When reading the endurance aspects of the British Athletics high performance strategy, my impression is that it is a work of necessary obligation, rather than a strategy with any clear outcomes or purpose in mind.

Let’s face it, none of these endurance specific events have any direct bearing on the amount of lottery funding the sport will receive, so how important can they really be to the senior management?

Below are the key points that drive the British federation’s current thinking for endurance, along with my counterpoints to add some perspective and balance, which unfortunately seems to be missing within the senior management of British Athletics.

I feel so much of this strategy is driven by how British Athletics wishes to present itself to UK sport, rather than out of any duty to the British athletes and coaches.

Currently, there appears to be no long-term endurance development strategy in place, only a short-term competition plan which offers the bare essentials without any clear reasoning or targets behind it.

I don’t assume to have the all the correct answers for the way forward for British endurance but I do feel currently there is too little diversity of opinion and a lack of coaching perspective in their decision-making process.

“The position of the World Cross in the international calendar is making the event less relevant”

There is no question that the World Cross is an event currently surviving on life support, but how best the event should be revived or formatted lies with the IAAF.

The future unlikelihood of British individual or team success should not be enough justification for British athletes to stop competing in future World Cross events if the competition format remains unchanged.

The World Cross in its current format remains a key opportunity for British athletes to race at the highest level of global competition and also a way for the GB endurance program to measure its annual success and development.

The current proposed strategy of only selecting athletes with “future track/road/xc medal potential” or a team that “shows current medal potential” but at the same time still fully supporting full U20 teams makes no performance sense.

There is no pathway evidence that shows a relationship between non-African individual performances at the U20 level and success at senior level, yet the GB endurance strategy regards the U20 races as “key development opportunities for juniors”.

Currently, I see very little clarity for the GB cross country strategy beyond the early season European event, but this needs to change in order to maximise the remaining three months of the winter season.

“The European Cross provides vital winter preparation for Britain’s best endurance runners at a relevant time of year and in favourable conditions”

Britains continued support for the European Cross is essential for the survival of cross country in Europe; without a continued strong European cross country culture the sport will fade into obscurity.

Photo: Sportsfile

Combined with the domestic ‘Cross Challenge’ series it is possible for British athletes to build a sustainable autumn/winter program of racing lasting six months.

As the cross country calendar provides half a year of competition this discipline should be given a much higher recognition for building the foundations for success at summer track championships and for also sustaining and developing endurance athletes.

A successful endurance strategy could involve the creation of a national cross country squad where commitment to race in the European Cross or World Cross would be a requirement. With cross country achievements not being eligible for lottery funding support, the sport has to take it upon itself, the responsibility to invest in its athlete development and protect a vital part of its heritage.

I believe more hands-on federation involvement is needed to co-ordinate endurance development in the UK and this starts with the half year where track performances are essentially made.

“The Edinburgh (Stirling) XC currently provides a key early winter marker for Britain’s best endurance runners, in a venue/format that is well known and effective”

The federation’s support of this event is encouraging and gives an opportunity for cross country to have live television exposure at a traditional point in the calendar.

This event could be given further value if used as part of a wider cross country strategy, possibly as the first stage in a two-part selection process for World Cross Country qualification, and therefore rewarding outstanding British results against quality international opposition.

My feeling is that the event is prioritised by the federation more as a way to give exposure to its team equipment supplier than for performance value.

“The position of the European Cup 10,000m is making the event decreasingly relevant”

In the last five years the Stanford 10,000m, with a few individual exceptions, has not afforded the majority of the GB athletes who have raced there any more performance advantage than the European 10,000m cup could have provided.

This year’s edition of the European Cup 10,000m at Highgate showed it is possible to hold a successful 10,000m event in Europe that can compare with Stanford but without the significant travel and cost.

Photo: Nigel Bramley

This year seven of the top UK 10 men’s 10,000m performances and eight of the top 10 UK women’s performances were achieved in the European Cup event.

The respective numbers for the Stanford race were two and one. The European 10,000m is still a very relevant event for the majority of the best British endurance runners and should be prioritised as a key performance and representative opportunity.

For US-based Britons competing in Stanford makes performance sense, but otherwise makes little sense when an equivalent European option is available.

