The State of Irish Athletics

special to Irish Runner.com by Eoghan Murphy - The dismal performances of the Irish track-and-field athletes in Athens came as no real aberration to those who had tracked their lacklustre form in the weeks preceding the Games.

Ten of the fourteen athletes who secured berths on the team in Athens achieved their respective qualifying criteria last year. And it was clear this season that they were not going to be able to replicate the performances in Athens that secured their qualification.

Injuries, misfortune and simple under-performance were the team's hallmark and the knives were sharpened for the usual suspects - the Irish Sports Council and the Olympic Council of Ireland. Yet the buck stops with the athletes.

Pat Hickey, the President of the Olympic Council of Ireland, was pilloried for only accepting athletes who had gained A standards. But he was vindicated: even those who had A standards were unable to justify their selection.

The bottom-line is that Sonia O'Sullivan and Alistair Cragg were the only athletes who reached finals at the Games: a poor return by any standards.

The barometer of a country's sporting credentials should be its affluence, not its population. We are no longer the penurious country we once were.

Our athletes deserve to be criticized for their inept performances. They were the best-prepared Irish team ever, but they were the biggest flops we have ever had.

It is now apposite to look at the state of the sport in the country. There have been post-mortems in the aftermath of dreadful major championships before, but never before we so urgently required an examination of the sport.

The past couple of years have marked a definite shift in the landscape of Irish athletics. We no longer have a conveyer belt of distance runners and throwers. Our marathon tradition is extinct.

It is our sprinters and walkers who filled the gap and look like, to some degree, spearheading Irish athletics for the foreseeable future.

But as good as our alabaster sprinters may be, they will not win medals in global outdoor majors; the advantage black sprinter possess is insuperable.

We may have enjoyed relative success of late when our 400m-relay team on bronze at the world indoors, but that race entailed so many pile-ups it resembled a chariot race from the film Ben Hur.

It should be noted that this year only two athletes reached semi-finals at the same competition, compared to last years six. And Paul McKee's individual World Indoor bronze from last year did not presage outdoor success.

And indoor championships are indisputably far less prestigious than the outdoor majors. Olympic Games are the ultimate litmus test of quality, and McKee and his relay teammates failed to even qualify for Athens.

The current situation in field events is particularly frustrating. Though we have a wide pool of talent in these events, Athletics Ireland pay them scant regard. While training days are organised for walkers and runners, the field eventers are conspicuously ignored.

The irksome thing is that we could excel in these highly technical field events. Almost every jumper and thrower who ascended the podium in Athens was European, while Americans and Africans dominated the running events.

Adrian O'Dwyer, arguably Ireland's best prospect since Sonia O'Sullivan, has considered switching allegiance to Germany because Ireland's support structures for jumpers are so poor.

"It really frustrates me the way Athletics Ireland treat field eventers," says the Kilkenny man. "I know there are training days organised for distance runners, who aren't that good anymore, and sprinters, but they seem to forget about the field events."

"The frustrating thing is that if some effort was put into developing the field events we could excel at them."

Perhaps surprisingly, O'Dwyer is optimistic about some aspects.

"I think Irish athletics is doing pretty well at the moment," he says. "It was disappointing having so few in Athens, but hopefully in Beijing we will have more. The standards are so high now that it makes qualification very difficult."

"We seem to have a good crop of Junior and U23s coming through - I was very impressed by Paul Hession recently."

Athletics Ireland's difficulties in managing Irish athletics have been well documented down through the years. They have been notorious for producing two things in abundance: confusion and farce. They would try the patience of a saint.

We should no longer be wasting money sending teams to world cross-country championships, especially if they are going to contend for nothing but the wooden spoon.

It seems the only reason why we continue to send teams to the world cross-country championships is because of Ireland's distance running tradition.

But that tradition is just a fading memory. It's time to forget the nostalgia and revise our plans for the next generation. If we win any world outdoor or Olympic medals in the coming decade, it will almost certainly be in walking, jumping or throwing.

The British have long recognised that their distance-running tradition is defunct and have invested in other disciplines. The same message has registered across Europe - it's time we caught the boat.

Sweden is a country that we must endeavour to duplicate. A country of similar size to us, Sweden yielded three gold medals from the Games. All came in field events.

The explanation for their success is hardly complex: they have an excellent structure for their field event athletes. Consequently, their runners have struggled - but you did not see platoons of Swedes lining the streets of Stockholm in funereal mood.

There has been much talk of a revival of Ireland's distance tradition, but the truth is that distance running here is like a shore from which a great tide has ebbed and left only a few small pools.

It is true that Alistair Cragg is a huge prospect, but Irish fans have been slow to embrace him. South-Africa born and bred, Cragg visited Ireland for the first time only this summer and had competed for his native country before some difference of opinion with the governing body there prompted him to switch allegiance.

Cathal Lombard's progression from journeyman to elite runner defied belief and his seismic breakthrough can now been discredited.

One tragedy has emanated from this saga: whenever an athlete makes analogous improvements in future, a groundswell of skepticism will inevitably engulf him or her.

Many opinions blurted by Jerry Kiernan on RTE during the Olympics were outlandish. He also had an eerie knack of predicting the results of races after they had been completed.

But his comments on James Nolan were well founded. Nolan threatened to make an impact on metric miling a few years back but never progressed.

One measure of Nolan's career can be judged by a comparison between his progress and that of Portuguese star Rui Silva. Both of similar age, the two athletes fought many epic skirmishes in 2000. The two were always almost inseparable; sometimes Nolan prevailed.

Yet come Athens this year, they were at different ends of the spectrum: Silva won bronze; Nolan only just qualified for the semi-final. Enough said.

As for our famous marathon running tradition, no Irishman would have finished within half a mile - or three minutes - of Paula Radcliffe when posted 2:15:25 in London last year.

The reason for the plummet in standards here is not difficult to divine: our athletes now are not prepared to train arduously.

John Shields, Irish schools Athletic Association administration officer, is aware of the problems in athletics but admits to uncertainty as to the solutions.

"From a positive perspective we have a terrific group of young athletes doing very well at underage level - Celtic Games, Schools Internationals and European Youth Olympics," says Shields.

"The disappointing thing is that a significant number of them are not coming through and turning into good senior athletes. It's difficult to put you finger on the reason for this.

"In the 1990s structures were put in place to give people and alternative to going to the US. At that stage the production line of athletes coming through the States system was slowing down. It's unfortunate that these structures do not seem to have worked.

"I also think there is a shortage of good technical coaches in Ireland. This may be the result of the coach education system, which over the past few years has not delivered the desired results."

A current advertising campaign by Iarnrod Éireann bears a slogan: "We are not there yet, but we are getting there." A slight alternation brings a fitting summation of Irish athletics: "We are not there yet, and we are not getting there."