Van Commenee thinks Britain's track and field team not ready for London Olympics yet
Charles van Commenee, the head coach of England Athletics, has recently informed the governing body that the British team’s performance is not yet up to the mark for the London 2012 Olympic Games. He added that if the aspiring athletes want to have a winning
chance in the prestigious international sporting event next year, they need to make use of every day until the opening ceremony of the Games.
According to van Commenee, the English delegation needs 15 athletes that have the potential of securing the top three positions in the Olympic events at the very least. This would give the UK team a good shot in securing its target number of medals.
Commenee expressed his concerns about the performance of the athletes under his supervision in the following terms: “If everybody is fit then yes we might be ok, but that will never happen so we need a few more. We are not ready to do the Games now. We need
those 12 months. I started this job two and a half years ago. I knew from the start that was not one day too many. Three and a half years is a very short time. We still have athletes underperforming at the moment. We need those 12 months to turn things around.
We need all the athletes to be in shape. We still have athletes underperforming in 2011.”
Commenee also added that in his experience, a relationship with the athletes that can be termed as friendship is not effective in terms of results. Rather, a professional business-like approach has been more productive as it provides clarity of mind in order
to make tough and correct decisions.
A meeting has been lined up for the British athletes that are going to last from November 12th until November 13th. The purpose of the meeting would be to highlight and address issues that the athletics team is facing and take steps
to eliminate them. The venue of the meeting is set to be Loughborough.
Apart from all the endeavours Van Commenee is under taking to improve the performance of the athletics team, he hopes that the home ground will provide a positive boost to the energies of the English participants.
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