RELATED: Protecting the competition environment through hyper-elitism

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The world of high performance sport can be very myopic, where ideas about performance get taken to extreme lengths in the belief that better performance systems and more precision of delivery will create better results. Often this does indeed happen, but only up to a point.

Many of the high performance systems in place are derived from sports with very controllable competition environments like swimming, rowing and to some degree track cycling.

The performance systems these sports have implemented have often achieved great medal success at the Olympic level but they also have resulted in creating abusive and obsessive performance cultures where athlete physical and mental health are compromised in the all-consuming chase for medals, as seen in recent British and New Zealand cycling scandals.

In all these dysfunctional performance environments, the failure was in leadership and I see the same issue currently at British Athletics.

The current GB athletics high performance strategy is a fascinating document, and it appears that it was written with the total conviction that the application of hyper-elitism is what now wins medals at the Olympic Games.

There is one point in particular that hits like a sledgehammer.

“The ability to provide truly world leading support to genuine medal potential athletes in the Olympic environment is severely compromised by taking a very large team with a very wide range of abilities/experiences/behaviours”

This basically says the British high performance program is driven by performance support and not by performance leadership. The millions of pounds given to GB athletics high performance is to provide the highest level of support services; it is the quality of the delivery of those services that will win medals and nothing will be allowed to compromise the delivery of these services.

This extreme Olympic selection policy over-values the final days before Olympic competition as being critical for Olympic performances; the reality is Olympic medals are won in the years, months and weeks leading into the games and not in the Olympic village.

The final days, although very important, are more about keeping your head and not messing up at the last moment. By trying to create this hyper-elite Olympic environment there is a risk of creating an environment that is too sterile and unfamiliar to that which the athletes are normally used to, through over support and over management.

Usually most critical to athletes at this time is familiarity and the support of those who have been with them through their entire Olympic campaign – their coach.

Why hyper-elitism fails

The failing of hyper-elitism is that it becomes incapable of encompassing diversity of thought, it assumes that to win Olympic medals you HAVE to behave and think in a certain way and you absolutely need to have x, y + z support.

This thinking is a classic case of the tail wagging the dog and underlines the total lack of coaching leadership currently within the GB athletics high performance program.

At the Olympic team level the ‘wide range of abilities’ is a ridiculous assertion, rarely does anyone make a British Olympic team that isn’t already doing 98% of things correctly.

Diversity of experience and behaviours is incorrectly assumed to be a negative trait in the philosophy of hyper-elitism; if this thinking had been applied historically I don’t think Britain would have won many Olympic medals at all; legendary athletes like Daley Thompson and Steve Ovett spring to mind here.

It is the diversity of experience and behaviours that make the great athletes who they are. Ultimately how hyper-elitism is applied comes down to the individuals who control the high performance structure. Who decides what behaviours and experiences are valid? Why would support for potential medalists be compromised with a less elite team when medalists from most other countries manage just fine? Who does hyper- elitism really serve?

My own experience

A few weeks before the 2004 Olympic Games at the GB Olympic training camp in Cyprus I experienced a type of athlete class order I hadn’t encountered before.

Photo: Getty Images

Half-way through a physio appointment, the physiotherapist treating me was ordered by the team medical officer to stop treating me and take care of another athlete who had a hamstring issue.

It turned out the more important athlete had merely a leg cramp from not drinking enough water in the hot climate, but it was the realisation that athletes were being organised into an order of importance at the Olympic team level I found very worrying. Who decided this? How was this decided? Why wasn’t this information made available to all athletes to better inform their planning?

When it came to the actual competitions in Athens the athlete deemed more important than myself didn’t manage to progress out of the first round while I finished 4th in my event.

Having lead Olympic teams myself I understand the importance of making sure medal potential athletes are well looked after, but I equally know that through communication and prior planning all athlete specific needs can be planned and accommodated for.

The Olympic team selection strategy shouldn’t be based around making sure the support staff can do their jobs most effectively and unhindered, it is about giving your best athletes the opportunity to achieve a lifelong ambition and to support them on their own terms at every stage of their journey.

In a follow-up article, Jon Brown will address the endurance specific aspects of the British Athletics high performance strategy.

Are you a fan of Fast Running? Then please support us and become a patreon. For as little as the price of a monthly magazine you can support Fast Running – and it only takes a minute. Thank you.

The post Protecting the competition environment through hyper-elitism appeared first on Fast Running.