what people in athletics think; whether they agree with the Government or whether they think our performances in the 2004 Olympic Games and the 2005 IAAF World Championships were good enough.
The Government provide the funds so they are entitled to decide how their money is spent. They have set our targets:
• Five medals from athletics and eighth place in the medals table for Team GB as a whole at the 2008 Olympics;
• Eight medals from athletics and fourth place in the medals table for Team GB as a whole at the 2012 Olympics.
So we need to recognise the reality of the situation we are in: perceived as a failing sport by the Government and UK Sport, we need to start to recognise the realities now – because anyone who doubts the devastating impact of the loss of Lottery funding should ask our colleagues in sports such as gymnastics and judo. They will vouch for the fact that slow strangulation can be extremely painful.
So we need to turn around performance levels at the top end of athletics – and do it quickly!
How? Run faster, jump longer, throw further, jump higher.
Slide 3 – What do I do?
I don’t…
It is not my job – or that of the UK Athletics Senior Performance Managers, Performance Managers at the High Performances or the Senior Performance Coaches around the country – to improve the general standards of athletics in Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
That task is in the hands of highly capable people at UK Athletics, headed by the Director of Athlete Development Zara Hyde Peters – ‘Dad’ to her friends – and at the Home Country Athletics Federations (HCAFs) and in the regions who will be working dedicatedly to improve the general standards. There will be finance available for Event Management Groups and for many other aspects as the sport constructs a coherent pathway for all.
On my travels around the country, it was a real shame to see magnificent facilities, such as the Indoor Athletics Centre at the English Institute of Sport in Sheffield, nearly empty. These are crucial among our nurseries for our future successes – not just for the next two Olympic cycles but for generations to come.
I do…
If we win five athletics medals in Beijing and all those medals come from, say, the sprints and the sprint relays, I will have done my job, the SPMs will have done their jobs and the SPCs will have done their jobs. That’s the bottom line, though of course the successes we achieve at competitions like next summer’s European Championships will be important contributors. However I will not have driven up general standards in British athletics.
It goes without saying that we have to do all we can to drive up the standards of our elite and near-elite athletes.
It cannot be emphasised enough that improving the quality of the personal coaches of these athletes is an absolutely crucial part of the puzzle – not least because good quality coaches can produce more athletes!
And I also…
There’s no difference between Tanni Grey-Thompson and Kelly Holmes except one competes sitting down and the other standing up. Both are Dames. Both are highly committed athletes. Both have had marvellous success. In addition, athletes such as Danny Crates who are successful Paralympians train with and compete against able-bodied athletes. So it is logical that we should evolve a system in which our aspiring Paralympians are dealt with no differently from our aspiring Olympians.
Norwich Union Great Britain and Northern Ireland Teams for competitions such as the IAAF World Cross Country Championships, Race Walking Championships and Ultra-Distance Championships will be funded from sources other than the World Class Performance budget.
None of the above is negotiable. It is what the Government have decided. They give us in Performance money for athletes capable of reaching the Olympic podium or top eight, and that is it. That is what we have to concentrate on.
It means that there might be no Performance support for the best athletes in this country in an event. There might be no support for an athlete who is No.1 in an event in this country and continues to improve but not sufficiently to suggest he / she is capable of reaching the Olympic podium / top eight. What does an athlete in this situation have to do? Run faster, jump longer, throw further, jump higher.
Hopefully, that will not make anyone give up athletics. I played sport all my life because I enjoyed it not because of the financial rewards I might or might not find in a rugby boot at the end of a match.
Neither, hopefully, will it mean that all of a sudden people will stop trying to be international athletes. There will still be a lot of support along the line for athletes to achieve that.
But let me use the examples of two other sports to explain how sharp focus earns rewards both at the Olympics and from the Government funders…
Cycling decided a few years ago to throw most of their effort into track racing. They did it very well. Now they have been really successful, they get more rewards. So they can expand their Performance efforts into other disciplines such as mountain biking, BMX … whereas I suggest that if they had spread the money through all the disciplines of their sport a few years ago, they would not have done well, as we did.
