I've resisted, goodness knows I've resisted, but as this thread has rolled on, as one of maybe just three people on this list who were in Santiago, I thought that I might add my two penn'orth. 1, It is October everywhere in the northern hemisphere, not just in the United States. I am afraid that the poor overall showing of the US team at the World Junior cannot be ascribed simply to the time of year - it was the same for everyone else. Everyone else saw their junior seasons finish in July or August, too. What everyone else did was arrange for extra meets in the interim, and their coaches organised their season with the World Juniors in mind. I found it astonishing to discover that one of the American athletes in Santiago had not raced since June: what sort of preparation is that for a major meeting? 2, Maybe there was a problem with the organisation of the US team in Santiago. Alright, so Nigeria never even got out of Lagos because of Visa problems, but what other "major" athletics nations allowed one of their top medal contenders to collect his passport on the Sunday night - less than 48 hours before the championships began, so he arrived just six hours before the 100m heats? Or what other major team allowed their top distance runner to be at home when the heats of the 5,000m were going on? Sure, the schedule was changed, but if the athlete had been in Santiago, that would never have been a problem, would it? Britain, France and Australia (to name but three) try to resource their junior and under-23 teams in the same way it plans and prepares teams for senior championships, if for no other reason to give the team management and the team members the experience of what it will be like on the big stage, when their chance comes. How many of the survivors of the US Junior team in Santiago will ever want to repeat their experience now? 3, Don't kid yourselves, the World Juniors is a major meeting. Look at past WJ champions, and look where they are now: the WJC is an event which identifies future talent from around the world (see Point 5 below). America can carry on ignoring it, at their peril. 4, What really ought to worry the United States: not only did the US team come away with a SINGLE BRONZE MEDAL (say that to yourself again if you find that hard to believe) - but there were only five other Americans who made top eight finishes. No one in the sprints. No one in the long jump. Not impressive, guys. One official said it was a good thing the US got that bronze: "Otherwise, people might have thought they were not here at all." 5, The sometime American argument that the WJC is not a major meet as far as America goes is somewhat undermined by the presence of something like 50 recruitment coaches from colleges in the US - there were more American coaches there than Chilean dogs on the track, or even members of the official US team. Presumably all those American coaches thought there was something significant going on down in Santiago. Of course, they were there recruiting foreign talent. My guess is it is easier to recruit "talent" when you've seen it come in the top eight at a World Junior, than it is to go down to the local High School and make judgements there and put in the technical coaching and development work for two or three years after. I found the following very interesting: >>> It's a shame that our high school national record holder and top junior pole vaulter Eric Eshbach (5.55m) is on only an 80% scholarship, while his own university gives a 100% scholarship to a British shot putter currently under an IAAF drug ban. <<< As I understand it, the scholarship began well after the drug ban was known, and the shot-putter (who had medalled at a previous World Juniors) competed for his college despite the worldwide ban, too. I don't know, but does this say a lot about the college system? 6, Mark Lewis-Francis. Let's use this guy as an example of "talent identification" and "development" elsewhere in the world. At the time of the British Trials, I was of the Darrell Smith persuasion: MLF might only ever have one chance to go to the Olympics, he is just an Achilles tendon injury away from oblivion, etc. But I think Justin Clouder put it well: at the beginning of the 2000 season, MLF had a 10.3 PR, he was only the second best junior in Europe over 100m, his goal all year had been the World Juniors. Mark took advice: what would he have to gain by going to the Olympics? A place in the semi-final, perhaps? "I'm in this sport for life," Mark said, "I live off experience, I learn from experience. I only have one chance of ever becoming World Junior champion. Hopefully, I have two or three Olympics ahead of me." Not an easy decision to take, especially not for someone only 17 years old. For someone to rant that making this decision makes Lewis-Francis "soft" is faintly ludicrous. The easy decision was to go to the Olympics. Would he have got more out of racing in Sydney, or more from Santiago? Now, I'd say probably the latter: it will allow him to grow in stature and confidence. Time will tell. If anything, by not going to Sydney, it all set him up for a fall in Santiago. Yet MLF dominated there - and can be expected to dominate his generation of sprinters for a good while yet, I'd suggest. As will Paul Gorries, the impressive South African who won the 200m, or Darrell's Al-Bishi, the 400m champion. In years to come, when they line up at Grand Prix events or their next championship, they will be announced as "World Junior champion..." Imagine how that will make them feel, and how their rivals will feel. How did it all begin for Mark Lewis-Francis? Lewis-Francis walked into the clubhouse at Birchfield Harriers, in Birmingham, about six years ago, and after joining his local club, was taken under the wing of their development coach, Steve Platt. Platt is a volunteer, a part-time coach and full-time enthusiast, who has patience, energy, his own experience of working with kids and the back-up of one of England's biggest clubs to call on. But little more than that. To this day, MLF has only ever trained twice a week. He might start a third session a week during the coming months. The same is largely true of Tim Benjamin, from Cardiff, who won the 200m silver medal, of Christian Malcolm (double gold medallist two years ago, fifth in the Olympic 200m final) and Dwain Chambers (100m world junior record-holder and fourth in the 100m final in Sydney). Is this all mere "coincidence", or are British athletics clubs managing to stumble across more talent more effectively than elsewhere in the world? Like MLF, Benjamin will be a junior next year, too, as will Tyrone Edgar and Dwayne Grant, the two other members of the sprint relay team that came within 0.05sec of the 17-year-old, altitude-assisted world junior record (and that after the French kept everyone waiting out on the track for half an hour). Clearly, the European Juniors next year could see some most significant performances. STEVEN
