Interview with HP Director Kevin Ankrom on the road to Amsterdam and Rio

Interview with HP Director Kevin Ankrom on the road to Amsterdam and Rio

Athletics Ireland High Performance Director Kevin Ankrom is looking forward to a big summer with the European Athletics Championships in Amsterdam and the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro. Ankrom is happy with the progress being made and has higlighted a number of developments in this in-house interview. 

Main points

• Big teams for Europeans And Olympics
• Amsterdam should see 35-40 athletes selected with at least one medal opportunity and key preparation for Rio
• Rio – Heffernan the main medal hope in a young Olympic team
• Preparations going well with training and holding camps
• Robust selection process
• Marathon runners will be able to compete at their best in Rio
• 150+ athletes carded in 2016
• Athlete buy-in to high performance programme
• Creating support for coaches ongoing

Q: How are things developing for a big summer ahead with the European Championships and Olympic Games as the two key cornerstone events?

A: I feel comfortable where we are at as a team and the plans leading up to the summer.  I have an expectation that we will have big teams at our championships and this is a good challenge which requires separate support teams for each event and the need to be working and planning together. Our HP staff, managers and coaches have been planning for these two events for more than a year now.  We have also been working with each athlete around their plans to optimise performance and training.    

Q: How are things shaping up in terms of selection for various events including the marathon and what way will that work?                                                                              

A: Our selection and appeals processes have come a long way since 2012. We have learned from the past and applied this to our selection policies and our process. I feel that we have a very robust selection process for each championship with dedicated Selection and Appeal panels each with their own specific terms of reference.  We also have spent a lot of time developing our championship selection criteria which is published well in advance for each championship.

As with previous Olympic Games we will nominate athletes to the Olympic Council of Ireland for selection. Final team selection will be on July 11th however with the co-operation of the OCI we will nominate the marathon and walks teams on May 23rd.

When the Olympic Games marathon qualification period opened on the 1st of January 2015 we went out to all of the potential athletes and coaches with information around the Olympic Games marathon selection process. To prepare for the Olympic Games we asked athletes to compete early in the qualification period and run an early marathon. Most of our current top selectable times have come from early marathon races and those athletes have had almost a year of turn around to prepare for the Rio Games.  Athletes who are on the fringes of selection or want to enter the selection pool will have up to 23rd of May 2016 to post a result.

Potentially athletes may be chasing a qualification standard to the very end and, although this is not ideal, it does give the opportunity for an athlete to come back and get it right if the first marathon did not go as planned.  The marathon event has changed and athletes are running more than one marathon every twelve months.  The marathon winners in Rio will potentially have run 2-3 marathons in one year.  Historically our own Irish athletes have run marathons months before and in some cases have still have gone on to run personal bests in championships. 

The selection panel will select up to 3 men and women for the marathon.

Q:What are your expectations for Irish athletes in Amsterdam and then moving on to Rio?

A: Amsterdam will be a very competitive European Championships compared to the 2012 event.  Some athletes will use this event as a last chance qualifier and others will regard this as a tune-up prior to the Olympic Games so results will be harder to predict.  For most athletes this will be an opportunity for an Olympic Games qualification and for young development athletes an opportunity to compete at a major championship event. We will see a lot of new faces and some established athletes at this championship but overall this will be a young team.  We have seen an increase in the number of developing high performance athletes (youth, junior and U23) and they are now transitioning to the senior level. For our top athletes Amsterdam could be a targeted event for a medal or a championship event used as preparation for the Olympic Games. Athletics Ireland will hope to have 4 relay teams, 2 half marathon teams and an overall team selected of around 35 to 40 athletes.  We would expect at least 1 medal opportunity and for some of our key athletes to get through the rounds targeting a semi or a final and possibly setting a new season's and/or personal best.

For Rio our performance expectations are pretty clear that we believe that Rob Heffernan is in a position to race for a medal.  We also have a handful of targeted athletes who we believe have an opportunity to push on and make a semi or an Olympic Games final, all being well.  Thomas Barr, Mark English, Ciara Mageean, will all be first-time Olympians who have prior championship experience and should do well in Rio.  Additionally, Fionnuala McCormack and the 4x4 relay team should take the opportunity to excel on the Olympic Games stage. We will look for these key athletes to perform and if the relay team makes it to Rio they are already in a top 16 team position.  For most of our athletes this will be their first Olympic Games and we are still a very young Olympic team. The average age of the 2012 team was about 30 years old where this team will mostly be under the age of 26 with 2020 Tokyo aspirations also in mind.  We hope to see a team size of 25-30 athletes and overall expect our athletes to compete to the level that got them to the Olympic Games.   

Q: How are Pre-Rio preparations/meetings with athletes and coaches going?

A: Since the 1st of January 2015 we have been working with athletes and coaches around preparations for the Olympic Games. This started with the marathon and 50km race walkers and post-World Championships 2015 out to all our carded athletes to submit their final plans for the build up to Rio. At this point in time athletes performance plans are in place, funding has been allocated and we are well into the year.  With just months to go before we take off to Rio things look pretty good as we have athletes and coaches away to various camps around the world.

Rio will be challenging for us being so far away although we have planned for this experience and have tried to replicate the Rio camp and championship experience previously when we were in Beijing at the 2015 World Championships.  We left as one team to Asia, went into a team camp and then moved on to the championship village. This will be the same experience we will undertake in Rio.  We learned a lot from our 2015 experience and it has helped us to better prepare for the Olympic Games.

