Is British athletics in a state of crisis?
Wednesday March 22, 2006
The Guardian
YES
By John Bicourt, British Olympic steeplechaser, athletics coach and manager
When UK Athletics replaced the British Athletics Federation in 1997, it was given one task: to produce elite, medal-winning athletes. The facts show, however, that UKA - and its stakeholders, Sport England and UK Sport - has failed because performances at world level have steeply declined in the past eight years.
Despite the handful of medals Britain has won, statisticians rightly rely upon a finals points system to calculate overall and comparative performance. At the 1997 world championships, Great Britain scored 76.5 points. Using the same system, Britain earned 34 points in Helsinki last year. In this period the international ranking of GB athletes fell from fourth to 16th place.
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Management must take much of the blame. Since 1997, £100m of public funding, sponsorship and television monies have passed through the hands of UKA with almost nothing of substance to show for this. It cannot claim the success of Kelly Holmes, Denise Lewis, Paula Radcliffe or Darren Campbell as they were already established. What about the athletes it should have nurtured in that time?
UKA is using money from the lottery and public taxes, but it is failing to deliver. In the last nine years it has remained unaccountable to the sport. The clubs have had no say, have received next to nothing to help them develop and, unsurprisingly, the volunteer coaches and officials are leaving, with no one to replace them.
As an elected officer of the Association of British Athletics Clubs, I am aware that most world-class athletes come from voluntarily run clubs. But the majority of these 1,200 clubs are not likely to see much from the £21m “legacy fund” over the next five years promised by the government after London lost the right to host the 2005 world championships. UKA’s lack of foresight over the new stadium provision fiasco of Wembley and then Pickett’s Lock was a national humiliation. Yet the world governing body, the IAAF, was already happy to accept a modernised Crystal Palace.
The High Performance Centres that UKA set up are extremely valid but are under-used and often empty. They are too exclusive, allowing in only lottery-funded athletes and their coaches. They should be selectively inclusive, not to overcrowd the facilities but so that other selected athletes and coaches can look, listen and learn, as well as get involved.
To attract and keep youngsters we must provide regular performance-rewarded competition in the form of graded meetings throughout the season across the country - like the established British Milers Club circuit for distance events. Today’s society is money-driven and so is sport. What really motivates athletes to train harder and succeed at the highest level is financial security. A performance-rewarded system to include successful coaches and officials (who are now by and large working voluntarily) would best drive British success.
The chances of success in the 2007 world championships and the Beijing Olympics are also slim. Unless there is an immediate and radical change of management and strategy at UKA, our hopes of 50% of British athletes reaching Olympic finals in London in 2012 - as predicted by the UKA - will remain a pipe dream.
NO
By Dave Collins, UK Athletics’ national performance director
In 1976 Britain left the Olympic Games with only one track-and-field medal, the bronze won by Brendan Foster in the 10,000 metres. Was the sport in crisis then? Quite the reverse: we were on the verge of a fantastic era.
Whatever people thought 30 years ago, let us look back to the last two major outdoor championships, the Olympic Games in Athens in 2004 and last summer’s world championships in Helsinki. At both events we won gold medals: three in the Olympics, one at the world championships.
Of course we want more, and to increase the numbers of British finalists - and we are working on it! Our challenge is to achieve even greater success, but it cannot be called a crisis just because British athletes are not winning as many titles as they have in the past. People talk about the days when Sebastian Coe, Steve Ovett and Daley Thompson triumphed at the Olympic Games and beyond, but that doesn’t mean we have a divine right to win gold medals.
Athletics is up there with football as a genuinely global sport played on a global level. In Athens more than 200 countries were represented, in Helsinki much the same, and the standard achieved by different countries has grown markedly.
There again, even though I know changes cannot be made overnight, I’m the type of person who, if I say we are fifth overall in the world, I want us to be fourth and it cannot happen quickly enough. I want to instil this urgency throughout British athletics, and the people working for me are now a great deal more urgent than they were.
I believe there has been a sea change, with the levels of expectations filtering down the tree. This is one reason why we cannot say athletics is in crisis. If we did not ask questions when results don’t go our way then perhaps we would have a problem. But we are doing that and we are finding the answers; we are tackling issues head on and addressing matters.
We know the challenges that we face and have several cunning plans to ensure that our sport does not enter a state of crisis. One area is the relationship between an athlete and his or her coach, and the extent to which the pair are required to look at their preparation with someone from UK Athletics.
If they need technical advice, this can be provided much more clearly and effectively by UK Athletics. In the past it was happening but in a less structured fashion - so again, let’s not accuse the whole sport of being in crisis when aspects of it are actually firing well.
But I do want people to be accountable. If a certain coach, for example, has said his or her athlete is going to perform well then unless there’s a very good reason it has got to happen. If they have stated the difference they are going to make as a coach, then we will check back over the last year to see if this has happened. And if it has not, we will ask why not.
This is not in order to criticise but to make sure that everyone is accountable, and to learn how best UK Athletics can offer our input. We are not just looking at the athletes and coaches but at administrators, scientists, the medical staff - the whole picture. We’re all in this together. We want success and, so long as we are pushing hard for it, this should not be called a crisis.