Our athletes need ringmaster to crack the whip

ON ATHLETICS:Irish athletes are crying out for direction and leadership and could do with a figurehead who has a deep knowledge, writes Ian O'Riordan

THERE HE was rooting through the gold watches and diamond necklaces. That was definitely him, shifting easily through the crowd, still living up to his name. The Ethiopian tracksuit made him stand out but the loose head and grimacing smile were the giveaway.

They said you could find more or less anything down in Beijing's famous old Silk Market, but we didn't expect to find Miruts Yifter - and definitely not to find him as relaxed and recognisable as the man who once dominated distance running under that greatest of nicknames, "Yifter the Shifter".

Truth is a couple of our more seasoned athletics aficionados recognised him first. And Yifter was glad to talk, glad to pose for a photograph, before shifting back into the crowd of shoppers along with his wife.

It was an amazing and uncanny coincidence. For bedtime reading this week I've been dipping in and out of Eamonn Coghlan's new autobiography, Chairman Of The Boards, and Yifter gets quite a few honourable mentions.

When it came to the Moscow Olympics in 1980, Coghlan had moved up the 5,000 metres and straightaway he identified Yifter as the man to beat.

Yifter had spent his youth working in factories around Addis Ababa and didn't start running until he joined the Ethiopian Air Force in his early 20s. He made the 1968 Olympics in Mexico but didn't figure. So he trained harder, and in the 1972 Olympics in Munich finished third in the 10,000 metres. Montreal in 1976 was to be his chance for glory, but Ethiopia got drawn into the African boycott and Yifter had to stay at home.

Inevitably, most people considered him too old to win in Moscow, even though Yifter would never admit exactly how old he was.

Age, however, hadn't slowed him down, and he won the 10,000 metres thanks to his trademark shift in gear over the last 300 metres.

When Yifter made the 5,000-metre final five days later, now clearly the big threat to Coghlan, a couple of Irish reporters hunted him down in the Athletes' Village in an attempt to establish for certain how old he was. "Men may steal my chickens," he told them, "men may steal my sheep, but no man can steal my age." Yifter won a first Olympic 5,000-10,000 double for Ethiopia, Coghlan finished fourth, and the rest is history.

If it was hard to tell Yifter's age back in 1980, it's even harder now, although down in the Silk Market, he announced unequivocally that he was "just 64". That would have made him just 34 back in Moscow, when many assumed he was at least 40. More likely he's still enjoying the mystery surrounding his age.

Yifter is in Beijing as part of the Ethiopian Athletics Federation and showed us his accreditation badge as if to prove it. "Team coach", it read, although he didn't seem too sure himself who exactly he was coaching, or even his exact role in Beijing.

But he was part of the set-up, and that's the important point. There's been a lot of talk this week about how some nations run their athletics business compared to how we're running ours. Yifter's presence with the Ethiopian team is a prime example of a business well run.

It's the point Alistair Cragg was trying to make during his emotional confession on Wednesday night after qualifying for the final of the 5,000 metres, and also the point I was trying to make earlier this week when trying to sum up the Irish performance in Beijing. There is an enduring problem with the way Irish athletics is doing its business, and it's certainly not the athletes' fault.

Saying that Cragg was a loser and that David Gillick has got it all wrong and that Derval O'Rourke would be better off disappearing back down to Cork was said in perverse irony, based on the notion that this was how their approach to the sport was being perceived. Apparently not everyone got it.

Cragg said he was sick and tired of the negative vibes that seemed to be permeating from the top down and the only surprising thing about that was how long it took him to figure it out. He said he and the rest of the Irish team were constantly being compared to athletes of the past, and usually lambasted for not coming up to their standard. He asked where these athletes are now, when help is needed.

Well three of them are back at home where their only Olympic role is as guest television pundits. A couple more are coaching in America and doing an excellent job. Another one is involved in the general running of Irish sport but may as well be running for office.

In other words, none of our so-called greats of the past are being properly utilised for the betterment of Irish athletics in the future, in the hands-on role where their experience can be maximised. And that's really all Cragg was trying to say.

It would be slightly impractical for Ireland to start imitating the way the Ethiopians run their athletics business. Their extreme training environment certainly couldn't be replicated, not even in the wilds of the Kerry mountains, but there is something to be taken from their general approach, like the involvement of Yifter here in Beijing.

Their athletes have their own managers and agents just like ours do, but long before a major championship on either the track or country, they come together under Ethiopia's head of athletics, Dr Woldemeskel Kostre. They're told where and when they can race, they're told when to rest, and invariably they all peak on the big day.

More than anything else, that's what is missing from Irish athletics right now - a ringmaster or godfather or guru or whatever you want to call him.

Athletics continues to be the headline act at the Olympics and there is very little room on the main stage. But the Irish team aren't just faces in the crowd. They have performed with the best in the past and continue to do so in Beijing. The task of how to move them closer to centre stage must now be handed to someone with vast Olympic experience and a deep knowledge of what it takes to succeed at this level.

Wonder if Yifter is interested.