Update/Project 30 Task Force

After much traveling and racing these past two weeks, I have gotten most of the week off from Brooks. I definitely am in the mood for some much needed rest before this next travel and competition phase.

I only have weights this week and one track workout this Friday.

I've had the pleasure of spending some quality time with my car, I spent a few hours after my last lift session detailing it. That's one of my favorite pastimes.

Later on tonight, my Nuggets are in town to play the Magic, I'm going to hit up the game, I have never been able to catch them play down here, I'm always out of town when they come to Orlando. The Magic have one of the worst arena's I've ever been in, I don't understand that, but whatever.

Another major event in USA Track and Field that I'm having trouble completely understanding is the recommendations presented by the Project 30 Task Force.

CEO Doug Logan felt that this was needed due to our "poor" performances at the Olympic Games. Which immediatley hits me as something I don't understand, there was not one Gold medal that Team USA should have won on paper that we didn't, and we got one that nobody predicted, but I guess we will over look that.

A few findings/recommendations that I feel a certain way about are:

* Excessive travel and poor long-term planning on the part of athletes, their coaches and agents appear to be the greatest controllable factors negatively affecting Team USA performance in Beijing.

To me, this is laughable. Excessive travel?, we are professionals and we all knew for years that the 2008 Olympics were going to be hosted in Beijing. This is a poor excuse. What I believe is the underlying thing here is that this task force believed that Olympians on the USA team competed too much in Europe prior to the Games. As a professional, you want to get paid for your services. You go to the Trials and pour out you heart to win a spot on the Olympic Team. I won the Trials, the most competitive competition in the World arguably and received a check for $5000. So you want us to sit at home and train for the Olympics, instead of going overseas where you can see that $5,000 check tripled in an appearance fee? I can't knock somebody who wants to take advantage of their newly acquired title as U.S. Champion and gain the appearance fees from European meets that come with that. So unless they plan on some sort of financial support like the other countries do, how can you say that because somebody wanted to capitalize upon their performance, as poor planning. Come to think about it, a lot of the Gold medal winners in the sprint events competed throughout Europe post-Trials i.e. the Jamaicans, who's trials were just as tough as ours in the sprints.

* Lack of communication between coaches and athletes, poor management of the relay pools and questions over which coaches were responsible for relays resulted in the 4x100m relay failures in Beijing.

Being on the outside of this looking in, as I was not involved in this process directly. I still feel a certain way about this. I am a firm believer that coaching had nothing to do with the 4x100m relay debacles. You can be coached very well, but things happen. If I would have fallen on a hurdle in the first round, can you blame Brooks for that? It's the individual runners responsibility to handle their business. Being present at almost all of the practices the relay had partaken in prior to competition, I saw not one day of "up to speed" practice. Who's fault is that, not the coaches. People were always sore or focusing on their individual events or whatever the excuse of the day was, and couldn't/wouldn't take part in the session. I'm very glad that I don't have to be a part of the whole "relay pool" thing. Hearing people complain about the possibility of not being on the relay because they finished 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th at the Trials was crazy. Let me go to the Trials and finish 7th, 8th place, I might not be able to get races in Europe, let alone make trips as a member of the Olympic or World Championships teams. Bottom line, blame the athletes, not the coaches.

* Inroads have been made into catching and punishing doping cheats, but more must be done to strengthen the anti-doping culture.

I can't feel any stronger about this. Drug cheats not only ruin their own image, they ruin the people that finish behind them careers. Think about the guy that finished fourth at the Trials, behind a drug cheat. He/she will never make up the experience or money they lost. Think of the Silver Medalist, who although they will get the stripped Gold Medal as a post audit, they will never get they joy of standing on the top position of the podium and hear their National Anthem played. At least USADA/WADA etc, don't sweep the drug charges under the rug like other major sporting leagues.

* American athletes as a group do not conduct themselves as true professionals, and USATF does not hold them to professional standards.

I need some more information on how they can just make this blanket statement. I don't know if this is to help us or if this is negative speak.

* Shorten the U.S. Olympic Team Trials - Track & Field to five days.

I thought that this whole report was done in order for us to send the best possible team to the major championships. With the trials being shorten to five days, I don't necessarily feel that this will impact me one way or the other, but let's think about two major athletes who are considered the best in their events. I can't imagine Bernard Lagat being able to pull the 5,000/1,500 double. Two rounds of the 5,000 and three rounds of the 1,5000 in five days? You talk about being susceptible to injury. Tyson Gay is the other that immediately comes to mind. He got injured attempting a 100/200 combo, which at this past year's trials were on the opening and closing weekends, now you want him to compete in eight races in five days. These are two of the very best in their event in America, so if the purpose of this is to send the best team, what's the likelihood that these two will be able to represent the USA in the Olympics where they have been ranked #1 in the U.S. in both events during recent times?

* Promote and foster a self-sustaining professional athletes' union.

I really hope to see this come to fruition. Several attemps that they have tried to foster in the past have either failed or not completely developed. Hopefully whomever this professional General Manager they plan on hiring will have some sort of gameplan.

These were just a few notes that I wanted to cover and I felt a certain way about. I haven't had the chance to talk to any other American runners to see what their view or opinion on the whole thing is. To me I believe they needed to find some sort of scape goat for issues that extended far beyond the track at the Birds Nest.

The thing that got me was how they put the stat out there that 3 of 8 women medalists produced season's best performances and 2 of 13 men's medalists produced season's bests. That might be the most jaded fact they found. They are comparing season's bests, which more often then not come from one-off races, to a competition which we had four rounds over the course of four days and the highest amount of stress imaginable. Payne was able to produce one of the two season's best, but his time was WELL off his personal best performance and had he been healthy last year, I know for a fact his season's best would have been faster than 13.17. Walter Dix was the other athlete, who ran sparingly last year.

That's just my two cents on this subject.......

Project 30 Task Force Quick Synopsis
Full Project 30 Report