No athlete no matter who you are

[Sickko]

Very funny but unkind but they have Pompey (sic?) who is a very good 400m runner...

[Yuttie]

yo a try too hard fi bi objective... stap chat madnesss

[Gamma]

oh yeah...what did she place in the final?

[Sickko]

last in her semi-final heat in season best 50.71

[Gamma]

hmmm...that seems to have left him with considerable time on his hands, nuh suh?

[Don1]

Yes!
Here is an example of that coaching as reported by a Franno lover -


Shelly-Ann and Franno, countdown to the finals…

[IMG] Posted by admin on Aug 23rd, 2009 and filed under Berlin Through Enigma's Eyes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry from your site






Berlin through my eyes … By Enigma


A keen observer to Shelly Ann Fraser’s warmup routine, especially during her starts and drive phase rehersals, was USA’s world renowned coach John Smith.
He was riveted to what she was doing, probably trying to find a chink in her armor, so that he could find that elusive way to get his charge Carmelita Jeter to defeat her the next day. This was not to be, SAF was under the watchful eyes of the world’s best sprint coach, Stephen Francis (better known as Franno).

There is Einstein, there is Usain bolt, there is Stephen Francis. What’s the commonality between these three men? I’ll tell you, they are ’super-abnormal’ men, better known as geniuses, they come along once every few decades.

But what about Shelly Ann? She was the one being sent to the gallows. Was she scared, nervous, tense, anxious or a bag of nerves? Well, I’ll give you a clue, find the antonyms to all those words and you’ll be in the ballpark. Shelly Ann was so relaxed that she was playing her coach like a game of Jacks. She threw, she scattered, she grabbed and still deftly caught the ball.

Then after mischieviously playing Franno, she went out and broke Jamaica’s sprint icon Merlene Ottey’s national record and in the process won the World Championships 100 meters title. What was her order of priority, we might never know, but according to her, all she wanted to do was execute her start to perfection. After completing this effortless task, she got out in front and held off a fast charging Kerron Stewart to win her second major title, the first being Olympic gold a year before.
But that’s not what I wanted to talk about, I got sidetracked. I want to talk about the part I thought was funny.

I was thinking to myself as I stood track side, before the start of the first round, that Jeter was looking better than Shelly Ann. Everytime Jeter ran down the track I was impressed, she exuded power and speed and she just seemed to disappear down the track. I wondered to myself ‘How on earth is SAF, my favorite, going to take down this giant’. I knew David slew Goliath, but Goliath was slow and Jeter wasn’t.
Something though, was tugging at the corners of my mind and that was, "Why was Jeter’s coach John Smith paying all the attention to SAF and not to his own athlete who looked obviously better? Was he seeing something great about Shelly Ann that I couldn’t"? Nothing was making any sense to me and the little discourse that was going on between SAF and Franno made it worse.

Franno was having his work cut out with ‘Likkle SAF’, (her pet name), he was not having a good day. After she warmed up, stretched and did some blow outs, he ordered her to the blocks.

Her first start looked good to me but Franno asked her what that was, "Who are you waiting for" he asked, "Someone said wait"?

"Coach my foot hurts", Shelly replied walking back to the blocks.

"Which part of your foot Shelly", Franno persisted.

"The whole ah it", was the reply.

Her next start was worse, she stopped at twenty meters and Franno was about to blow a gasket but managed to say in a calm voice.
"Shelly why are you stopping short, I want you to run the whole thirty meters".

"Coach mi belly ah hat mi", Shelly said.

She went back, settled in her blocks again and on Franno’s command busted out another start. This one caused Franno to throw his hands up in the air in exasperation but he made sure she didn’t see.
"Shelly is that running or gliding", he asked calmly.

"Coach mi foot", she said again.

"Which foot Shelly", he asked.

"Mi nuh know", she pouted.

"Shelly come here", Franno said, and as she turned, I saw it was all mischief, she had this smile on her face she was trying to suppress that said it all. I was in tears by this time, I looked across at another observer and he was in stitches too. Shelly Ann was obviously ready to run and Franno’s babysitting was boring the hell out of her.

He cracked a big smile, realizing he was being played and talked to her for a few minutes. After her next and last start he said excellent.

She in return gave him a look that said, "Tell me something I don’t know".
I breathed a sigh of relief because if Franno liked what he saw, I liked what I saw too, regardless of how my untrained eye was seeing it.

Shelly Ann went out and ran on the first day and did well. The next day, between the semis and finals, I went back to the warm up area to make sure our little hero was ready to roll. This time though she was obviously in some kind of distress and her physio was walking her around the warm up track trying to relax her, he indicated to me that she’d be alright.
She then went out, executed her race to perfection and we all know the rest of the story.

Outside the press conference room that night, Franno couldn’t have been a happier ‘parent’. He beamed and smiled at his ‘daughter’s’ achievement for so long, that I thought (in amusement) it would take a surgical procedure to remove that smile off his face if he didn’t take it off soon enough.

The big smile that ‘Likkkle SAF’ put.



http://www.trackalerts.com/?p=2832

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Great getting her to peak!
As Gamma would say, I rest my case!

Nice nuh ****************!!!!

But Karl...dat nuh disprove Willi's point of the importance of the personal coach managing the sprinter to peak over the last 7 days.