Canoeing, similarly, decided to concentrate on its Olympic disciplines (sprint and slalom) even though it had had some success in other disciplines such as marathon racing and one guy in particular called Richard Fox who could win races if you armed him with a saucepan and put him in a barge. Indeed, the British Canoe Union installed their office for sprint and slalom on the opposite side of the river to their offices for the other disciplines. I ask their Performance Director if he walks across the water between the two but however he travels, the tactic has worked for that sport.
Given that we all want athletics to be a successful sport, and given that this is how success has been successfully pursued, you can hopefully understand why we are taking this route.
We have been given the target of five medals and 80 place points in Beijing. To achieve, we have to put people in finals. If we don’t, we become a very hard-up sport. If we exceed the target, we get more resources. How can athletes help us in this respect? Run faster, jump longer, throw further, jump higher.
Slide 4 – Some Perceptions
It does not really matter whether people within the sport believe we are all pulling together or not. The Government perceive athletics to be a divided sport so we have to change that perception if we wish to be better thought-of.
But it’s the disjoin between coaches that worries me most. The fact that we hear coaching centres referred to as poaching centres is not indicative that everybody is pulling together.
It’s a given that event groups are different. An endurance runner can compete all year – on track, on road, in cross country with fell, mountain and ultra running thrown in for good measure. Sprinters have just two opportunities, outdoor and indoor.
It’s also a given that we have athletes who are more world class in some events than others. We have world class coaches, but I don’t think we have them in all disciplines.
Coaches seem to behave differently in different disciplines. At meetings, I see what I call the three witches – John Herbert, Ted King and Aston Moore – huddled together around the jumps take-off board obviously discussing each other’s athletes. In certain disciplines, coaches seem to have difficulty communicating with each other; it’s as if each has one of those old magnets that repel other coaches at five paces and I sometimes think if three of them found themselves in the same room, it would exceed critical mass and blow up.
I’m well acquainted with egos, having attended quite a few rugby union dinners in my time. And I have to say that since I became UKA Performance Director, I have had no shortage of advice, some of which is anatomically possible. The message I get is that everybody knows best.
In this vein, coaches frequently prod for athletes who are with other coaches. When there was a recent tiff because an athlete decided to move from one coach to another, coaches were writing in to magazines like AW and Viz calling me all the names under the sun for making the athlete move – which I didn’t – yet some of the same coaches had been writing to me in previous weeks saying: ‘Give me athlete so-and-so and I’ll make him so much better.’
Wouldn’t it be better if we all worked openly together rather than in Chinese whispers? After all, nobody knows everything except my Missus. And I know that because she told me.
At least, it’s no secret what athletes have to do to climb up the Pathway. Run faster, jump longer, throw further, jump higher.
Slide 5 – Some guiding principles
Given what I’ve just said, these should be self-explanatory.
Athletics simply must have a pathway from the classroom to the podium, and the ability to reinforce coaches.
We have to show we can all move in the same direction – and pretty damn quick.
As Performance Director, I have to behave like a banker with the sport’s money. I have to invest in the best cases of athletes getting better on the way up towards the podium and top eight. There will be equity of investment through the sport – through UKA, England Athletics and the regions, plus Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales – but it is my task to invest in those most likely to succeed in Beijing 2008 and London 2012.
So far as egos are concerned, I have no problem with people phoning me and saying, ‘There is a better way.’ In fact, the more constructive advice I receive, the better. Let’s try and find new ways of making our athletes more successful. Let’s talk about it!
The Senior Performance Managers and Performance Managers are not going to be going around athletes’ training sessions with clipboards ticking off what they’re doing right and marking down what they’re not doing so right. They are servants of the sport. They are there to help the athlete improve and to help the coach find ways of helping the athlete improve.
