ATHLETICS:Kevin Ankrom clearly has ambitions for athletics in Ireland, probably as much as he has ambitions for himself – and that can be a healthy combination, writes IAN O'RIORDAN

SOME OF you probably noticed a little break there in the athletics season; the calm before the storm, perhaps, as a particularly long summer of track and field is about to get under way. By my reckoning, this won’t be just building towards the World Championships somewhere in South Korea at the end of August, but all the way to the London Olympics next summer. Ticket sales, after all, are now closed.

Indeed, I had a little break there myself, in more ways than one – and let’s just say will soon be brandishing the same upper body scar as Lance Armstrong, Ozzy Osbourne and Mary Cullen, among countless others. Of course it could have been a lot worse, and the human body really does have incredible powers of recovery, as long as you give it time. It’s just the nature of all sport: sometimes you’re the hammer, sometimes you’re the nail.

Anyway, the London Olympics were very much the focus this week when we were introduced to Kevin Ankrom, the man now responsible for directing the elite end of Irish athletics. We all know what direction things in that area having been going recently, as this critical position has effectively been vacant since the closing ceremony at the Beijing Olympics, almost three years ago.

Ankrom isn’t exactly coming in at an ideal time. Although better late than never, I suppose. And Athletics Ireland were certainly convinced they had found the right man for the job – describing him as their “Alex Ferguson”.

If you’re wondering who is Kevin Ankrom and why you hadn’t heard of him before – and believe me, we were too – he’s a 43-year-old American, from Jacksonville, Illinois, whose main experience in athletics has been in New Zealand, where he was high performance director for the past four years.

It’s mostly coincidental that New Zealand is one of the countries Ireland is often compared to when it comes to athletic ability and potential, given the similar population, climate and indeed athletics tradition. And during his time there Ankrom oversaw their most successful Olympics in 20 years (in Beijing in 2008) and their most successful Commonwealth Games in 40 years (in New Delhi last October).

Before that, Ankrom was performance manager at the Hong Kong Sports Institute, also for four years, and straight up confessed that one of his main reasons for applying for the position with Athletics Ireland in the first place was to bring him closer to home, so to speak, or at least closer to the frontline of world athletics, having felt more than a little isolated in New Zealand. And who wouldn’t?

In fact, he was often commuting from Hong Kong, where his wife and two daughters were living – but the whole family will this time be together, in Dublin, full-time.

There’s no denying he oversaw a fair amount of success in New Zealand, and he reminded us a couple of times they won two medals in track and field at the Beijing Olympics, in Valerie Villi (gold in the shot) and Nick Willis (silver in the 1,500 metres). But what we really wanted to know was how, or indeed if, he could transfer that sort of success to Irish athletics, in the long, short, or whatever term.

Imagine our surprise then when Ankrom said that all our distance runners would first be shipped off to Kenya for six months of very hard training at very high altitudes, that our throwers would be spending a similar amount of time training with the Leinster rugby team, and that if more of our sprinters weren’t coming up to full speed then they should probably resort to anabolic steroids, or else quit.

Okay, Ankrom obviously didn’t say anything like that, and there was no reason why he should. The last thing any new man in this position should do is starting telling the likes of Derval O’Rourke or David Gillick or Olive Loughnane to start doing things his way or no way. Not yet anyway.

“I am not going to be the bull in a china shop,” he said. “You have to come in and encompass as much as you can and work on building and enhancing the things which they are doing really well. If, given the opportunity, I am able to look at plans and develop structures in the short term to help them, that’s why I’m there. It’s going to take time to develop that relationship.

“But I know what good looks like, and therefore am able to develop and enhance it. Collectively, I need to pull a lot together, to create a factory of performance for the future. And it is all about pathways, systems, structures, and processes. I’m just going to be a broken record on that, unfortunately.”

That’s fair enough: none of us really expected Ankrom to come out with anything too radical. His biggest challenge may well be coming to terms with the politics of Irish athletics, but he’s already set himself a few targets, starting with the London Olympics.

“First and foremost my role is to take care of those athletes who are heading for London. Those athletes will have their structures in place, so you can’t make big structural changes. But if there is one per cent of help you can give them then that one per cent of help could be the difference between not qualifying for a final and qualifying for a final, or not getting a medal and getting a medal. But most importantly, then, to look at what we can do for 2016.”

Ankrom doesn’t strike me as the sentimental type, and said he’d no fear of making the “hard calls” – especially when it comes to whole A v B standard debate, which as far as most elite Irish athletes are concerned is one of the big issues surrounding the London Olympics.

He fully supports the Olympic Council of Ireland’s policy of accepting only A standards, noting, “that’s the same in all the other countries I’ve worked in”. He went even further, suggesting A standards shouldn’t be a guarantee of selection.

“You can have A standard athletes who are professional qualifiers, but I’ll only be sending the guys who can get the job done on the day. Whether that athlete has A or B standard is irrelevant. If I do catch grief I’ll get more of it for supporting an athlete who goes to competitions just to participate. It’s my job to send the right athletes who will show up and produce the goods on the big occasion. Results, particularly top-16 finishes, are my guiding principles.”

Kevin Ankrom clearly has ambitions for athletics in Ireland, probably as much as he has ambitions for himself – and that can be a healthy combination.

“If this was an easy job I wouldn’t be here, and that’s the fact and truth of it,” he told us, and on that note should be given his time.

The most crucial thing really is that he understands the importance of being the hammer, and doesn’t end up being another nail.