One of the many challenges Hamish Adams faced when he took over as CEO of Athletics Ireland in 2018 was how to solve the historical problem of a lack of a professional coaching structure.
portspeople like to talk about controlling the controllables, and coach investment is in this category for athletics administrators. Irish athletics has been largely living off a system where top athletes get funding from a carding scheme but their individual coaches don’t get any.
It would be like giving Johnny Sexton the top annual funding of €40,000 but not funding a coach and if he didn’t perform in Europe then his funding would be cut. This isn’t a neat comparison but that’s generally how it’s been shaking down for Irish athletes.
Irish athletics is coming into an exciting space with exceptional talent but that huge potential wasn’t reflected on the governing body – after a disappointing Tokyo Olympics – in Sport Ireland’s high-performance funding which was announced last month.
Athletics Ireland’s annual funding for 2021-2024 crept from €840,000 to €841,667, which didn’t compare favourably to the increases other sports received. Adams counters that by saying the funding for individual athletes “effectively doubled” (from €256,000 to €442,000) and “they’re optimistic for more” funding based on their new strategy.
That new strategy is the Athletics Ireland High Performance Plan 2022-2028. Adams says the Sport Ireland Tokyo Games review – which called for better coaching structures, improved athlete support for those not based in Dublin and more transparency around athlete funding – was “actually quite mild” and this new plan addresses those issues.
Some of Athletics Ireland’s new stated targets include winning one medal in Paris 2024 and one medal in next month’s World Championships and in August’s European Championships.
“You want to see medals at the end of the day. If you look at the Sport Ireland high-performance plan it’s all about delivery of Olympic medals. That’s why this strategic plan is being put together to lift what is a rising tide,” Adams tells the Irish Independent.
“There’s a narrative out there, yes we were disappointed (with Tokyo) but if you look at the level of athlete that we have coming through the system its unprecedented in terms of benchmarking. These are the facts: the Rio cycle from 2013-2016 we won 12 international medals, in the Tokyo cycle we won 30 international medals – that’s from European U-18 level right through. So, it shows that we do have a rising tide in the sport.”
It’s hard to believe that it is 2022 and investment in athletes’ individual coaches is finally being acknowledged by Athletics Ireland but here we are. As well as the imminent appointment of a full-time coach education manager, Athletics Ireland will also advertise for the position of a consultant coach with a “track record of global success.”
They plan to contract a minimum of five coaches of carded athletes and a minimum of two performance training groups this year, which Athletics Ireland will fund. For 2023 and 2024, they want to increase the number of contracted coaches (which they will need funding for).
“Look, we’d love to do more for everyone in the system. Some coaches have travelled as part of the team, we’ve supported them in other ways. Sport Ireland is supporting them as well through coaching courses but should we be doing better? Yes. We should. And that’s what this document is about. We put our hands up and say look the system is not perfect, it will never be perfect but what we’re doing is moving it up incrementally.
“We’re not talking full-time contracts because many of our coaches probably don’t want full-time contracts. They’re in good jobs but they put a huge amount of time in with their elite athletes. It’s around identifying the needs of that coach and supporting those needs.”
Another recommendation from the Sport Ireland Tokyo Review was to “create clarity in athlete funding decisions which are accountable and transparent.”
Is there an answer for this?
“Our athlete funding is very clear in terms of the standard you have to hit to receive Sport Ireland carding and also the level that you need to perform at to hit Athletics Ireland carding because we invest €150,000 per annum in Athletics Ireland carded money to our athletes – no other Olympic sport does that.
“Where the ambiguity came in was because pre-Tokyo we had 13 carded athletes. Sport Ireland guaranteed anyone who made the Games carding of €12,000 and that came in late so I think that created some ambiguity beyond our control.”
It’s not a good look for any sport when one of its greatest athletes becomes one of its greatest critics.
In her Irish Times column last month, Sonia O’Sullivan said the “best Irish athletes succeed not because of the system here but in a sort of rally against it” and the high-performance system “lacks accountability and transparency.” After Tokyo, O’Sullivan said there is “a lack of centralised managment from Athletics Ireland and with this comes a lack of any accountability when things don’t work out.”
Adams takes a different view.
“Everyone is entitled to their opinion but Sonia is not involved in our programme as such so,” he says. “She’s perhaps the greatest Irish athlete we’ve ever seen but I guess she’s not involved in our programmes. It’s a bit like you commenting on our programme without being intimately in the middle of it. It’s a bit like me picking the Irish rugby team when I don’t know any of the stats or how an athlete’s feeling or what shape he’s in.
“The facts are the facts, we need to just focus on them because people are trying to sell; you’re a journalist, journalists have to try and sell print. I think every sport is subject to opinion, opinion pieces. We just need to get on and focus on our job and not be distracted by that commentary.”
The Ireland rugby team train close to where this interview was being done at the Sport Ireland National Indoor Arena before their tour to New Zealand. If they perform poorly on the biggest stage, the buck stops with the head coach. The Irish athletics team had a poor Tokyo Olympics overall. As CEO of Athletics Ireland, who is Adams accountable to?
“I’m accountable to the board. I answer to the president of the board. Look, we’re all accountable and I think that’s an interesting one in terms of once coaches are contracted, there becomes an accountability. At the moment, there probably isn’t that accountability and that’s something that we want people to buy into.
“We’re very open and honest and I think a big part of what we do – you’ll see in the strategic plan – is that the values in the plan mirror those of our strategic plan in the organisation, they’re around integrity, inclusivity, excellence and respect.”
You only need a passing interest in athletics to know Rhasidat Adeleke’s stunning potential. In an interview with the Irish Independent last month, Adeleke’s coach, Edrick Floreal, described the decision not to take her to Tokyo as an “awful mistake” while Sonia O’Sullivan called it “one of the worst decisions ever made by Athletics Ireland”.
Adams is adamant it was the right call. “It goes back to the facts are the facts. Our high-performance team have access to so much information. It’s not for me to comment but we still stand over the decision. It was the right decision for many, many reasons and I think that will show in the future.”
Next weekend will be the 150th edition of the National Track and Field Championships. Athletes will, as ever, have their performances rated and scrutinised. Four years in the job, how does Adams rate his own performance so far?
“It’s been a difficult few years. I was only in the job a couple of months and we had an office fire so we were out of the office for 12 months. We had to rebuild everything. We only got back into the office in the October and we were out in the March with Covid. It’s been a tough few years but you’ve just got to keep the head down and keep going. Control the controllables.”