World champs focus ‘damages Olympic dream’

THE man tasked with fine-tuning South Africa’s Olympic medal hopefuls for the 2016 Rio Games is warning athletes against putting too much energy into the world championships this year.

Frank Dick, the director of coaching of British track and field from 1979 to 1994, said research shows little correlation between Olympic medals and good performances at the athletics world championships the year before.

Of the eight finalists per event at the 2011 world showpiece in Daegu, South Korea, an average of only three made the Olympic finals at London 2012.

Team SA was a case in point; in 2011, they won four medals but in 2012 Caster Semenya’s 800m silver was the only track and field gong.

“You don’t make the world championships [the priority],” said Dick, who has been contracted by the South African Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee.

“To drive a complete year’s commitment to go for a particular pinnacle is quite emotionally, physically and mentally debilitating. It’s very exhausting. And the chances of repeating in such rapid succession are not good.”

Dick said some athletes and coaches were already focusing too much on Beijing this year.

“Some conversations I’ve had it has been very clear that everything this year [for them] is about a world championships, and I’ve said ‘be careful’.

“We’d have to have a very robust high-performance strategy in place for us to sustain that sort of punishment each year.”

Dick, who is meeting athletes HARD LINE: Frank Dick wants Rio to be South Africa’s target and coaches across all codes, cautioned he would tackle agents if he felt they were arranging congested competition schedules. “If necessary, I won’t back off from a discussion.”

Most of South Africa’s 2016 medal prospects — from swimmer Chad le Clos and triplejumper Khotso Mokoena to rower James Thompson and triathlete Richard Murray — will compete at world championships this year, from early August to mid-September.

Dick said he wanted federation officials present at meetings with athletes and coaches.

“It’s important they understand what the athlete and coach are trying to do because maybe there’s something more that the federation can do.”

There were more than 50 areas in which an athlete could make minuscule improvements that, added together, could result in a big difference, he said.

Dick, who made himself unpopular in 1980 when he decreed that Britain’s Olympic selection criteria should be tougher than the actual Games qualifying standards, hasn’t softened his stance.

“I don’t want to hear an athlete saying to me ‘I broke the South African record’.

“I have to say to them ‘but that’s a domestic competition. You’re actually going to walk into the toughest of all arenas. You must set your sights at that level’,” he said.

If necessary, I won’t back off from a discussion