Elite may be pushed out of top bracket

Athletics: Certain changes in the way the Irish Sports Council are assessing their high-performance grants has squeezed many Olympic athletes out of the higher awards bracket for the coming year.

For the first time one of the main qualifying criteria will be performance and not overall ranking, which reflects the Sports Council's intention to start getting a better return on their investment.

The complete list of 2005 grants won't be finalised until the end of next month, but the Athletics Association of Ireland (AAI) expect the more hardline approach. Many of their elite athletes including Athens Olympians Derval O'Rourke, Mark Carroll and Olive Loughnane and top sprinter Paul Hession are likely to be casualties of the criteria.

Up to last year athletes could qualify for the various grant categories through the IAAF top list (which is based on performance) or the IAAF ranking list (based on six best performances). Those ranked 17-50 in the world, for example, were deemed international grade. From now on only the performance will count - a decision that hasn't gone down well with the majority of athletes or their coaches.

Finbar Kirwan, high performance manager with the Sports Council, explained the reasons behind the changes: "In the past an athlete could qualify on either of the two systems, the top lists or world rankings. We wanted to work off one single ranking system by which the athletes can be measured against.

"Overall the carding scheme remains more or less as it was for 2005, but there will be a major overhaul towards the end of this year, which means there will be significant changes for 2006. But the bottom line is we have to get the best value for the money that is allocated to us.

"And we do have to start looking towards the future. One of the main things that will come out of the Athens review next month is that we have to start focusing on the athletes that can deliver, and also the junior athletes that will be there for you in 2012 and 2016."

The AAI were faced with a choice - either the ranking list or the top list could be used as one of the criteria to decide if athletes were eligible for a grant. AAI performance director Elaine Fitzgerald fronted the discussions with the Sports Council, and is confident their decision will work best for the long-term development of the sport.

"There is already a drive from the Sports Council to tighten up the carding scheme," said Fitzgerald. "So a decision was made, and obviously not everybody was happy with the outcome of that. Quite a few different factors were taken into account, but we just thought times and performances were fairer. The IAA ranking list is based on performance over the season, but we want to develop a programme for people to qualify and compete at major championship events, rather that go out and become circuit athletes so to speak. That's mainly why we chose the performance list."

One definite causality of the tightening of criteria is Paul Hession, the 21-year-old Galway sprinter who last year ran 20.61 over 200 metres, but just missed out on A-standard for Athens. Under the ranking system he was 36th in the world for 2004, but his time only rates him 88th best. His coach Jim Kilty has found obvious flaws in the changes.

"The top list time is a once-off," he said. "There were 23 Americans ahead of Paul based on times, but as we know a lot of those are dodgy. He's ranked 36th in the world when based on his six best races, and only five or six Americans are ahead of him. To me the ranking list is the model of consistency, the top list is the opposite.

"So I feel they made the wrong decision. I know it's not in, say, Paul Hession's favour or Karen Shinkins' favour. But in fact Paul did a survey himself and 77 per cent of Irish athletes do better on the other list, so I think both lists should be accepted."

Kilty also works with several other top Irish sprinters including Derval O'Rourke, who qualified for the 100 metres hurdles at the Athens Olympics on the basis of a performance in 2003. Athletes automatically remain on the carding scheme for two years, but O'Rourke failed to hit those heights again last summer primarily because of a serious illness shortly before the Games, when she lost 4.5kg in weight. She is now in danger of losing a quarter of last year's grant of €11,500 for 2005, despite her best start to the indoor season with her 8.24 seconds victory over the 60 metres hurdles in Cardiff last weekend.

Last year 53 athletes benefited from grants totalling €452,625 under the Sports Council's international carding scheme, which ranged from world class one (worth €30,500) to junior grade (€1,600). The council, however, are open to hearing special cases such as Hession.

"I can't comment on individual cases," explained Kirwan, "but we had to improve our focus on our best athletes . . . I can understand there may be some situations where individual athletes will feel like they're being targeted, but obviously they're not. We've got to take a broad view on this, and there is an appeal process, completely independent of the high performance unit."

Last week UK Sport announced their support for elite athletes would be better targeted, which meant weeding out athletes unlikely to be medal contenders, and targeting the money on those who were left.

There is the growing acceptance the Sports Council have already started working off a similar backdrop.