Athletics Ireland pay for running from woes

ATHLETICS: Greg LeMond spoke about the dangers of living in a state of denial – it's a pity Ireland's premier athletics body seem to be doing just that

AFTER BEING utterly consumed by cycling matters this week, and given a frightening tour de force account of all that ails the sport by none other than Greg LeMond, it’s almost a relief to be back in the world of track and field – even though in this part of the world that means the fiasco in Athletics Ireland and the last goodbye to any decent bit of television coverage for the summer.

LeMond opened my mind to a lot of things this week. His knowledge of cycling is exhaustive, in every sense. Even before we got into any talk of doping he treated me to some insights into his training methods – most of which would be regarded now as thoroughly “old-school”. If only he had told me them 20 years ago.

“You’re a runner,” he said. “What did you run, 10k? How many 10k runners do you know thought if they ran a quick 10k they could run a quick marathon? Maybe first time out they did. But what happens 90 per cent of the time is they overload themselves, and don’t transfer that time to the marathon. The secret is staying on the right side of hard training. All elite athletes, runners, cyclists, whoever, have depressed immune systems, and once they go past the right side, do too much, they break down, get sick.”

All very well, I said, but how do you know you’re staying on the right side? “I’ll give you an example,” he said, “after I won the Tour

in 1989 my team wanted me to ride three hours a day, to get ready for the World Championship. I went home and did absolutely nothing, for four or five days. You want to get to that point where you’re itching to ride, desperate to compete.”

And how do you know you’re at point?

“When you’re horny again,” he said.

“Horny as hell.”

LeMond went on to win that World Championship in 1989. Seán Kelly, who no doubt prepared thoroughly for the event, finished third.

LeMond also opened my mind to the dangers of living in a state of denial – whether regarding a personal issue, or an issue that threatens a far wider cause. It’s a theme we’re becoming all too familiar with in this country, and the outcome is always the same. We think we’re better off staying hush, suppressing the truth, dreaming on. Then we realise there really is nobody flying the plane and soon the whole thing crashes in a bloody and ugly mess.

Athletics Ireland appear to be living in this very state. They may not be crashing just yet, but they’re not far off it – particularly if last Wednesday’s display before the Oireachtas Committee on Sport is anything to go by. I was cycling around Doonbeg with LeMond at the time, but from what I’ve been told it was another impressive exercise in self-delusion.

Nothing I haven’t seen or heard already.

Three few weeks ago I called up a top Athletics Ireland official to confirm the board had passed a resolution whereby chief executive Mary Coghlan would step aside, with a view to negotiating her permanent exit. He not only denied everything, but finished off by saying he’d ‘prefer if I didn’t write anything about it’.

Coghlan is far from the root of the problem, but unfortunately for her, she became a part of it. At the start of the year, Athletics Ireland had its core funding withheld by the Irish Sports Council – who instead are funding them on a weekly basis – after various conflicts, including some key appointments within the athletics body, and agreement on a high-performance plan. Legal matters surrounding these appointments, plus other internal issues, have been mounting, the fees for which have now run to €160,000.

On Wednesday, Athletics Ireland president Liam Hennessy opened proceedings with the Oireachtas Committee by declaring Coghlan was “currently on holidays”. Eventually, only after some bewildering cross-examination, did Hennessy admit talks have indeed commenced to bring about Coghlan’s removal.

Obviously, Hennessy was under legal restraint, but the fact is Athletics Ireland walked themselves into this mess by believing if they just kept quiet about their problems they would all go away. Hennessy is a reasonable man and a lifelong athletics supporter and certainly doesn’t deserve to be burdened with such a crisis. But now is the time for straight talking and some straight answers – neither of which the Oireachtas Committee got on Wednesday.

It was a footnote to Wednesday’s proceedings which ultimately may prove most damaging. In December, Athletics Ireland will host the European Cross Country Championships in Santry, and Hennessy admitted they are facing “a fairly decent shortfall” in terms of funding.

Everyone knows the Government’s funding for sport will be reduced to slim pickings in the coming years, and they certainly won’t be in a position to bail out Athletics Ireland. Bankruptcy is the worse-case scenario here, but a scenario nonetheless. If Athletics Ireland do have serious financial problems with the event they need to disclose that now, before it’s too late.

The saddest part about watching Athletics Ireland tearing itself apart is it comes at a time when the sport itself is perhaps at its healthiest – not so much at the elite end, but certainly at the mass participation end.

Last weekend, the Ireland team gained promotion to the second division of the new European Team Championship. (Not that you would heard much about it. RTÉ, as we know, are effectively ignoring the sport this summer. And by the way, the collapse of the British end of Setanta means no more Golden League meetings on Irish TV.) It was close, but in the end Ireland accumulated enough points to join Lithuania in promotion from their third division group and fight the middleweights in division two next year.

There were several impressive individual victories, including Paul Hession in the 200 metres, Derval O’Rourke in the 100 metre hurdles, Thomas Chamney in the 800 metres, Fionnuala Britton in the 3,000 metres steeplechase, and the previously unheralded Alan O’Brien in the 1,500 metres.

The very concept of the European Team Championship illustrates the advantages in being honest about issues facing the sport. The European Athletics Federation realised the competition, in its previous guise as the European Cup, was in trouble, but rather than deny it, they openly debated the future of the thing, and reinvented it in a way that would at least make it more spectator friendly.

This included a devil-take-the hindmost format in the distance running events, the field events having eliminations after two rounds, and a no false start rule in the sprints.

Inevitably, there were teething problems.

In the top division in Leiria, Portugal, Spain’s Natalia Rodriguez was the backmarker after three laps of the 3,000 metres, but took no notice of her instructions to step off the track. She went on to win, only to find herself disqualified. And in the men’s 3,000 metres, two runners ended up sprawled on the track after their desperate efforts to avoid elimination at a similar stage.

But at least the European Federation are awake to the notion that athletics needs to be forward-thinking, not backward thinking.

The only thing worse than that is to think you have no problems at all, or that of you bury them deep enough, they’ll just go away.