At the moment, the fact is that there are athletes on funding who have gone slower year on year for the last three years. Why hasn’t something been done? Why hasn’t someone asked? If I was the coach, I would have asked myself, ‘Am I doing everything right?’ If I was the athlete, I would have asked myself, ‘Am I doing everything I can?’ If I was an administrator involved with the athlete and coach, I would have asked myself, ‘Am I doing all I can?’ Because someone must be doing something not right for the athlete to be going slower for three successive years. I come in and ask, ‘What are going to do next year?’ The athlete says, ‘Same thing.’ I say, ‘No you’re not!’
But if there is a problem – with an athlete, with a coach or with an administrator – they will hear it from me, not from a whispering campaign or from a letter to a magazine or a newspaper.
And I hope if athletes or coaches or administrators have a problem, they will come to me rather than conduct a whispering campaign or write a letter to a magazine or newspaper.
After all, we are all seeking the same results with the same athletes. Run faster, jump longer, throw further, jump higher.
Slide 6 – And Three System Principles
WHO is more important…
If that promising young endurance runner Paula comes to me and says, ‘I’ve got a new training plan; I’m going to go to Albuquerque for three months and eat cream cakes’, I’m probably going to say, ‘Are you sure?’ But I’ll let her go and do it; and when she wins another medal, everybody will go on the cream cakes training regime. If a highly promising 15-year-old and her new coach come to me and say, ‘I’m going to train on cream cakes for three months’, I will say, ‘No you’re not!’ In other words, athletes who have a proven record will be given more leeway than athletes who do not have a proven record; I think that’s fair.
But at the same time I have to find an equitable method of measuring the progress of athletes in vastly different disciplines. The example I have been using around the country is, how do you compare Ricky Soos, the 800m runner, with Shirley Webb the hammer thrower? Both went to the Athens Olympics but there the similarity pretty much ends.
I also need to see how good a coach is, because a good coach is one who raises an athlete’s standards year on year. It’s acceptable to flat-line year on year if the athlete is already an Olympic or World Champion but, below that, we need to see improvement year on year.
So we need a standardised system that enables me to identify the good coaches – and to identify what help the not so good coaches need to make them good coaches.
This is why we are asking all World Class Performance athletes to fill in the following…
The Athlete Performance Template (APT)
A standardised format for evaluating the performance and/or potential of athletes is essential for a number of reasons. With an accurate and valid method, we achieve the following:
• EVALUATION: A means of evaluating athletes, in order that funding and other support decisions can be made more objectively.
• DEVELOPMENT: A means of identifying weak areas in the profile, in order that support and development may be optimally focussed.
• REWARD: A means of evaluating progress, in order that support professionals’ and, most crucially, coaches’ contributions can be assessed. Genuine systems of reward/recognition against development/sanction are enabled.
In short, most of our aims are supported and progressed by developing and coherently deploying such a methodology.
For all factors, we must make every effort to make the ratings as objective and ‘clean’ as possible. Recognise that scores may be subject to quasi-legal (or even fully legal) appeal processes. Scores and rationale are clearly and openly discussed with the athlete and coach, so objectivity is key. Interpersonal concerns MUST NOT prevent the consideration and comprehensive address of difficult but crucial issues, especially in developing athletes. The longer an issue is left un-addressed, the harder it is to change and the greater its impact on performance.
Increased validity/objectivity should be achieved in a number of ways including:
• Use of additional input from appropriate specialists or informed others.
• Providing a clear rationale for all scores.
• Appending relevant evidence to the document.
• Relating scores and rationale to previous years’ comment
This version is intended for use with WC-Performance athletes, plus those ‘accelerated promotion’ athletes from the WC-Development ranks. Assessments take place annually, and are completed by the relevant SPM with extra input as required. These form the basis of performance review meetings between athlete and coach/SPM and PD, which decide on both levels of resource, annual and Olympic cycle goals, specific support needs and the season plan.
SEE DOCUMENT FOR TABLE
… and we are asking all World Class Potential athletes (in old terminology) to fill in the following…
The Athlete Performance Potential Template (APPT)
A standardised format for evaluating the performance potential of athletes is essential for a number of reasons. With an accurate and valid method, we achieve the following:
• EVALUATION: A means of evaluating athletes, in order that funding and other support decisions can be made more objectively.
