Editor's letter

Foreign legion to lead 2012 Olympians

BRITISH athletes hope to make us proud on home soil in 2012. But whatever performances they achieve will have been managed by an overseas army of coaches who were born outside the UK.

There was controversy in 2001 when Sven-Goran Eriksson became the first foreign manager of the England football team. Born in Sweden, would he have the same drive as his patriotic players?

Over time, the furore died down and when Italian Fabio Capello was installed as England’s new manager there was nowhere near the same scale of debate. In athletics, there has also been little reaction to the fact that most of the major coaching positions are now held by international outsiders.

UK Athletics’ head coach, Charles van Commenee, is Dutch. The governing body’s recently appointed strategic head of coaching and development, Kevin Tyler, is Canadian. New Paralympics head coach, Peter Eriksson, is Swedish. Even the new chief medical officer, Craig Ranson, is Australian.

Maybe this says something about the standard of our British coaches. If they were so good, after all, why would we need an injection of foreign expertise? Or perhaps it is just a temporary trend and after 2012 we will use British coaches again.

Whatever the reason, one thing is for sure – it is happening in other sports too. The British performance manager for track cycling in Beijing was Australian Shane Sutton. British Swimming’s new head coach, American Dennis Pursley, started his job in October, while the new national diving coach is a Russian called Alexei Evangulov.

There are other examples too. All of which means the British team in 2012 will be supported up by a huge army of international mercenaries.

Is that a good thing? If it is within the rules, why not? No one will complain if Capello leads England to a World Cup victory and the same is true if there are medals galore at the Olympics of 2012.

►  TWO big features in this week’s issue celebrate the joy of running for running’s sake. Dave King took part in 80 races around the UK in 2007 and his article, on pages 24-26, describes the best and worst of them. Then, on pages 18-21, Paul Halford explains why he temporarily abandoned his quest to improve his road PBs in order to take part in a stage race in the Himalaya.

Reading these pieces made me hungry to run and I hope you feel the same after reading them.

Jason Henderson, Editor

From this week's Athletics Weekly, - available in WH Smith and all good newsagents, or on subscription

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