ATHLETICS: British talent may now be out of the running

As Durham prepares to host the first World Cross-Country Championships in Britain for 12 years, it would have been nice to think that the bulk of Britain's best middle-distance runners were similarly concerned with today's competition. Sadly - perhaps inevitably - it ain't so.

Doubtless the British teams selected will perform with honour, but the potential level of their achievement has been seriously lowered by the unavailability of talents such as Eamonn Martin, Paul Evans, Gary Staines, Liz McColgan, Richard Nerurkar, Yvonne Murray, John Nuttall, Dave Lewis and John Brown.

A sad state of affairs? "Of course it's sad," said Ian Stewart, head of the British Athletic Federation's events promotion unit and the last Briton to win the senior world title back in 1975. "I think it's down to how important runners consider cross-country to be. And there are major financial considerations for a lot of our guys."

That was a point taken up by the veteran Dave Clarke at a team news conference yesterday. "Athletes must be made to feel they are valuable. In 18 years of international competition I have received just £200 towards my training. "Unless the situation improves we won't have the top guys turning out for us and we shall continue to lag behind."

The financial factor has been compounded this year by unfortunate timing. For administrative reasons, the London Marathon has been brought forward two weeks from its accustomed position, giving anyone who might have considered combining the two events, McColgan and Martin, only one week to recover.

Thus the first four of these listed absentees have had to concentrate on the forthcoming journey from Greenwich to Westminster. "If the gap had been three weeks or more I would have gone for it," Martin said.

Next year the London Marathon returns to its usual date of the third Sunday in April and there will be a gap of nearly a month for runners to recover from the World Cross-Country championships, which will be held in South Africa on 26 March. But there is no guarantee that this will mean a stronger British challenge next time around.

"We are proceeding with the old British method of `we'll cope as best we can'," Bud Baldaro, one of two national cross-country coaches, said. "I don't think you can dabble with an event as competitive as the World Cross-Country Championships. Someone should have been assigned to co-ordinate preparations two years ago."

It was, in fact, four years ago, immediately after Britain's men had taken the world team bronze medal and Paula Radcliffe had won the junior women's event, that Baldaro and Ian Wilson, the British team manager, began work on a structured plan to ensure Britain built on their cross- country success at world level.

The response at HQ has been minimal. In October, the British Athletic Federation gave their cross-country commission £30,000 towards preparation for the World Cross-Country Championships, stipulating - curiously - that it could not be used for warm-weather training. It was too little, too late.

"The Federation has put a pittance into cross-country," Martin said. "It has always been a breeding ground for future middle distance runners but there has not been enough appreciation of the undercurrents of how important it is in the long term.

"We used to be a fantastic nation of harriers. Now we are a nation of sprinters. And if you look at the performances in those two areas it is obvious that investment has had a lot to do with it.

"We had a great chance to get British cross-country running back as a major force. The cross-country commission have used the money they were given by the Federation very fairly but they didn't have enough to spread around. I was always going to run at London this year. But I think for some of the other runners money would have tipped the balance."

Martin, however, does not believe that throwing money at the problem would provide a total solution. He, too, argues the case for a structured plan to co-ordinate the efforts of leading middle distance runners. Such attention might prevent a repetition of some of the apparent anomalies of this season - on the day of Britain's world cross-country trial, two leading Britons were competing in Milan.

The system of contracting athletes for competitions, which the BAF is planning to introduce this year, could make a difference to the standard of Britain's world cross-country team. "I think it should help," Stewart said.

Baldaro cast his gaze wistfully at Government-funded training groups operated with such recent success by countries such as Portugal and Spain. "Eventually we will have to grasp the nettle of matching what the Iberians are doing," he said. "Until we do, we are always going to be distant competitors."