Former British international thrower is now guiding athletes at the Aspire Academy in Qatar and here explains his approach, his influences and why building a pathway is key

Zane Duquemin is a former Great Britain and Northern Ireland internationalist specialising in the shot put and discus. He competed at four consecutive Commonwealth Games for Jersey, achieving a best place of eighth (in the discus) in Glasgow 2014.

The 33-year-old, coach to European bronze medallist Lawrence Okoye and multiple Paralympic Games medallist Dan Greaves, is the lead “development” throws coach at Qatar’s prestigious Aspire Academy with the aim of progressing athletes aged 12-18 years from grassroots level through to Asian Games, World Championships and Olympic Games (across all throwing disciplines). Working alongside programme lead Ivica Jakeljic – coach to former Olympic, world and European hammer champion and world record holder Anita Wlodarczyk – Duquemin is also the “performance” throws coach for shot put and discus at the Academy.

How did you get into coaching?

I wanted to coach from a young age. My first throws coach in Jersey was from New Zealand and she went back over there when we were quite young. My mum ended up getting a coaching qualification just to allow us to train, but I would help out the other throwers in the group from about 15 years old and I enjoyed it. I guess I got quite a good taste of coaching early on in my career because of that.

My coaching took a back seat once I went to university [St Mary’s University, London]. I focused more on my own training and I didn’t coach anyone other than my sister.

After I graduated I moved to Loughborough. At that point I was still fully focused on making the Rio Olympics and I was looking for a job to help support me financially after being removed from the World Class Performance Programme (WCPP). A few people at the track suggested that I should do some coaching because there seemed to be a market for it. I started coaching for Loughborough University and shortly after that I started my own coaching company.

My company took off pretty quickly. I knew the level of commitment that was required to be a full-time coach and I also knew that it would be detrimental to my training, so it was really just meant to be a short-term project until I could find another job, but I soon realised I enjoyed it – and I was quite good at it.

At the time I think I was probably the first UK throws coach to promote content on Instagram and it really blew up. I was quite fortunate in that sense, I realised I could get by financially with online programming, and because of my reputation as an athlete and my relationships with other UK athletes I was soon able to develop a good training group.

Who is your greatest coaching influence?

I met my coach John Hillier when he was on holiday in Jersey. He had that typical coach mentality, so even when he was on holiday he’d come down to the track and take a couple of sessions. He obviously had no idea I’d go on to do anything – I was just a scrawny little 12-year-old who was obsessed with throwing the discus – but in the end I went to university in London just so that I could be coached by him.

John has been my biggest influence and greatest mentor by far. I think, as an athlete, when you spend so much time around someone, you pick up a lot of their traits. John has a very unique way of getting people to work hard and he was able to squeeze performances out of athletes who should never have been anywhere near that level. He did it on a consistent basis, and he still does.

There are a lot of things that John did that I still apply today, especially when I’m working with the development athletes, for example knowing when to go hard on them, when to be that father figure, or when to go a bit softer. Technically and programme-wise I learned a lot from him, but I think that learning how to deal with athletes and how to push their buttons in the right way at the right time was the biggest thing I took from John.

I also spent quite a lot of time on training camps with Shaun Pickering and Swedish coach Vésteinn Hafsteinsson [coach to former Olympic champion and reigning world champion Daniel Stahl].

I learned a lot technically from Vésteinn as he had a bit of a different approach to John, but Shaun was a completely different influence. There was a small coaching element, but it was more a sense of how to be truly professional and he questioned everything I knew about what it meant to be an athlete. Some people found Shaun intrusive because he was opinionated and wanted people to do well. If he didn’t think someone was doing what was best for them he didn’t hold back, he’d just tell them. Not everyone appreciates that but, for me, that was something I always really liked about him. If he didn’t think I was making smart decisions he’d pull me up on it right away. He would always ask: ‘Why?’. Even if the point was irrelevant, the fact you had to think about what you were doing and justify it is something that I do to this day, so, if I’m writing a programme or I’m trying to change someone’s technique I have to truly understand why I’m doing something, rather than just going with the flow and hoping it works out.

Most recently I’ve obviously been working with Ivica Jakeljic. He’s been in Doha for ten years and he’s the top guy on the programme. He’s quite similar to John in how he approaches things with athletes, but technically he also does a few things differently, especially in the hammer and the javelin which are events I hadn’t been exposed to much before I came out here, so he’s really upgraded me in those areas.

What’s your coaching style?

It’s important to coach the person and not the event, and that’s the way we try and do it here. Everyone’s programme is different based on who they are and what their body responds well to. You can’t just put people in boxes; it’s trying to take them on the path that’s right for them, as opposed to trying to squeeze them into a set programme or a path you’ve taken athletes previously.

What we do at the Aspire Academy is actually very simple. We have a solid talent ID programme, we have a very simple philosophy of how we develop athletes from age 12-18 and we stick to it. We have basic principles – throwing, lifting, athleticism, gymnastics – and we let the programme run its course.

If you take an athlete from point A to point B there’s a pretty good chance they’ll be at a high level as long as you’re recruiting correctly.

How would you describe the current state of throws in the UK?

Much like British Athletics as a whole, it's a bit of a mess.

What we’re doing in Qatar isn’t rocket science, but in the UK we don’t seem capable of doing that. We hope it comes together, we chop and change plans every few years, and we don’t get anywhere.

The reality is, before I moved out here [in 2019], there were maybe only two other guys around my age who were coaching at a decent level. We should probably have been supported at that stage to plug a gap through to the older generation. I was offered a very small package with British Athletics as a consultant, but when I told them I was looking to move to Qatar they wished me luck; they didn’t even try to keep me, and that said everything to me.

On the hammer side, the hammer circle organisation in the UK does a great job of bringing people together, but with the other events, every time something starts to gain momentum it seems to stop. Until you have a decent number of full-time coaches who are encouraged to go through CPD [continuing professional development] and upskill themselves, we’re never really going to get anywhere, that’s the bottom line.

Every now and then you’ll get a freak athlete who comes out of nowhere, but without the coaching structure you can’t even begin to talk about the athletics structure and the athletes themselves. The fact is, the good athletes who come through in the UK just now, they might have supportive families and a coach who’s a good fit at the time, but often it comes together through luck as opposed to a pathway or a system.

There are plenty of talented athletes who fall by the wayside and we never see them again. It’s a shame, unfortunately.

You’re balancing a full-time job at Aspire with coaching UK-based athletes remotely. What are the main challenges you’ve faced?

Remote coaching is not the same, no matter what anyone says.

If you see someone in person before training you can tell if they’re having a bad day. You can have a conversation with them and they might still have a good chance of a decent training session. If you’ve got a 30-minute window on Zoom and they’re rushing around in a bad mood, that session is finished before you even start.

Inter-personal relationships are never the same working online and I’ve really struggled with that. Even though I had good relationships with my athletes before I moved out here, it’s something that’s hard to maintain because everyone wants more.

Lawrence is a relatively low-maintenance guy so he’s quite easy to work with long-distance. The challenge is when you have athletes who are a bit more emotional; that can be very difficult.