Athletics scholarships set to lift the post-Athens gloom

A RAY of hope to illuminate the gloom that has enveloped Irish track and field since Athens?

Former world champion Eamon Coghlan and long-time athletics enthusiast Bill Cullen of Renault have teamed up to announce one of the largest corporate investments in third level sports scholarships in Ireland.

Over €200,000 from the Bill Cullen Scholarship Fund will be invested over the next three years to further the careers of six young DCU athletes with their sights set on Beijing in 2008.

Among those benefiting will be Colin Costelloe, a 1,500m runner and a medallist at the recent European Youth Olympics in Paris - already being talked of as the new Coughlan.

Another is Azmera Gebredzi who arrived in Ireland from Eritrea for the 2002 World Cross Country Championships in Dublin and never left. She has since won 15 AAI underage and Irish Schools titles.

“This is a fantastic help,” said Costelloe yesterday. “It was a tough decision for me. I was thinking of going to the States as well, so this proves to me now that I made the right decision. I had narrowed it down to DCU and Arkansas University where Alistair Cragg is.”

Guiding the five athletes and one swimmer for the next three years will be DCU’s Enda Fitzpatrick, another athlete who spurned the route to the US a few years back. The six recipients will benefit from on campus accommodation, physiological screening, medical support and a travel allowance for international meetings.

“We started to identify budding young athletes two years ago and there could have been a lot of other athletes chosen apart from the six here,” Fitzpatrick said. “There was no set criteria but we feel this six are among the stars of the future.

“I have no doubt that I am looking at people who will be in the next Olympics. I’m confident of that. Having them all on campus, close to the creme de la creme of facilities can only be a good thing for them.”

Eamon Coghlan, a prime mover in getting the scholarship fund off the ground, is delighted that today’s top Irish athletes won’t have to repeat his experiences in the US in the 1970s.

“These youngsters have the opportunity to train and to study at home. I had to take the road further west to Villanova University and I remember having $10 in my bank account and waiting for my mother and father to send me over another $50 to subsidise me for a while longer.

“This initiative takes some of the pressure off the athletes and off the parents, knowing there is another helping hand there to support them. It’s not just the financial side of it either. DCU are giving them the best of facilities and back-up from the likes of Dr Niall Moyna and another athlete [Fitzpatrick] who could have taken the road west but didn’t.”

Cullen made it clear that this was not a case of jumping on the Olympic bandwagon, stating that four athletes whom he preferred not to name - two of whom competed in Athens - had already benefited from the fund in the last 12 months.

“This is not an opportunistic undertaking here,” said Cullen. “I realise and recognise the determination, courage and sacrifices that any young person has to make in becoming an athlete of even national standing. That’s what we want to recognise. If what we are doing here can stimulate some other corporations to support Irish athletes then that is even better.”