Omissions provoke angry response

Athletics Grant aidYesterday's announcement of grants for Irish athletes was greeted with the angry shock associated with an amputation, not the silent resignation of a main character shunted off the stage and into retirement. When the Irish Sports Council (ISC) omitted Sonia O'Sullivan, Mark Carroll, James Nolan, Peter Coghlan and Karen Shinkins from this year's list of athletes who will receive government funding, it left itself open for the whole system to be questioned. Now athletes are doing just that.

"Maybe instead of firing us, we should fire them," said Carroll yesterday referring to 'the Blazers.' "What myself and others use the grants for is to fund the things we don't have in Ireland, the facilities we've never been able to get, the altitude training, the warm weather training, the indoor arena."

Back in Cork following his run in the final of the European Indoor Championships in Madrid Carroll is one of the few athletes to hold an A standard for this year's outdoor World Championships in Helsinki, yet he is now on the official scrap heap alongside his A standard colleague and former Olympic medallist and World Champion, O'Sullivan. Last year he was worth €19,100, this year nothing.

"I don't think it's right," added Carroll, who was telephoned by the Sports Council a few days ago to be let down gently.

"I'm disgusted. When they phoned me I suppose I was caught off guard. I think it is very unfair to us and unfair now to put that sort of pressure on the up and coming kids to produce medals in Beijing, which is just three years away."

James Nolan, who did not get the easy let-down, heard at around lunch time yesterday, two hours before he was to step on a plane in South Africa that he was also phased out. Nolan, who qualified for the semi-final stages of the Olympic Games in Athens and was a silver medallist in the 2000 European Indoor Championships, has not only seen his financial support base instantly crumble but his entire lifestyle and future plans thrown into chaos.

"I'm disgusted, absolutely disgusted," he said yesterday. "They didn't tell me in advance. I've had no time to prepare my life. It is like being handed a redundancy. I'm going to arrive home now and I am going to be in debt up to my eyeballs," he added.

"I'm 28 years old and I fulfilled most of the criteria they (ISC) asked for. It's just ridiculous. I have good years ahead of me. Look at Kelly Holmes (two Olympic gold medals at 34). Saying that you're over the hill at 28 is madness.

"I've put in an appeal to the Sports Council but I'm very emotional about the whole thing, very emotional and disgusted that this has actually happened. I really cannot believe it. I mean now I'm broke, zilch, zero. I'm not due back in Ireland until May. What do I do? I've no support. I've no job. I've absolutely nothing."

This year's carding scheme clearly had a different emphasis, with the Carding Committee applying criteria to every athlete and deciding on individual funding according to how they measured up.

Each athlete was assessed on their likely progress: if they were expected to continue upwards in standard and were likely to be around in two, three or four year's time.

Tough rather than ruthless is how the Sports Council phrased it.

"This way of awarding the grants had been teed up with the governing bodies," said a Sports Council official. "These are tough decisions but athletes can appeal and make a case. Everyone is reviewed under the five-year rule. There is a focus on younger talented athletes. And we have made concessions for athletes like Paul Hession and Jamie Costin, who was involved in a car accident in Athens."

In reality funding is not straight-jacketed by strict criteria. When champion boxer Andy Lee was recently talked out of turning professional in order to prepare for Beijing, a number of financial issues were agreed. A living allowance equivalent to the annual grant, a €3,000 education allowance, help in acquiring car sponsorship and a medal bonus were all part of the deal. Lee's deal may be closer to the way the Sports Council wish to see things move forward.

Other notable athletes not on the list simply didn't apply. European 3000 metres champion, Alistar Cragg did not make an application, nor did breastroke silver medallist in the European Short Course Championships, Andrew Bree.

But for O'Sullivan, who was 35 last November, Carroll (33 last January), 28-year-old Nolan and several others such as Coghlan, Shinkins and Gary Ryan, the message is that they have served their purpose and have little to offer the future. "It was put to me that we had expired," says Carroll. "It was like saying to us that we're not interested in European medals, just Beijing, and you're too old, so go away."