The State of the Sport
There cannot be any person in athletics who does not have a view (well informed or otherwise) as to what the sport needs.
If you feel strongly about something then write it for all to see. Not everyone will agree with you, perhaps nobody will? But those who have a valid constructive view should air it. It's an opportunity to affect opinion and perhaps galvanise support? Don't just moan about it or worse ignore it because our sport will not effectively improve unless your concerns and views are aired.
Athletics is in dire straits (apologies to Mark Knophler) and being run by an administration seriously and disgracefully lacking in ability to deliver the sport over the last eight years, sponsored by Sport England, a government quango with it's head in the clouds and clearly with little idea about the success routes for athletics.
What a pity that the "performance driven" condition Malcolm Arnold,
"Britain's most successful coach" (!) applied to athlete lottery funding was not applied to himself, his successor and the rest of the UKA management team. Had there been, most of them would not have remained into the second year of UKA's existence and whoever replaced them would have needed far better abilities and expertise to survive.
There have been no regular and continuous appraisals by their paymasters Sport England, no accountability to the sport and of course no sackings. .....(nothing like the fear of losing a your job to motivate you to succeed but if the job’s for life with no questions asked, sit back and enjoy!)
Yet, despite the demise of the sport there are many in it with the ability to help create a vibrant and successful British Athletics across all age groups, whether as coaches, managers, officials or administrators. They mainly exist in the voluntary sector, they are known in their clubs and it is through them that the sport really exists. But they can only do so much when it is their unpaid time they give and many are now giving up and walking away in disgust over UKA's mismanagement and apparent contempt for the clubs. UKA’s management is not made up of these kind of people, its mainly made up of friends of friends and it is not based on ability. If it was, then the sport would have been successful instead of just mediocre.
UKA’s management is in one sense a parasite on the sport. It has sucked public money away from where it is most desperately needed and where it would have done most to substantially raise standards and international achievements. It is in denial over it's own limitations and puffs itself up in it's 'Emperors clothes' at the few exceptional achievements of British athletes on the world stage as if it were it's own, when in fact the credit was due to those athletes own efforts, their own non UKA employed coaches and own development mainly outside of the "UKA support system".
Now we have a new Performance Director and we hear he is going to get tough.! Well if his predecessors’ achievements are anything to go on he would have to be pretty useless to do worse. I wish him well but his targets for improvement must show results year on year and not be allowed to wait for a ‘glorious’ delivery in 2012, what ever Tessa Jowell our Olympic Minister thinks! As in 1997 when UKA came into existence bursting with promises to deliver, new schemes are afoot to "create the pathway from talent identification to Olympic rostrum" ( a lovely sounding phrase that we’ve heard repeatedly for the last eight years with absolutely no effect) Well dream on UKA Ltd., Tessa Jowell, Sport England and UK Sport. Unless they're poor, very poor and have no alternatives as in most of Africa and former Easter bloc countries and/or unless they can make a decent living from it they aren't going to start turning up in droves to fulfill the government’s dream. As Michael Johnson observed, athletics is not a team game, it's every athlete for themselves and the road to success is a very tough one. Hardly surprising then that many talented individuals look to other sports more exciting and more rewarding.
Despite the cynicism from some quarters of UKA (perhaps to justify their own failings) this country is teeming with talent but to create the drive towards the realisation of that unrealised potential demands:
Vast sums of public money have been wasted on UKA Ltd over the last eight years that has produced next to nothing relative to the cost. Had those largely wasted c £45millions been directly ploughed into 1-4 above the sport today would without doubt be successful by every measure.
Don't allow a self important, largely incompetent and overblown UKA administration to continue to destroy athletics in this country. Write to your MP. Ask them to question Tessa Jowell the Secretary of State for the Department of Media Culture and Sport, as to the continued waste of public money without accountability over the last eight years, handed out by Sport England and UK Sport to UKA Ltd., for what has turned out to be an incredibly bad value for money return. Oh, and ask your MP to enquire of Ms Jowell as to why the Foster Report was seriously flawed statistically and in its scope, neglected to address UKA's failures to achieve targets and failed to properly and fully consult with the body of the sport, the clubs which are now being imposed with a new structure (in England) which entails replacing (quite possibly illegally) the AAA's of England together with the Area Associations, regardless of what the clubs may actually want. Go to www.britishathleticsclubs.com and www.british-athletics.co.uk on the internet before you decide to vote on the referendum questions.
John Bicourt |