WE’RE HISTORY ... unless we wise up and modernise, warns UK Athletics chief
BRITAIN’S highestpaid athletics official will warn today that his sport — set to be the centrepiece of the 2012 London Olympics — is in danger of failing.
David Moorcroft, the chief executive of UK Athletics, comes out fighting in an open letter which angrily attacks those stuck in the days of Sebastian Coe, Steve Ovett, Allan Wells and Daley Thompson.
‘ We are in danger of a steep decline and I am looking at myself and asking “So what have I done to change that?” Clearly not enough,’ he writes in today’s edition of Athletics Weekly.
‘Our sport is in danger of failing and many people in athletics, including on occasions myself, are either so preoccupied with defending what we do, or existing within our comfortable little bubble, that we cannot see what is staring us in the face.
‘Too many people in athletics believe we can run athletics as the world used to be, rather than as it really is.’
Most of Moorcroft’s bile is aimed at club and area association officials who have opposed the changes in the sport’s political structure proposed by a commission chaired by Sir Andrew Foster, the former chief of the Audit Commission.
Despite the Government holding up £21million in grants until the changes are accepted, more than 100 clubs remain in opposition and have formed their own independent association.
Moorcroft attacks the clubs for the damage they are doing to Britain’s young talent. ‘ There’s something wrong when young athletes are exposed to senior competition, not because it is right for their development but because the club needs the points,’ he says.
‘We now have to move forward. I will ask those who still want to put obstacles in our way to move aside and let those who want to get on with it, get on with it.’
Moorcroft, who took over when the sport’s governing body went bankrupt in 1997, now has charge of an £18m annual turnover and has made it clear he plans to lead the sport to the 2012 Olympics.
His attack comes after his performance director Dave Collins used the same concept of ‘ failing’ sport. He took over the elite end of the sport last March and endured the worst- ever showing by a British team at a world championships five months later, when only three Britons finished in the top eight of individual events.
Collins warned then that unless the athletes came good in the 2008 Beijing Olympics, National Lottery money would be cut. UK Sport, the provider of the funding, has set the sport a target of five medals in China and eight in London in 2012. ‘There is a financial imperative for us to perform in Beijing,’ he warns.
Later this month, Collins will announce the names of the athletes to be given central contracts which guarantee up to £25,000 in Lottery money and full medical back-up. There will be no more than 40, which means that at least 25 who enjoyed its support this year will lose out, among them some well- known faces.