• DEVELOPMENT: A means of identifying weak areas in the profile, in order that support and development may be optimally focussed.
• REWARD: A means of evaluating progress, in order that support professionals’ and, most crucially, coaches’ contributions can be assessed. Genuine systems of reward/recognition against development/sanction are enabled.
In short, most of our aims are supported and progressed by developing and coherently deploying such a methodology.
For all factors, make every effort to make the ratings as objective and ‘clean’ as possible. Recognise that scores may be subject to quasi-legal (or even fully legal) appeal processes. Scores and rationale are clearly and openly discussed with the athlete and coach, so objectivity is key. Interpersonal concerns MUST NOT prevent the consideration and comprehensive address of difficult but crucial issues, especially in developing athletes. The longer an issue is left un-addressed, the harder it is to change and the greater its impact on performance.
Increased validity/objectivity should be achieved in a number of ways including:
• Use of additional input from appropriate specialists or informed others.
• Providing a clear rationale for all scores.
• Appending relevant evidence to the document.
• Relating scores and rationale to previous years’ comment
This version is intended for use with WC-Development athletes. Assessments will take place annually, and are completed by the relevant PM with extra input as required. These should form the basis of performance review meetings between athlete and coach/PM (and, if necessary, PD), which decide on both levels of resource, annual and Olympic cycle goals, specific support needs and the season plan.
SEE TABLE IN DOCUMENT
WHAT we will not do…
We will not be giving top marks to athletes who mark themselves 10 out of 10 in every box. We will not be adding up scores and giving places on the Pathway to the top few.
We are looking for athletes to make an efficient judgement of themselves. This information, along with discussions we have with our staff and with the athletes’ personal coaches, will help us to make our own efficient judgements about what things each athlete most needs to work on during the next year. If things are going wrong, we need to find out why and turn it around.
On the question of rewarding people who improve athletes, I know there are knockers of the standard method of identifying successful coaches. But I do not see a dearth of good coaches in Britain in all events; and I would like to recognise and reward those who are upwardly mobile.
If I get into a situation where I feel I should suggest to an athlete that he should move, the coach and the athlete will be the first to know. And they will know at least a year before any move takes place because we would be telling them that something has to change if their partnership is to work. This change may take the form of the coach being mentored, or going abroad to gain more experience of a certain aspect of an athlete’s needs.
But I emphasise again – we are here to help athletes and their coaches. There is no point in us upsetting coaches or driving them away from the sport because they are the people best placed to make good athletes – and to make more good athletes. And the more good athletes we have, the happier I will be if they run faster, jump longer, throw further, jump higher.
Slide 7 – The Challenge of being Excellent
WHO has the toughest task?
I use this simply to illustrate that everybody thinks they have the hardest job in the world. In fact, there are a number of individuals who contribute to the success of an athlete – mummy, daddy, teacher and coach at least.
How many more depends on the specific needs of each individual athlete, something that should be reviewed as an on-going process.
Slide 8 - So what would I like to see?
WHY we must change and exchange ideas…
All the best coaches I’ve known while playing rugby union and getting myself knocked about in judo pinch ideas. They pinch them from coaches who are above them. They pinch from coaches who are alongside them. They even pinch ideas from coaches who are below them in the sport’s hierarchy. Because everybody does something right.
Yet in the short time I have been Performance Director at UKA, I have asked at least four well-known coaches: “What can I do for you? Where can I send you around the world to help you improve the help you give your athlete(s)?” “Nowhere,” they replied. “I know all I need to know.” They are brain-dead! How are they going to get better if they have closed their minds? How can they help their athlete(s) get better if they are not prepared to improve their knowledge?
There were certain athletes at the summer’s World Championships in Helsinki who, when I looked in their eyes, reminded me of a startled rabbit caught in the headlights. I recognise what a tough challenge it was for them; in my more modest days in rugby and judo, I took many more beatings than I gave out but I always came off the pitch or the mat with my pride intact.
