World Half Marathon team

TheBigGreen

SS Strava

average_runner

Testosterscone wrote: »

Pollock 21st European. With the likes of Hawkins, Moen, Griffin and any of the Poles missing does show the tough task which lies ahead in Berlin later this year over the marathon

Britain have some good runners coming thru. Hawkins is great to watch

Krusty_Clown

Great result for the Swiss man Julien Wanders, who relocated to Kenya, to break into an otherwise African top 20, with an 8th place finish. Not a PB (he ran 60.09 in February), but just showing he can compete with some of the world's best over the 13.1 distance.

wgtomblin

On the men's side, only 9 European teams competed. Including Turkey and Israel, mostly comprised of African born (and based) athletes.

No teams from the likes of Germany, Poland, Netherlands, Scandinavia, Italy...
Any ideas why they choose to stay away?

Ireland only finished ahead of Kazakhstan and Gibraltar. Is there a benefit in funding and sending a full team to this event? Our athletes are otherwise entering large city half marathons anyway (Paris, Berlin, Barcelona etc.. )

average_runner

wgtomblin wrote: »

On the men's side, only 9 European teams competed. Including Turkey and Israel, mostly comprised of African born (and based) athletes.

No teams from the likes of Germany, Poland, Netherlands, Scandinavia, Italy...
Any ideas why they choose to stay away?

Ireland only finished ahead of Kazakhstan and Gibraltar. Is there a benefit in funding and sending a full team to this event? Our athletes are otherwise entering large city half marathons anyway (Paris, Berlin, Barcelona etc.. )

The amount of funding they get isn't much to write home about. They deserve a chance there

Testosterscone

wgtomblin wrote: »

Ireland only finished ahead of Kazakhstan and Gibraltar. Is there a benefit in funding and sending a full team to this event? Our athletes are otherwise entering large city half marathons anyway (Paris, Berlin, Barcelona etc.. )

Would imagine that it offered good championship experience in build up to Berlin for the Marathon team as well as blooding new athletes into the team. Considering similar climate and relative inexpense of Valencia it provides decent return if learn from it (stomach issues and other things which can hopefully be rectified)

Always a bit bemused that sending athletes is the first thing questioned with regards budgets, what about cost saving measure on the administration side of the sport, or negotiating better deals with event management companies for services rendered (or tendering processes etc)

Surely creating a culture of excellence around championships is one of the biggest failings of our athletes in recent times as opposed to lack of talent of many of our athletes who do go to championships having achieved qualifiers.

Also closing avenues to earn Ireland call ups has an impact on development. People argue that Marathon qualifiers are soft in comparison to some other events but this has also lead to an increase in general standard in Marathon running in this country. Likewise the demise of the Inter Clubs XC coincided with the decision to stop sending teams to world cross. Having an Irish presence at these events might not seem to have a huge impact but it does influence the landscape at a domestic level.

wgtomblin

average_runner wrote: »

The amount of funding they get isn't much to write home about. They deserve a chance there

Hmm... all the more reason why I would question why limited funding would be allocated to sending full teams there. For instance, would it not be better to forego this competition and dedicate funding towards training camp, altitude training, etc..

"They deserve a chance there".
I don't understand this argument.

wgtomblin

Testosterscone wrote: »

Surely creating a culture of excellence around championships is one of the biggest failings of our athletes in recent times

This is a fair point, thanks.

Not having a go at the athletes. I guess what sparked my question was that I was interested why likes of Ireland and Austria sent teams while some larger European nations with more depth, chose not to.