A tribute to Sean Kyle
Mark Kirk penned a lovely tribute to Sean Kyle on his passing yesterday giving a great insight into the man:
It's only after someone has gone that you really reflect on the impact that they had on your life.
Sean Kyle as he was to many of us throughout the years was a great coach and a great mentor. It didn't matter to him if you were an international athlete or someone who turned up at the track to try some running – he was equally as generous in sharing his vast knowledge. This knowledge not only encompassed middle distance running but he also coached sprints and throws.
When I look back on our training regime we followed under Sean, I realise now how far ahead of his time he was. As a young athlete I did physical preparation, strength and conditioning, running drills, threshold runs, plyometrics, hill sprints, and the usual runs and running sessions. We may have used different terminology back then but basically these principles are considered the essence of good middle distance coaching in the modern era.
He had a vast array of coaching manuals, papers and books which he kept in his study and he somehow found time to read all of them. He re-read them repeatedly to refresh his memory and maybe to pick up some little bit of useful information he may have missed. He was never afraid to try something new. This had the benefit to us of never knowing what to expect when you turned up for training!
Now I am actively coaching athletes I do find myself using quotes and techniques that Sean would have used. Among his favourites was never to reveal how many reps we were about to do in a session. In hindsight it was probably a good way to eliminate the last rep wonder, the athlete who would destroy the rest of the group with their one and only big effort on the last rep!
As well as coaching all his athletes basically 7 days a week Sean ran a successful family insurance business, he was a husband to Maeve and a father to Shauna and in his later life a grandfather to Indie. I remember he also trained for a marathon. He managed to fit this in by running back home from the track in Antrim after he had spent a couple of hours coaching!
Sean and Maeve basically had an open house and invariably there would be some athlete or coach staying with them. Many of us spent our Saturday nights at the "Kyles" enjoying great chat and card games. Both Sean and Maeve were very generous hosts and loved having company and a bit of craic!
Holidays for Sean and Maeve generally involved athletics with trips to various cities where Olympic Games, World Championships, European Championships or Commonwealth Games were being held. These gave Sean a great opportunity to meet other coaches and athletes and further increase his knowledge and his vast network of friends from all over the world.
One of my fondest memories of Sean was our time in Australia before the 1990 Commonwealth Games in Auckland. He arrived in Sydney for a month long training camp with little more than a stopwatch and a change of clothes! That man took travelling light to an extreme! He was the life and soul of our squad and taught us all a few risqué songs which we sang very badly on the bus on the way to training venues.
In recent years Sean's health started to deteriorate. I can remember well my last proper conversation with him at the International meeting at the Mary Peter's track a few years ago. He was sitting on a chair at the finish line watching all the events with great interest stopwatch in hand. I will never forget his delight and excitement that Ben Reynolds had broken the NI record for the 110m hurdles that night. His love for the sport of athletics was as deep that night as it was 30 odd years ago when I was privileged to be one of his athletes!
I could never thank him enough for all the help and advice he gave to me and of course to many others over the years.
He will be missed by many.
RIP Sean
