Longford's trackside leader

Although Catherina McKiernan missed out on the £500,000 pay day after running just short of the world marathon record in Amsterdam last Sunday, her agent, Ray Flynn, had negotiated a healthy appearance fee that, combined with the prizemoney, ensured McKiernan didn't come home empty-handed.

Flynn is now in the position to be even more productive in creating race opportunities and financial bonuses for McKiernan when she decides on her next world record attempt.

Although athletics is down the list of sport's top earners, the services that Flynn provides for McKiernan and about 70 of the world's leading athletes, across the full spectrum of events, has created a healthy business for the Longford man. Ten years ago, Flynn ended his own successful running career by starting up an athletics agency business in Tennessee. Since then his clientele has grown to include Olympic 100 metres champion Donovan Bailey of Canada and a host of other top American sprinters. This month Flynn Sports Management was ranked fourth in the annual IAAF poll of athletes' representatives.

"The first job for an agent is to advise the athlete and work with his or her coach to present the best balance of races available," says Flynn, who was back in Dublin for a few days this week after watching McKiernan's record attempt.

"That includes information about who is in those races and then to draw up the contract for those races. Then we endeavour to seek endorsements for the athlete, especially from sports-related businesses. We would also offer advice on taxation and investment options for athletes that end up making a lot of money from the sport."

Most people would think an athlete's only interest in an agent is to "show me the money", yet Flynn explains how the responsibility extends beyond that. "Our prime interest in any athlete is to see them succeed and maximise their athletic potential," he says, "and that means selecting the best possible combination of races to do that. Secondly, it is to maximise their financial return after selecting these competitions. But we won't jeopardise the athletic considerations by muddying the waters with the financial aspect.

"In Catherina McKiernan's case, for example, I will always present to her and her coach, Joe Doonan, the best competitions and they will select them based on dates and in the context of long-term plans. In many cases we have turned down very good financial opportunities because it just didn't suit the build-up to specific competitions."

That, unfortunately, can lead to problems with the national governing bodies, demonstrated most controversially over McKiernan's participation in the World Half-Marathon in Zurich and the subsequent demands of the athletics body, BLE, for a contractual agreement with McKiernan to run the World Cross Country next March.

The many changes that have taken place in the sport in the last 10 years - making it more professional now than ever before - means the administrators who govern the sport have been forced to adopt a different approach with how they work with the athletes and select them for major events.

"I understand the infrastructures that exist in member federations and their options within the IAAF in selecting athletes for particular events and I understand the business approach as well," says Flynn. "But you can get a stick and try and whip a cow into a barn or you can work with them and create some sort of working relationship.

"BLE have incredible opportunities from a business and marketing standpoint when you think they have the best woman middle distance runner in the world in Sonia O'Sullivan and the top marathon runner in the world in Catherina McKiernan. If you are governing a sport that is enjoying this golden era of these two great athletes, then there won't be a better opportunity to market and promote the sport.

"It doesn't necessarily mean creating a new position, but even just a contractual arrangement with one of the more prominent marketing companies in Dublin who would assess the opportunities for the sport." E to work with the agents in building that relationship with the athletes, but up to now that route has been ignored. The irony is that

Working together could create better opportunities for all parties involved, he says.

Flynn is keen to emphasise the athlete's position of strength in the agent-athlete relationship. "There's no investment on the athlete's behalf in that if they make no money then we make no money," he says. "Our income is on a commission basis, usually in the 15 per cent range.

"Athletes on the most part would seek us out and I think we're at the stage now where the reputation can make a big difference, but unlike federations we lose our athletes if we're not any good at our job.

"We have a staff of five people and that's a full-time, all year-round job and in most parts we try to have a representative whenever one of our athletes is in competition. As it is, 10 per cent of our athletes make 90 per cent of our money, so that gives you some idea about how the business works.

"We do like to help nurture and develop as many athletes as possible, but the nature of the sport says otherwise. I also have the philosophy that it's better to judge people when things are not going well, rather than when things are going well. It's easy to work with an athlete when they are on top of the world, but it's more important to be there for them when things are not going well."

Any agent, coach or indeed federation's nightmare is the positive drug test of one of their athletes, something which fortunately has not happened in Flynn's experience of the business.

"You obviously try and steer away from athletes who potentially might be doing something illegal or who, through some sort of tip-off, you hear is taking illegal drugs," he says. "There will always be debates on where to draw the line over what is ethically illegal as a drug and what will help reach you're own ability through natural terms. Right now I think it's more important to concentrate on the illegal substances rather than what is available as a natural product."

Flynn has also worked in promoting events such as the million dollar mile back in 1991 and the Donovan Bailey one-to-one with Michael Johnson in Toronto two years ago.

"That was a new dimension and would only be successful if Johnson had finished the race. While I don't see more of those sort of one-offs, I do see meetings becoming more squeezed in terms of less events and less athletes in those events, making more of a package for television."

It's always a fine line between finding the optimum race for an athlete and securing the best financial reward for their efforts. There have been those that got their paths mixed with unfortunate results, but Flynn maintains it is the former that motivates most.

"In my experience, for the most part, every athlete wants to be the best they can be. McKiernan told me after Amsterdam, and I believe her, that she was never thinking of the record money. When you're out there in a marathon and reach 23 miles in the heat of combat, all you think about is winning, and preferably in as fast a time as possible."