This years event, which finished last month, attracted 30,000 plus spectators and featured high school athletes from around the length and breadth of the country. Virtually every Jamaican athelete competing at the highest level on the world atheltics stage also excelled at Champs level. Indeed, Asafa Powell was deemed skittish and too nervous following his one and only Champs appearance. Some things evidently don't change.
The marquee event, the 100 metres, was won this year by Juilian Forte with a time of 10:45s. The winner in 2008, Jazeel Murphy, set the current Jamaican schools record at age 15: 10:42s. Mark Lewis-Francis, at the same age, set the current British schools record of 10:93s. No-one has come within .1 of a second of that record since. In an event of millimetres, Jamaica have clear daylight separating their athletics standards from the UK.
A typical 'Champs' scene
Clear daylight also exists in the setup of the Jamaican athletics scene. In spite of the obvious inferiority of its education system, Jamaica still finds the money to pay for a trained athletics coach for every primary and high school. It does this without having to cut back on the rest of its curriculum.
The school athletics scene in the UK is at nowhere near this level. Our national championships attract less than 4000 spectators, and have a cloudy future beyond the next four years when a sponsorship deal with Aviva expires.
Too many schools pay little to no attention to raising athletics standards, or even bothering to raise participation levels, which are at their lowest levels for 15 years. While the idea that schools don't offer competitive athletics because 'somebody loses and everyone should be a winner' is nonsense (like much of the 'PC gone mad' stories we hear), it is certainly true that events such as sports days, once the staple of school athletics, have in many cases become little more than gimics.
While county and regional events still exist, their profile is non-existant. There is no mention of them at many schools, and no preparation for them, or setting targets to pupils to compete in them.
From personal experience, another problem is a lack of recognition and support for talented athletes within the school system. I went to a probably below-average state school in the west of Scotland. I was a talented athlete, particularly as a sprinter (100 and 200 metres) and as a high jumper. Without blowing my own trumpet, I was light years ahead of anyone else at my school, I broke easily the current school record in 6 events, and the fact that I had some talent was thus bloody obvious.
And yet, I recieved no real coaching or advice. The P.E. teachers were simply either uninformed about athletics or just uninterested. There seemed to be a culture that's mantra was 'You're pretty good already. Well, keep at it'.
Talented youngsters, unless they go to a school with an athletics focused teacher, live next to a strong local athletics club or fall through the front door of a 'National Centre for Excellence' simply do not recieve adequate coaching to improve their abilities. A side point here is that the facilities available for athletics vary drastically throughout the country, as does the level of national level support and funding.
Scotstounhill: Finally, some good facilities!
Ultimately, youngsters at a young age are just not encouraged to participate in athletics. There is a scientifically quantifiable hypothesis called the 'Rule of 10,000', which says that to be truly excellent at a particular skill, whether it be touch typing, writing fiction, or athletics, you need to put 10,000 hours into practising and refining your skill at it. It is when these 10,000 hours are achieved at a young age that greatness comes. There is a reason that so many of the best footballers come from poor areas of the world, why so many star Boxers, American footballers and NBA basketball players come from 'the Projects'. It is because there is little else to do other than spend hours practicing their chosen sport.
Undisputed champ Riddick Bowe (l), the 12th of 13 children, was brought up in a Brooklyn slum. All Star Carmelo Anthony (r) played basketball in the streets of a Baltimore Project from the age of 8.
Obviously, I am not suggesting that poverty is in some way of benefit to youngsters growing up (it is also true that poorer children, on the whole, simply do not grow as tall and become as strong as they should for example). However, it is certainly evidence in favour of the 'Rule of 10,000'. If we can get those 10,000 hours of practice spread over a child's schooling, then we can maximise their development athletically. Those with talent that does not immediately show itself would have a chance to develop it, and those already exhibiting good ability could refine it and take it to the next level.
With London 2012 not so far away, a change in emphasis is certainly needed so that Britain can be competitive with the rest of the world in the athletics events of our Olympics. Perhaps Seb Coe et al should visit Kingston next year and learn something from the real Champs.
GM
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