We are working very positively in partnership with the Olympic Council of Ireland and a multi-sport team camp has been established with the OCI prior to the Olympics in Uberlandia in Brazil. We plan to use this camp and leave as a team on July 28th and transition athletes in stages from the camp into the Olympic village prior to their event.  We will have a few athletes with different individual plans that are looking to stay at altitude as long as possible prior to their race that won’t be in our Uberlandia camp. We are fully aware of these plans and we are fully committed to supporting this option as these plans are a performance decision that will have credible impact on race day.

Q: How is the High Performance Programme developing? It was launched in 2013 – What imprint to do you feel you have left to date?

A: The HP programme is a long-term initiative which I believe is developing well. Our strategy and direction was to have a change of approach, to develop a performance system with 7 identified strategies, and to create a platform and opportunities for more of our athletes to win on the world stage over the course of the next 10 years. In many ways we have achieved change while we continue to develop the culture of high performance. Highlighting some key areas where we have created a performance system of support we have:

• Changed the way athletes are funded. We now manage the High Performance Carding system being one of the first sports in Ireland to do so.
• Athletes at the top levels are receiving more support
• We are now supporting more than 150+ athletes.
• We have put in place a robust system to select athletes and teams for major championship - selection policies, selection and appeals panels with a terms of reference and an appeals policy for each championship event.  
• Along with the Institute of Sport we have created and developed a world-class sports science and medical system. Centralising around the new sports campus athletes now have access to doctors, physios, strength and conditioning and sport science specialists as a cost neutral service.
• We provide championship selected teams with world-class logistic and operational support
• We have identified the distance and sprint disciplines as our key events and have put in place programmes to develop opportunities for success.
• Our endurance programmes have won 5 medals at European championships and have seen a resurgence of our marathon runners. Our relay programmes have set new national records in almost every relay and overall more relay teams are representing Ireland at major championships and Olympic Games. 

Q: Medals and performance wise are we on target?

A: Back in 2013 in our High Performance plan we looked years in advance and saw that there were about 24 medal opportunities for our programme to achieve.  By its nature this target shifts a little as athletes emerge and develop at different rates.  Our goal as a HP programme is to create the platform and the opportunities for athletes to be in a position to improve, be consistent and perform at the highest levels and I believe we have been successful at delivering on this commitment. Currently to date with still more to come in 2016 we have achieved 21 medals across the HP programme (development, cross country and senior athletes) since the launch of the 2013 plan. I am very pleased that we have been able to set out the potential medals years in advance and to date achieved 87% of that total. As a high performance programme, we are conscious of our commitment to effectively plan, invest and provide a return on the government’s investment in our sport.

Q:Is there enough funding available overall?

A: I would say yes. Would we welcome more funding? Yes. However, we are very grateful and appreciate the performance investment from Sport Ireland and most certainly we have secured an adequate amount of funding in 2016 to allow us to create a platform and opportunities to develop and support coaches and athletes.  Athletics Ireland has been very successful in raising our own self-generated funds to contribute to the overall development of athletics and the high performance system. With finite funding each year we identify the key athletes and supporting coaches along with the key programme event areas that will have the biggest return on investment. We also have an obligation to report to Sport Ireland at the end of each year and demonstrate that we are making the right investment with a performance return. The funding will always be a challenge and if access to further funding becomes available it would enable us to particularly expand our coaching development initiatives and programme.

Q: Why are only 10-12 athletes funded?

A: There are now more than 150+ athletes carded in 2016 (up from 40 back in 2011). The focus is generally on the top tier of carded athletes in each sport announced by Sport Ireland annually. For 2016 we have 11 individual athletes and 1 relay team at the top tier of carding and of those 11 we have 1 podium, 6 world-class and 5 at the international level.  The carding programme was previously managed by Sport Ireland and handed over to us to manage for the last two years. Overall our supported carded athletes have increased almost four-fold in 5 years.     

Q: Have athletes bought in to HP?

A: One of our metrics of success outlined in our high performance plan was “athlete buy-in”.  We have progressed from a lot athletes who previously formed their own performance support teams to a performance system that almost every carded athlete is using or tapping into the system we have developed.  There is a balance here, where we work with key athletes and their teams. We are not forcing it but the combination of athlete and central support is the essence of high performance in the long term and I believe that we are achieving buy-in. 

Q: How has HP Programme helped coaches?

A: Overall coaches have been helped in many ways by Athletics Ireland but probably the most unnoticed area is the yearly support the high performance programme has given to personal coaches. Each year we support a number of carded athletes coaches with funding to attend camps, competitions and championships. We would like to have full-time coaches to work within the high performance system but financially that may not be viable or sustainable in the short and long term. We need to find what is sustainable and what works best in an Irish context and perhaps supporting a number of coaches like we are currently doing could be a way forward.

Q: Are you enjoying the job and the challenge?

A: Yes I am enjoying being part of the Irish high performance system. Change management is not always easy but the challenge of it could be considered the fun part. High performance jobs in general are tough but what I enjoying seeing is development over time and more so what continues to develop after I leave a job.  For example, it has been exciting to see New Zealand evolve and continue to improve as a programme.  We focused a lot on the throws while I was the Performance Director and now seeing the like of Tom Walsh win world championship medals and a number of up-and-coming throwers getting to the senior level is rewarding. Ireland is a challenge but a rewarding and meaningful experience.