What happens our athletes when they go to major championships?

Common Sense

What happens our athletes when they go to these events. As people know, I never diss athletes on these boards, but I'm perplexed when I see someone with the talent of Roisin McGettigan running 11 secs outside her PB in this morning's SC - when anything close to that would probably have gotten her into the final. There is something wrong. Forget about finals or even progressing beyond heats but shouldn't we, at least, be expecting PBs from our athletes.? Again I'm not getting at the athletes themselves - nobody probably feels worse than they. But is it our system -we send out managers and coaches to these championships. This isn't a phenomenon that has occurred only at these championships, but has been happening at every major championship over the past numbers of years. Maybe we should be looking at our whole approach to preparations for championships such as - physiotherapy, physioloby, medical etc.

ecksor

In the case of olympic years you would have to regard the OCI's bizarre time conditions for qualification as not helping the cause either.

Redfraggle

So many athlethes from every country across the world fail to produce on the world stage. When you have only a few representatives like Ireland one or two underperformers looks worse than it actually is !!!

Anyway look at Paul Hession this morning - a fab 20.40 in the 200m beating his own PB by a massive 0.21sec... absolutely brilliant - that time would have won all but 3 of the 8 heats...

marshmallow

I don't know if this is the thread to post on but..
My school qualified for the All Irelands. It was on a Saturday this year. My friend is a brilliant sprinter and could have done brilliantly but she went to Wezz the night before. What a stupid thing! She got home at about 1am and had to get up at 8am or so to go down to Waterford.

She came fourth in her category. Top 3 went onto the Irish+British competition.

thirtyfoot

Great run by Hession alright, unfortunately he had a hurricane up his a*se, +4.3m/sec, so won't count for PB purposes. He has a tough lane draw this afternoon, lane 1, but a PB could get him into the shakeup.

The standards are so high now and so many of our athletes are scraping in, its difficult to maintain a high-performance plateau throughout a season, many times athletes have to peak early just to qualify and by the time the championships come they are on the downward curve.

Although not the case here, the OCI standards are counter-productive, you have to peak 2 months ahead of the Olympics just to qualify and try peak again for the championships. "B" standards should be accepted, I believe its better if an athlete has achieved a "B" standard 4 or 5 times in the 4-6 weeks before a championship, as opposed to an "A" standard just once 12 or even 6 months before. Many times, a "B" standard can progress you through a round in the majors.

Common Sense

A great run by Derval O'Rourke (13.00 - a season's best) to qualify for tomorrow's semi. This is what I would be expecting from athletes, going out there and being properly 'peaked'. As I said above getting through heats, while important, is very much down to how other athletes perform in as much as an athlete him/herself performs. So fair play to Hession and O'Rourke - they ran to their potential and as they found out, fortune favours the brave.

nonrunner

what happened McCambridge yesterday?
i didn't see the race just saw the results, i thought she would be in with a shout of making the final but she was well back.

o'keeffee in the hammer prob just peaked too soon, her PB of a couple of weeks ago would have gotten her easily into the final, pity.