UKA masterplan in the spotlight
Tuesday July 13 was a busy day for UK Athletics chief executive Joanna Coates. Not only was she over-seeing a Diamond League on home soil in Gateshead but she launched the governing body’s operational plan.
A few hours before the elite athletes competed in the stadium in the North East of England, Coates was trackside conducting interviews about a strategy which she hopes will put the sport in a better place in coming years.
I was part of a small group of journalists who did a video call with her a few days before the official launch. She spoke with enthusiasm and confidence about the plans and her only disappointment was that her audience wasn’t a little more excited. However she was hardly going to receive a gushing round of applause from a group of hard-nosed hacks.
We were also hit a little cold by it at the time and hadn’t had chance to digest the entire plan. So now, a few days later, what do I make of it? Here are some good and bad points.
Athletes first
As the ‘Age of the Athlete’ title implies, UKA is putting athletes first. There is a desire to stop treating athletes like a 'commodity' and to give them better support as they try to fulfil their potential.
More domestic competition
In recent years UKA has been criticised for not giving athletes enough competitive opportunities on home soil. Many athletes have travelled to events in Europe in search of better weather conditions and tougher competition. But the new plan wants to create more competitions in the UK at the level just below Diamond League standard. They also want to strive to make a more logical flow to the competition calendar with talk of a ‘golden thread’ of competitions.
Reaching for the stars
The plan is hugely ambitious with the goal of 7-10 Olympic medals by Paris 2024 and 11-13 by 2032, whereas the Paralympics medal target is 28-30 by 2032. Also, by 2032 UKA wants to have athletes representing Great Britain and Northern Ireland in every single track and field event at major championships.
Similarly, increasing commercial revenue is a big part of the plan with ambitious figures projected. “We know it won’t be easy but to make change you need to be bold and ambitious,” says Coates.
Home countries are onside
Athletics in the UK is notorious for its infighting over the years. AW has used the phrase ‘civil war’ a lot and for good reason. The various organisational and governing bodies have frequently bickered and been keen to protect ‘their bit’. But now Coates seems to have got them all onside and there is a perhaps unprecedented degree of joined up thinking.
In addition, athletes have often been confused as to what UKA’s role is compared to the home country federations. But this plan lays these out pretty clearly.
Cinderella events get attention
The new plan clearly wants to focus on weaker and less glamorous events plus areas like mountain and ultra running. At last there is a promise that discus will get as much attention as 100m and that long jump will receive as much support as the marathon.
More major events
UKA see the value in bidding for major events and they are supporting a bid from Birmnigham for the 2023 World Road Running Championships. In addition it is supporting feasibility studies for the World Indoor Championships in Glasgow in 2024, European Athletics Championships in Newcastle and Gateshead in 2026 and a possible World Athletics/Para Championships bid in 2029.
UKA re-invents itself
Coates knows the governing body has an image problem after some shaky recent years. Now it has renewed focus with this plan and that has to be a good thing. There is also a drive for UKA to switch from being “transactional” (with the licensing of coaches, provision of funding etc) to being “supportive”.
Loughborough facelift
The East Midlands venue has become the epicentre for elite British athletes but UKA want to change it into a UKA performance and innovation centre. Among other things, injury prevention will be a key area it will focus on, which is crucial given that this thwarts so many potential medal hopes – and indeed entire careers – every year.
Focus on officials
UKA recognise that without officials there cannot be any competitions so there will be a major effort to retain and recruit new officials. Yes, this plan is trying to tackle many areas but as Coates says: “It is a big and complex sport so we have had to break it down into bitesize chunks.”
New plan for coaching
This system is going to be revamped completely and many would say “about time”. Performance director Sara Symington and development director Mark Munro will no doubt have a big part to play in its restructure plus of course Jackie Newton, who was recently appointed UKA head of coaching development.
Less reliance on funding
UKA has been reliant on funding from various agencies and sponsors so part of its new plan is to have a renewed commercial drive so that it can create more of its own funds. When standing firm against the BBC recently when it came to paying for rights to broadcast the British Championships, Coates demonstrated that she can be tough when it comes to protecting the value of the sport.
Safety first
Safeguarding is a key part of the plan and almost certainly is more of an emphasis for the governing body than at any time in history. Related to this, UKA also state that they want performances to be achieved ‘in an ethical manner’ with an emphasis on clean sport.
Lack of detail?
The Age of the Athlete presentation looks and sounds good. It has lots of catchy phrases and even snippets of poetry. So there is an argument to say it is style over substance.
Some of the financial and medal winning projections are so ambitious it is natural to ask “how” exactly they will be achieved. UKA argue the detail is in their complete plan, though, which you can read here. So judge for yourself.
Age-old goals
Many of the aspirations are the same ones the sport has had for many years. Back at the turn of the millennium UKA stated they would like to be able to select athletes in every track and field event at major championships but two decades later we are sending a team to the Tokyo Olympics with gaps in a number of events.
There are also phrases like “from playground to podium” which we have heard in the past. And the mere mention of the word ‘hubs’ will put a chill down the spine of older athletics fans, although in the latest plan they refer to performance-related hubs as opposed to hubs of a political nature.
Not too much of this latest UKA plan is particularly original but the key will be whether the current UKA team can actually nail these long-held aspirations.
Ditto event-specific competitions
Again, this has been tried before. The British Milers’ Club has been held up as a ‘model’ of event-specific competition for many years and during Dave Moorcroft’s period as chief executive there were efforts to mimic it with ‘jumps fest’ and ‘throws fest’ events, although they never quite took off.
Distant from the distance world?
The plan is pretty sizeable and all-encompassing but does it give enough importance to the huge world of distance running. UKA might argue that recreational running is not their focus, but of course many elite athletes start off as recreational runners and bodies like the London Marathon, Great Run and parkrun are enormous and should arguably play more of a part in a plan for athletics in the UK.
Manpower and resources
It’s no secret that UKA has slimmed down its team with a number of redundancies in the past year. So can a smaller and streamlined governing body squad of staff, almost all of whom are still working from home, manage to execute this most ambitious of plans – during a pandemic to boot?
Tackling drop-out rates
One of the biggest problems in the sport is the annual loss of talent due to injuries and other factors. Britain has just topped the medals table at the European Under-20 Championships in Tallinn but how many of these athletes will still be competing in two or three years’ time let alone competing at a higher level? History tells us many will have vanished or burned out. It is a huge issue and, for me, the new plan does not do enough to address it. Linked to this, schools athletics is barely mentioned in the Age of the Athlete plans although UKA would argue that athletics in schools is moreso the domain of home country athletics federations.
Rise in ticket prices
UKA want to increase revenue and one way to do this is to bump up ticket prices for major events. So get set for rising prices.
Elephant in the room
UKA want to reach a position in 2032 whereby the British team has an athlete in every single event at major championships. However this flies in the face of the current selections for the Olympics where a number of athletes with World Athletics invitations could have gone to Tokyo but have been left at home.
I put this to Coates and she said: “One thing we’re really clear about is that we don’t want to lower standards to ensure we have representation. We want to have representation at a very high standard. We don’t want to drop the qualification standards.”
To see the Age of the Athlete plan in full, CLICK HERE
Look out for an interview with Coates in the August issue of AW magazine too.
