07.05.2009

100 days to go: A high performance update

It is approximately 100 days since my appointment as high performance manager and it is now 100 days before the start of the Berlin world championships.

It is an appropriate time to reflect with the athletics community on the last 100 days and muse about some of the expectations for the next 100 days.

The domestic athletics season produced a raft of impressive performances so numerous it is hard to pick out any particular performance. The key theme, however, is that in a traditionally quiet time, a post-Olympic year, we saw myriad performances of quality.

The culmination was over 30 qualifying performances for the world championships and over 30 qualifying performances for the World University Games. This is a wonderful boost for our athletics future.

A word of caution is the need to convert these performances into top-eight performances at the world championships and translate these into a lasting performance impact for our Olympic aspirations in London 2012.

In conjunction with the work surrounding the domestic season there have been many consultative meetings preparing for the presentation of the Athletics Australia high performance strategic plan. The process has been exhaustive and has culminated with the completion of athlete and coach reviews around Australia.

A planning group was established to discuss and debate future direction and consultative meetings with all the major stakeholders have been completed, including athletes and coaches. The themes have been clear and the focus is on the athlete and coach in a supportive environment, which enhances the daily training environment alongside the provision of quality competition opportunities.

An ambitious aim for the world championships is to get all our top performers fit and healthy for the Games. Imagine Jana Rawlinson, Nathan Deakes, Sally McLellan, Steve Hooker, Jared Tallent, Fabrice Lapierre, Jarrod Bannister, Youcef Abdi, Craig Mottram and Luke Adams supported by established, quality team members like Tamsyn Lewis, Sarah Jamieson, Dani Samuels, Sean Wroe, Jeff Riseley, Collis Birmingham, Joel Milburn and John Steffensen.

Further to this add our newest team members at this level - Tristan Thomas, Mitchell Watt and Kim Mickle - and we have a performance team to be reckoned with.

A primary objective of Athletics Australia is to assist and facilitate this lofty goal with all the support mechanisms at its disposal.

It is my fervent belief Australia possesses talent of the highest level and the key to the success of this group is the attention to detail that enables athletes and coaches to eliminate as much of the chance from performance as possible and allows repeatable success to follow.

Good luck to all Australian athletes and coaches in all the upcoming championships this year.

Eric Hollingsworth