Ireland's best lose track as purse strings tighten

On Athletics:In the past week alone Ricky Simms has travelled from Paris to Lausanne to Rome on the back of the IAAF Grand Prix. It's unlikely you've heard of him but Simms is among the top agents in the sport, a considerable success for the 33-year-old from Donegal.

With his boyish looks and gentle charm Simms draws inevitable comparisons with the fictional Jerry Maguire, and the one thing he does share with the Hollywood version is a genuine concern for his athletes.

Simms fell into the business largely by chance. In 1998 he was working at the NCTC in Limerick and coaching a handful of Irish runners. In trying to get them into races he encountered various agents and figured he could do just as well. The following year he got himself an internship of sorts with Kim McDonald's agency in London, which represented many of the world's elite. He quickly learnt the ropes, and when McDonald died suddenly in 2001 Simms was among the obvious successors. He is now one of three directors of the agency, now renamed Pace Sports Management.

For a check on the state of world athletics, Simms is therefore our man. He reckons the essential difference between now and, say, a decade ago is that there's less money around.

"From an athlete's point of view it was easier to make money nine or 10 years ago," he says. "It used to be that if you were an Olympic silver or bronze medallist, or even say the best in Europe, you could demand a nice appearance fee.

"The usual line now is we only pay the World and Olympic champions. After that it's really about prize money.

"But if you're a star athlete today then you're getting as well paid as ever. Someone like Asafa Powell in the 100 metres can still get up to €100,000 a race.

"But there just aren't as many stars around, and there's lots of reasons for that. TV coverage is a big reason, and it's well documented how that whole culture has changed. Like the whole reality TV, the Big Brother scenario, wasn't around 10 years ago, and that now means getting athletics onto terrestrial TV has become much more difficult.

"So you still have a lot of people interested in athletes, but they just aren't seeing as much and therefore are not aware of some of the other big stars.

"And every sport needs stars to sell itself. We all know athletics has also had its drugs problems too . . . and right now it's like the British tabloid press only want to carry an athletics story if it's a positive drugs test. That's unfair and hasn't helped the sport either."

The shift in the balance of athletics power has also brought change. More African nations are emerging - Tanzania, Botswana and Uganda - especially in distance races. Simms represents many of these Africans, often loosely referred to as "the Kenyans", but he certainly doesn't see their success as damaging to the sport.

"They have definitely taken distance running to a higher level. But I think there's still a lot of ignorance in some quarters, people who complain about all their success. I mean the Americans dominate the sprints and no one complains about that.

"All these athletes are great characters and there's no reason why more of them shouldn't be stars. A lot of them come from farming communities - like the old, rural Ireland - and don't speak English so well, but we work hard on making them into stars, like doing victory laps and press conferences and that.

"The only problem there is that it's become so much harder for runners from Ireland . . . Papers don't want to carry a story about a guy who finishes sixth or seventh. So obviously for athletics to get stronger again we need European athletes doing well. Most of the meetings and sponsors are in Europe."

It's no great surprise then that no Irish athlete can currently demand an appearance fee worth shouting about; for the likes of Derval O'Rourke and David Gillick just securing a starting lane is about the best they can hope for. Without Government grants and sponsorship they would struggle to survive.

Simms, however, makes an interesting observation. One of his athletes, the two-time world indoor 400-metre champion Alleyne Francique of Grenada, receives no government funding; he earns his living chasing prize money. As a result he has no fear of competition, races often and financially does well. If Irish athletes had to do likewise would they, be more successful?