Gregan gives Ankrom’s strategic plan the thumbs up

Brian Gregan looks down at his feet, scratches the black stubble on the side of his face, then lets out and slow and deliberate “eh . . . Jeez . . . well . . . let me think . . .”

Together we have just seen the future of Irish athletics, a vision of where the sport is going, and where it will be, by the time it rolls onto the beaches of Rio.

Kevin Ankrom, the man who two years ago was handed the high performance badge in Athletics Ireland – and clearly intends on wearing it all the way to Rio – had called the assembly, in a Dublin hotel on Thursday morning, and started shooting straight from the hip.

“More athletes winning on the world stage,” was the catchy slogan which introduced his Strategic Plan, 2013-2016 – and Ankrom followed that with several more: “success is a moving target”; “progression is never linear”; and indeed “talent is harder to hide than find”.

Of course nothing in the sporting strategy grabs the attention more than the medal predictions, so when Ankrom counted out 24, up to and including Rio, he certainly had our attention. “And this is evidence-based, not about waving a magic wand,” he explained, although justifiably stopping short of predicting how many of those medals will actually be won in Rio.

After the slogans came the devil of the detail. Divided into two parts, the "Strategic Plan" touched on the usual suspects (more full-time coaches, smarter use of funding, improved medical back-up, linking with third-level institutions, etc); then came the Operational Plan, or the actual mission itself, which Ankrom illustrated with a strange yet colourfully laid-out chart, titled "Athlete Development Pathway" – with lots of lines and arrows and triangles and some interesting use of shading (see for yourself, right).

Strategic plans get lost
Now, this is where strategic plans get lost on most people, and where Gregan, mercifully, was available to step in. Because despite declaring it the "first plan of its type in Irish athletics" – and more than a little audaciously – much of what Ankrom said sounded worryingly familiar, at least to someone who had sat through very similar plans in the not so distant past.

Why, for example, no urgent meeting with the Sports Council and Institute of Sport to investigate how UCD – with the largest student body in the country – is still allowing its running track to be used as a storage area for steel fencing?

Why no twice-annual group training trips to Kenya, linking up with Brother Colm O’Connell at his school in Iten, where more young Irish distance runners could be subjected to the effects of altitude training, without which they have zero chance of medalling in Rio?

Why no talent identification days where the likes of Derval O'Rourke and Paul Hession and Rob Heffernan are brought along to both inspire and instruct what it takes to make it onto the world stage, before anyone can talk about winning medals out there?

Fancy vision
But enough of my fancy vision: what ultimately matters is what athletes like Gregan think: at 23, with a successful junior career behind him, and the clear potential of qualifying for Rio, whatever about medalling, he seemingly struggled to find any fault, anything lacking, in this new so-called system of Irish athletics. So I pressed him again and even after thinking about it, Gregan sees only the good.

“What I can say, is that I’m in that system now, and know that it does work. For me, as a junior, I don’t think there was much of a system there. But now there is. I think the Institute of Sport has been the biggest thing. So the system is definitely on its way, especially for the size of the country.

“Like John Shields, my coach, would talk with John Clearly, my strength and conditioning coach, who also looks after the Irish boxers. I’ve got my physio, so that every niggle is looked after, and again we all discuss it with each other. That’s never happened before. Like I can get a full set of blood tests done, through the doctor, that’s explained to my coach, the physio.

“I’ve spoken before about how great it is to have a proper indoor track at last, in Athlone, too. Maybe integrating more groups of athletes, is one thing. I still do a lot of training myself, although with a good group, and it would be nice to maybe link it with a few British or Americans occasionally. Just to get that extra input, that maybe even my own coach would say ‘yeah, that was something I might have overlooked’.

“But I’ve no reason to leave Ireland. It’s actually things like the Institute of Sport that’s keeping me here. The weather, obviously, is not great. But we have that one-stop shop now. Even if I was trying to get physio away somewhere then it would be far more costly. And I wouldn’t be the same priority either. I only have to text my physio now, and can get an appointment the next morning, so things really are integrated like that here now.”

That’s the bottom line: as long as athletes like Gregan share Ankrom’s vision, give it their full endorsement, it has every chance of getting more athletes winning on the world stage.