Armchair fans crave the days of Rosenthal and lunchbox

Athletics:These are worrying times for the armchair athletics fan. It's likely they saw nothing of the first big meeting of the year last night, unless they happened to be in Norway or else subscribers to Setanta Sports.

When it comes to athletics on television these days it's essentially all or nothing. There is still blanket coverage of the major championships, and everything else - with few exceptions - is either picked up as an afterthought or ignored completely.

It wasn't always this way.

In the old terrestrial-only days, before the dawn of satellite channels, it was hard to avoid athletics on the television, especially what was glamorously termed the Grand Prix circuit. Come the summer both ITV and BBC would wheel out Jim Rosenthal and Brendan Foster on at least a weekly basis, letting them entertain us through several hours of live athletics from such exotic locations as Gateshead and Bratislava.

Rosenthal was particularly deft at this, often conducting an extensive build-up to say Linford Christie in the 100 metres, and still smiling after Christie pulled up after 20 metres, clutching a hamstring with one hand, and his lunchbox with the other.

On special nights Rosenthal would show up in places like Oslo or Zurich, barely able to contain his excitement. These meetings became essential viewing thanks to the galaxy of stars like Carl Lewis, Steve Cram, Said Aouita and Sergey Bubka. If one of these didn't break a world record on the night then something was amiss.

Oslo's Bislett Games was that first big meeting of the year last night - and the first of the six-series Golden League - and while five Irish athletes managed to secure one of the precious starting lanes - including our champion hurdler Derval O'Rourke - there was no RTÉ coverage of any sort. Given their dwindling rights to sporting events it was surely a missed opportunity.

The IAAF, the international athletics body, has finally started to address television coverage, clearly aware of the need to sustain the profile of their sport. Through their commercial partner IMG/TWI, they secured 60 television contracts for this year's Golden League that cover 150 countries worldwide, including a groundbreaking agreement in the Middle East. Without this coverage athletics would fall further from the top table of sport, where it once sat comfortably alongside even soccer and rugby. One argument for the fall-off - and it's nothing to do with drugs - is that the sport doesn't have the stars anymore to justify two or three hours of live coverage.

That's the old chicken and egg situation. The sport has changed a great deal over the past decade, especially middle distance events, which are now dominated by the Kenyan and Ethiopian athletes, whose appearance and even names are harder to distinguish than the likes of Sebastian Coe and Steve Ovett.

Yet there are still plenty of athletes driving the sport and worthy of live television, with Australia's Craig Mottram being one example. Just last weekend, running at the Steve Prefontaine memorial meeting in the US, Mottram beat all the top Africans to win the two-mile in 8:03.50, knocking eight seconds off his Australian record and becoming the third fastest in history.

This meeting went out live on NBC, and Mottram had the commentators laughing nervously when answering how he managed to beat such a class field: "Running fast is all about the size of your balls," he said.

Mottram also featured in Oslo last night, running in the famous Dream Mile, yet one of only four non-Africans in the race. Since first staged in 1924 the Bislett Games has produced 52 world records, three times in the mile.

But given what is shown on television these days the Golden League should still hold broad appeal. The idea of athletes chasing a $1 million jackpot has worked well since it's introduction in 1998, and last year saw it shared between three athletes: Jamaican sprinter Asafa Powell and 400-metre runners Jeremy Wariner of the US and Sanya Richards of America.

These are the same athletes that will be the headline acts at the World Championships in Osaka later this summer, and of course next year's Olympic Games in Beijing. That Irish athletes such as O'Rourke are good enough to compete at Golden League standard is another reason to merit better television coverage in Ireland. And without television coverage there is simply no knowing the emerging stars of the sport, of which there are many.

Just look at how US teenage pole vault sensation Allison Stokke is causing such a frenzy. It has been suggested that the hype around her is as much to do with her good looks as her athletic talent which just shows why athletics can be a beautiful sport on many levels. But isn't that another reason why these are worrying times for the armchair athletics fan?