Thanks.
I got an academic full ride scholarship from the German government, they are paying even the plane ticket and I don’t have to return a single penny. I will study aeronautical & space engineering. This opportunity started last year and I had never seriously thought about living outside this country, or at least attending college. After travelling arround Europe this winter I realized it’s a continent full of opportunities for young people that you can’t simply find in Argentina.
The problem with Argentina, and it’s inhabitants (that would include me), is excess of pride and lack of self critic. Many problems aren’t adressed because of excessive mediocrity found everywhere in the society and that includes me and my family and my group of friends. We were lucky enough to have a German education and we are suddenly realizing how this country is slowly sinking towards a point of no return. It’s sad but when the most inadecuate and underisable people play the most strategic roles it’s the expectable outcome.
On the other hand argentineans are good people and mostly working, but as a “mass” there are many glitches where you can clearly see the outcome of almost 90 years of educative decadence, specially in the most poor groups. But they, as a nation, are still proud of what the country was 100 years ago, when the country was a leading in terms of development and growth. I would say there is no foundation for that pride right now.
Regarding athletics, the national federation has too many dark business with the little money they recieve from the government. I believe we have about 10 synthetic tracks in the country, 5 of them being in Buenos Aires province. There is a regional sports development centre where there are 2 of these and right now they are building a third one in the very same spot, whereas 1 was enough for it’s current use and in the northern provinces there isn’t a single one. Southern provinces have no tracks at all. Two weeks a go there was a big celebration because a cynder track was opened in the north, well it’s ok and good for the sport, but they made a relatively big show of it as if it was a stadium.
Coaching is another huge problem. I know that everywhere are bad coaches, but generally there are a few coaches with deep knowledge per country. Here the “head coaches” of the most “pregious” track clubs have no idea of the effects of sprinting on the cns and are doing any type of crazy stuff for short sprinters (500m repeats on track during spp is a good example?). They look at my as if I was some kind ape when I try to explain them I am going s-l and lifting 3 times per week after sprinting. They can’t understand how I will develop my “aerobic base” with those extensive tempo runs, or why my volume is so low. They are importing cuban coaches (that are supposed to be eminences) and after having shared training sessions with the jumps guy I clearly see how out of 7 jumpers none survived the training.
On the top of that very few coaches can speak english, and if they do, I seriously doubt they will be reading anything of the level you can find in this forum. What’s more appaling is that there are still some athletes that have good performances relative to their genetic potential and it makes you wonder how far these guys would make it if they had a more scientific coaching.
Regarding your speciality, there’s nobody training for the 400 from your approach, every single quartermiler I know is doing overdistance but in a volume even greater than Hart’s system. There is a guy who runs the 200 in 20.8x but is unable to break 47 even though he trained for it and has the biotype of a quartermiler. There is talent here but it goes nowhere.
On the other hand certain track clubs are favoured and that’s why you see mediocre athletes attending international meets and good ones staying at home. It’s some kind of mafia, there have been phantom meets were an “old lady” suddenly made the minimum for the OG, she went to Beijing and barely vaulted 4.20. It’s a shame that the metropilitan federation has to obbey orders given by the argentinean one, even the ones that are obligued to organize these phantom meets will tell you “I wish it rains and hails tomorrow when that old bitch is jumping”.
There’s also lots of money that was destined to the athletes but disappeared in the way. In the last NC two hammers disappeared for ever ever during the competition! When the second track was installed here the video finish system disappeared and the track costed roughly 800.000 dollars, while it’s a mediocre rubber track, … I believe the most humillating that has happened (and is happening) is that our best promise, a youth javelin thrower (world ranked 8th) gets zero funding from the state because of a coaching conflict. Many athletes live in the local development center and this guy gets nothing even though he could clearly make it to la creme de la creme! He lives in a favela (slum), one person is privatly sponsoring him and gives him enough money to eat properly. There was a collect done in order to buy some javelin shoes for him. And I bet my ass somebody is having a nice time with this kid’s money.
Then my athletic development also gets benefitted from my move to Germany. If I had stayed here it would have been impossible for me to continue training, we lack infrastructure, to get to the university it takes arround 1h 20m and then the same for the trip back home. Add another 1h total trip time to training and it’s humanly impossible to stick to a training regime, and I am lucky enough to be able to attend university! In Munich it only takes me arround 20m to get to the university and 10m to get to the Olympic park, it’s much more doable. I hope to get quality coaching there and to be able to fulfy, at least partially, my “talent”, which isn’t anywhere near great. And secondly I hope, that in the remote case I made an international competition, not being forced to compete for Belgium if things don’t go well with my the CADA. Anyway for the moment that doesn’t represent a real worry.
Sorry if it was long but I believe you deserved a complete answer.