‘Major interest’ in athletics position

ATHLETICS IRELAND will have their new Director of Athletics in place by the end of the year, according to CEO Brendan Hackett, who said they had candidates short-listed for the job.

Originally the position was Director of Coaching but when Stephen Maguire stepped down for health reasons it was decided to expand the post to include some new areas.

“Suffice to say that Director of Athletics will now put a system in place for both coaches and athletes,” Hackett said, pointing out that he or she will not be coaching athletes.

And he confirmed that the new appointee will come from outside the country and will be a person who has produced Olympic or world medallists and will have worked in a system that has produced those performances.

“We have had major interest in the position and, as of now, we have short-listed four or five people,” he said. “This weekend I will be talking to some more people at the European Coaching Conference in the Park Plaza in Tyrrellstown.”

Under the new system personal coaches and coaches who discover what he described as “diamonds” will continue to have a role to play in the development of the athletes.

“We have seen this with Paula Radcliffe, for instance, where the coach who discovered her talent as a young athlete remained with her throughout her career,” he said.

“We need people to identify athletes at a young age. World class athletes are what some describe as genetic freaks. I would prefer to call them diamonds. If athletes like that are discovered in Spain, for instance, they spend hundreds of thousands on development.”

“If the Irish soccer team qualified for the European championships or the World Cup the whole nation would be celebrating,” he said, “If our rugby team won the World Cup you can only imagine the celebrations.

“But it is also very difficult for an athlete to qualify for the Olympic Games and the world championships.”

Liam Hennessy, Chairman of the High Performance Committee, who was also present at the launch of next year’s programme, said that athletes who achieved the B standard for an event would not be guaranteed a place in the team for next year’s world championships in Osaka.

“A number of factors will be taken into account, including the athlete’s state of fitness but it is not something that will be sprung on the athlete at the last minute,” he said.

Teams for the European cross-country championships will include U23 teams for the first time and the teams will be selected following the national inter-counties championships in Dungarvan on Sunday week.

Two athletes, however, have been pre-selected — Martin Fagan from Mullingar who set a course record when retaining his conference title in the US recently, and Mary Cullen from Sligo.

As regards the world championships in Kenya they have decided to send only the winners of the senior men’s and women’s inter-club championships although that could change.

But it is expected that there will be a big team in place for the European indoor championships in Birmingham at the beginning of March.

Joanne Cuddihy, who had a spectacular season that took her to the final of the 400m at the European championships in Gothenburg is unlikely to be involved.

A medical student at UCD, she will be doing her final exams in February and then, in March, she will travel to train at UCLA under the renowned Dan Pfiaf.

“I won’t be making any drastic changes or anything like that,” she said. “Not in March but it will be high intensity training and I will have more time to train.

“Obviously my objective is to make the final of the 400m at the world championships in Osaka.”