Coffee With Larry, British Athletics and their 19 athletes who could go to Budapest but BA may not allow them, A Modest few suggestions

This is Coffee with Larry, your daily musings on the world of athletes, powered by caffeine and the imagination of yours truly, Larry Eder, editor at RunBlogRun.

Also, please note these are the suggestions of me, Larry Eder, and no one else.

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This is #CoffeeWithLarry for Thursday, July 27, 2023.

Our topics today:

1. The cruelty and honesty of the US Trials system.

2. The British Federation apparently will not allow 19 British athletes who received WA invites to Budapest; what is the story?

3. Jack Buckner, British Athletics CEO, noted months ago that he wanted to be more “ruthless” in UK approach to picking teams.

4. Over the last 30 years, one of the most important stories in our sport is the resurrection of British Athletics.

5. Much of that was due to the financial resurrection provided by Fast Track (Alan Pascoe, Jon Ridgeon, Ian Stewart, and Cherry Alexander) that Niels de Vos dismantled in 2011 to avoid paying a commission of 120 million sterling.

6. De Vos’s decision dismantled rather quickly the financial health of the UK.

7. By 2018, even the London DL was a mess, down to 30,000 fans, due to World Cup, which lost $1.5 million two weeks after DL.

8. Buckner comes into the position with a sport paying out settlements due to coaching improprieties and no new sponsors.

9. AVIVA is a health management company that sponsored British Athletics to the tune of 55 million sterling a year! When AVIVA had to cut back, they offered 15 million, and the de Vos administration did not even return their phone calls.

10. The new administration is recovering from those shenanigans, but the media circus that will come out with 19 athletes not being allowed to go to the WC is going to be bad.

11. Our humble suggestions;

a. Ask footwear sponsors or athletes to pay their way.
b. Ask Nike, UK sponsor to sponsor 19 athletes and get some seriously good PR.
c. Speak to London Events or Great Run in helping out.

12. Selection process can be good and not so good. Politics is one thing, but the 19 athletes, in several cases, are the best healthy GB athletes, and the experience of competing in the first WC or getting more experience is building for Paris 2024 and London 2028, among others.

13. The London Diamond League was the finest meet of the year. 50,000 screaming British fans celebrating our global sport, showed the vitality of the sport in the British Isles. A contrarian approach to the 19 qualified may be a good way to build on the future of British Athletics. We wish our friends across the pond wise judgement in the coming days.

Your thoughts?

#CoffeeWithLarry

Author

Larry Eder
Larry Eder has had a 52-year involvement in the sport of athletics. Larry has experienced the sport as an athlete, coach, magazine publisher, and now, journalist and blogger. His first article, on Don Bowden, America's first sub-4 minute miler, was published in RW in 1983. Larry has published several magazines on athletics, from American Athletics to the U.S. version of Spikes magazine. He currently manages the content and marketing development of the RunningNetwork, The Shoe Addicts, and RunBlogRun. Of RunBlogRun, his daily pilgrimage with the sport, Larry says: "I have to admit, I love traveling to far away meets, writing about the sport I love, and the athletes I respect, for my readers at runblogrun.com, the most of anything I have ever done, except, maybe running itself." Also does some updates for BBC Sports at key events, which he truly enjoys. Theme song: Greg Allman, " I'm no Angel."
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