Athletics: Rob Heffernan puts aspiring world champions on inside track

How to create the next world champion? Who better to ask than our last one, Rob Heffernan, who since retirement has kept an oar deeply entrenched in the waters of Irish athletics.

Put simply, the teenage ranks here have never flowed with such talent, medals arriving in droves at recent underage championships. But Heffernan knows the vast chasm needed to bridge the gap to senior level, as does his wife Marian, an Olympian in 2012.