In fact what Willi says makes 100% sense to me.... this is an event that is won or lost in tenths or rather hundredths of a second...except fi Usain.
Who better to make those razor edge decisions than the athlete's coach? No one is better suited....and Francis is clearly extraordinary..technically AND from a motivational standpoint.

I believe in team camps and team building BUT track is largely an individual sport with thousands of intimacies and idiosyncrasies of which ONLY the personal coach will be aware. Throw that off and lose a tenth of a second...den wha?...joy for no one.

Any camp the JAAA has should dispense with the Team Coach concept (lef dat fi Champs) and allow individual coaches to be in charge of their athletes to reach peak.... but maybe the JAAA can insist that all are within the same facility or at least nearby...barring any extreme circumstance.
What's the sense of a coach preparing an athlete for 99 days then on the 110th day when they are to run the race of their life...hand them over to another...who may well be competent BUT unfamiliar with the athlete.....ridiculous.

Too much ego and backward thinking and personality nonsense at play...an mi nah excuse Francis from dat eeda....but the JAAA needs to enter the 21st century...it's a much different ballgame from DQ's time...night and day! The JAAA is stuck in the 1970s.

Wi lucky wi dodge di shat this time..AGAIN...but it cyaan guh suh fi eva.

[Sickko]

Well allow me to give you another perspective...VCB and Tyson Gay won a lot of gold medals while their coach was in prison thousands of miles away... maybe we could argue that they would have run faster if he was there to b e hands on...

[Sickko]

My bad, she was fourth in her semi-final, heat in a NR 50.71 seconds and just missed the final..but no she did not make the final but she did make per PB

[Gamma]

was he in prison for 10 days? didn't he design their programme from prison over a period of time and isn't that vastly different from the situation outlined above? in fact i don't think that the 2 situations are analogous at all...

[Don1]

What's good for the goose....

Well allow me to give you another perspective...VCB and Tyson Gay won a lot of gold medals while their coach was in prison thousands of miles away... maybe we could argue that they would have run faster if he was there to b e hands on...

maybe so..some can train independently and do well..others would fall apart...those athletes need hand holding.

There is no cookie cutter solution for these situations. Whatever (within reason & the agreed rules) an athlete/coach finds optimal...that's the environment we should try to provide.

[Karl]

Nice nuh ****************!!!!

But Karl...dat nuh disprove Willi's point of the importance of the personal coach managing the sprinter to peak over the last 7 days.

In fact what Willi says makes 100% sense to me.... this is an event that is won or lost in tenths or rather hundredths of a second...except fi Usain.
Who better to make those razor edge decisions than the athlete's coach? No one is better suited....and Francis is clearly extraordinary..technically AND from a motivational standpoint.

I believe in team camps and team building BUT track is largely an individual sport with thousands of intimacies and idiosyncrasies of which ONLY the personal coach will be aware. Throw that off and lose a tenth of a second...den wha?...joy for no one.

Any camp the JAAA has should dispense with the Team Coach concept (lef dat fi Champs) and allow individual coaches to be in charge of their athletes to reach peak.... but maybe the JAAA can insist that all are within the same facility or at least nearby...barring any extreme circumstance.
What's the sense of a coach preparing an athlete for 99 days then on the 110th day when they are to run the race of their life...hand them over to another...who may well be competent BUT unfamiliar with the athlete.....ridiculous.

Too much ego and backward thinking and personality nonsense at play...an mi nah excuse Francis from dat eeda....but the JAAA needs to enter the 21st century...it's a much different ballgame from DQ's time...night and day! The JAAA is stuck in the 1970s.

Wi lucky wi dodge di shat this time..AGAIN...but it cyaan guh suh fi eva.

I think we were arguing about Franno not allowing his charges to attend camps. ...not his 'holding their hands' during this period of 'peaking'. It is the where of 'holding thir hands'. I am saying in camp.

-------

Sure that last minute keeping the athletes on the 'bubble' is very, very important...but my point is camps enhance that. Running off to some dark distant corner away from the rest of the team is not it.

Franno could have and should have had his athletes in camp. All the athletes could have and should have their coaches available to them. Leave the relays to the team coaches designated with responsibility for 'relays'.

The team managers should have had meetings with the various coaches long before and certainly immediately on teams - meetings do not mean room full of coaches or even meeting coaches in groups..but communicating in manner that is most suitable and that which leads to optimum use of minds to have in place 'all that is necesary' to assist - being selected to hammer out how best to have everything in place to serve the needs of the athletes. The managers only task is to assist and aid such that best performances result.

Every darn area must be covered. - travel, accommodation, meals, training facilities and equipment, available medical staff and support identified medical facilities & staff...access to the best if and when needed...etc., etc.

The nonsense about not being in camp is nonsense. That building of TEAM and all TEAM brings is a must!

[Sickko]

and you can add to it that Francis was given FULL ACCESS to all his athletes both at the camp and during the meet as well so no one was taking way his athletes from him as was the accusations last year.

[Karl]

Every athlete has that right.

JAAA does not put food on their table and its WRONG for them to force anyone to compete.

Question: Does accepting selection mean the athlete has entered into a contract to compete? ...if so, should the JAAA try to enforce the contract? ...the athlete should be professional and live up to the contract?

[Peter R]

Even wid a buss toe?

[Willi]

They were in camp...in italy.

Plus this is not football, its an idividual sport mainly!

However, we can come to some compromise, as long as performance does not suffer.