I want athletes who give it a go.
Lie down and die? No!
PB at a major championship? Yes please!!
And we administrators have to change, too. Unless we try new things, we are not going to change the sport. One thing’s for sure, so far as the Government is concerned – if we stay as we are, we are going to be an extremely hard-up sport.
We simply have to get athletes to run faster, jump longer, throw further, jump higher.
Slide 9 - And what do the athletes need?
WHAT do the athletes need?
I spotted these inter-linked rings on a Coca-Cola can and thought it made a perfect illustration of the complex needs of an athlete. To get to the top, he / she needs many different things, in different degrees, at different times in his / her progression from playground to podium.
I don’t mean to keep harping-on about those coaches who told me they knew everything but, with every respect, they only guy I know who is first-class in all those five basics has a big S on his chest and wears his underpants outside his tights. And Superman wasn’t part of the Norwich Union Great Britain and Northern Ireland Team’s support squad the last time I looked.
This is why increasingly the top athletes will be coached by teams of people. If we were in cycling, everyone good enough to be on World Class Performance would be moved to Manchester and would be told who would be coaching them, who would be doing their strength and conditioning work, how they had to change their lifestyle, etc, etc.
The fact is that we are in athletics and that approach would not work for athletes. I prefer to work with people who are willing to seek and take on board new ideas; who are prepared to challenge themselves.
For example, what’s a realistic training load for a 14-year-old endurance runner? I don’t know because I’m new to the sport but many of the answers I’ve been getting suggest four sessions a week, each of about an hour. Yet an 11-year-old gymnast trains for five hours a day. Ah, you retort, but gymnasts peak sooner than athletes. Do they really? We’re getting 19- and 20-year-olds winning World and Olympic medals these days in athletics. I’m not saying gymnastics has got it right. Neither am I saying we’ve got it wrong. I’m saying we don’t know.
Maybe we’ve got to work the younger athletes harder. Maybe we’ve got to work them smarter.
I am told that if we don’t work them at the right rate through the age groups, then as soon as they have to up their training as seniors they fall over with injuries or illnesses. That may indicate there is a need for more attention to strength and conditioning at an earlier age. Maybe. It’s another area to explore.
In other words, there is a whole range of different things that are needed to help an athlete to get to the top – which is where we must get more of them if this sport is to thrive. What do they have to do? You know by now. Run faster, jump longer, throw further, jump higher.
Slide 10 - The Performance Pathway
WHO can reach the Performance Pathway…
It might take an athlete 10 years to climb the Performance Pathway to the top; it might take two. It depends on the discipline as much as the athlete. For example, there are athletes in Disability who have reached the top within a couple of years of appearing in the system; others need to progress for longer than that.
Athletes as young as 14 and 15 will be welcomed on the Pathway, provided we consider they have the potential to become podium / top eight in due course. That is not to say people who emerge at later stages will be ignored: we can’t afford to miss anyone of genuine world class! We certainly don’t intend to be ageist. If you’re still an up and coming sprinter at the age of 25, you’ve probably missed it; but if you are an up and coming endurance runner at the age of 26, you may still have a chance of making the podium / top eight so we would welcome you on the Pathway.
To stay on, athletes will be required to show firm evidence year on year on year of progress towards the podium / top eight. To help them do that, we will provide them with all the advice, assistance and expertise that we can find. And there will be personalised funding levels, tailored to meet the requirements of the individual.
If you picture the Pathway as a pyramid, stretching from the playground to the podium, this is how I envisage the top three notches will be populated…
WHAT the will structure look like…
SEE DIAGRAM IN ORIGINAL NOTES
The numbers in the illustration above are for only diagrammatic purposes.
The sole purpose is to demonstrate how we are establishing a seamless Pathway in which the promising athletes are picked up and passed from person to person to person whose task is to make sure they are getting the best possible services.
The major quality we seek in return is that the athlete remains upwardly mobile and on course to get to the podium / top eight.
HOW many are really world class?
World Class Performance: UK Athletics will have funding for 40 athletes who we consider to be capable of going to Beijing in 2008 and doing one of three things – 1) reach the podium; 2) finish in the top eight; 3) use the experience well and have a realistic shot at reaching the podium at London 2012.
Initially when the sport received Lottery funding, there were 247 athletes on the World Class Programme. With the best will in the world, can anyone remember a time when the UK genuinely had that many world class athletes?
While the funding for next year will be for 40, if we decide we have only, say, 38 athletes in these categories, there will be 38 on World Class Performance; if we decide we have, say, 43, then I will beg, steal and borrow the funding for the extra athletes. It is not our remit or intention to rigidly enforce regulations; it is our intention to encourage as much talent as we can find.
Those athletes and their personal coaches will be supported by the UKA Senior Performance Managers – John Trower in speed events, Alan Storey in endurance and Aston Moore in field. They will not be like time and motion men looking down on you, ticking boxes as you train. They will be supporting you, acting as sounding boards, offering advice, finding solutions for difficulties you may face.
In addition, there will be Senior Performance Coaches. They will be working part-time as relay coaches because all the indications are that our best hopes of medals in Beijing lie in relays. They will be working part-time with serious podium hopes. In some cases, they will be personal coaches who we are paying to go to training camps, etc.
Those appointed so far are Malcolm Arnold (sprints), Todd Bennett (relay), Harry King (relay), Ted King (jumps), Tony Lester (sprints and relay), Mike McFarlane (relay), Mark Rowland (endurance) and Roger Walters (relay).
I wonder how many there will be in a year or two’s time, leading athletes who run faster, jump longer, throw further, jump higher.
Slide 11 – The Performance Coach Role
World Class Development: there will be 80/85 at this level (compared with 125 from England who were on the old World Class Potential Programme last year). This figure has been arrived at because we believe we need that number to maintain a group of 40 at Performance level.
If more people show the potential to go to the podium, nobody will be happier than me to go to get more funding. But it’s up to the athletes to make that happen – to demonstrate that they have the potential, that they deserve the support, that they can really get to the podium in Beijing or, more realistically given the time scale, London.
Our conversion rate has not been great so far. We have supported more than 400 athletes on World Class Potential over the years. So far, too few have reached the required standard – podium or top eight.
That is not a great success rate. If this was an investment bank, it would not be an acceptable return. Neither, I suggest, is it an acceptable use of money provided, via Lottery funding, by people like you and me who buy a ticket hoping that, if they don’t win a million or two, they help somebody to win a medal or two.
So the matrix standards will return to what they were intended to be: a guideline, a starting point. Once the matrix standard has helped an athlete to get onto the Pathway, we will expect them not to bounce along just above the standard year on year on year but to continue to improve towards the podium / top eight.
Slide 12 - The Performance Manager Role
UK Athletics Performance Managers will focus entirely on helping these athletes improve and helping these athletes’ personal coaches to find the expertise required. The PMs are Matt Favier in London, Simon Nathan in the West Midlands and North West of England, Steve Rippon in the East Midlands, Yorkshire and North East of England, and Martin Rush in the South of England.
Performance Coaches will be added as they show they have the capacity to operate at the required level.
I don’t want this to sound like a trick question, but … How many athletes can a world class coach coach? I suggest the answer is, ‘Not many.’
I think we have world class coaches in some events. We can place other coaches to learn from them. That way, we create more world class coaches. And the chances are good that they would create more world class athletes, which is what we are after.
In other events, I am not so sure that we have world class coaches. Is the solution to bring in foreign coaches? Lord Coe was reported as saying so. But with the greatest respect, I do not think that is the answer.
One reason is that it would tick-off loads of good UK coaches.
Another reason is that foreign coaches would bring in their own methods; their own ideas on such vital issues as nutrition, which might not suit the British environment.
And finally this is a UK system. I would prefer us to build the capacity of British coaches in the British system.
But what we must build is a Performance culture … run faster, jump longer, throw further, jump higher.
!
for finding this site link