Second Time Around – Part 1

Top to bottom: Thomas Riley, Michael Haslett and Peter Richardson all pictured by Ian Astin during their NatWest Island Games debuts in Rhodes in 2007.

Exactly half of the 20-strong athletics team will be experiencing the Island Games for the second time, all ten having made their debuts in Rhodes in 2007. They all acquitted themselves very well 2 years ago, and will be hoping to use that experience to push on to bigger and better things this time around. This blog entry focuses on 3 of the men who will be taking part in their second Island Games in a month’s time. The remaining 3 men and 4 women in this category will be featured in updates over the next week or so.


The most successful of the 2007 debutants was sprinter Thomas Riley, who produced a great run in the 100m final (and indeed in the heats and semi-final) to take the silver medal in a very rapid time of 10.73. It was such a close race that he finished just one hundredth of a second adrift of the winner.

Over the past winter, Tom spent several months training in America, where he had the opportunity to mix with some of the best sprinters in the world including Tyson Gay – triple gold medallist at the 2007 World Athletics Championships in Osaka. This must have been a fabulous experience, and will hopefully help to inspire Tom to go one better than in 2007 and climb to the top step of the podium in Aland. He will also fancy his chances of further success in the 200m and the 4x100m relay.

He has the family name to uphold too, as his sister Hannah won 10 athletics medals (3 of them gold) at the Island Games between 1999 and 2005 – some record! Tom is a committed and ambitious athlete who definitely has the potential to go higher than Island Games level. The consideration standard for selection for the 100 metres in the 2010 Commonwealth Games in India is 10.60, which is surely a realistic target. I hope he makes it!

Michael Haslett and Peter Richardson came away from their debuts in Rhodes with a bronze medal apiece, as part of the 4x100m relay team that finished 3rd. They only narrowly missed out on the podium in the 4x400m relay as well, the very young team finishing in 4th place in a time only about a second outside the IOM Senior record.

Mikey is currently approaching the end of his first year at University of Wales Institute in Cardiff, and has really pushed on strongly with his athletics career over the past 2 years. His main event is the 400m hurdles, and already this season he has run a time that should put him in with a real chance of medalling in Aland. His 55.55 second clocking at Bath at the end of April was recorded in his first outdoor event of the season after a couple of weeks of illness, giving every encouragement that he can run even faster by this time next month. He must be pretty much a certainty to be in both relay teams too – both of which look like being very strong.

As well as being a very fine athlete, Mikey is a real team man who enjoys helping and encouraging other athletes. I know Tom Richmond was very grateful to him for doing a lot of speed work with him before last year’s Commonwealth Youth Games even though Mikey himself had narrowly missed out on selection. Oh, and Mikey also provided some of the best entertainment of the Rhodes Games - during the women’s football match between the Isle of Man and Aland! I wonder if the Aland number 9 will be playing against the Isle of Man again this year? If so, I want to be somewhere in the vicinity of Mr Haslett!!

Peter is also finishing his first year at University, in his case at Sheffield Hallam. He is an athlete of great natural talent, and performed really well on his debut in Rhodes. As well as being part of both relay teams, he reached the final of the 400 metres - quite an achievement in an event that was exceptionally strong 2 years ago. He had a fairly low-key season in 2008 when he competed mainly for fun, but over the past winter he has trained very hard and has started this season in good form.

He is a real all-round athlete, and is also likely to be competing in the long-jump competition in Aland. Following the Rhodes Games, Peter decided to have a crack at hurdling, and caused a major surprise by beating Michael Haslett in the IOM Track & Field Championships that year in a hugely impressive time of 56.0 seconds. I don’t think he has done a lot of hurdling since, but that is definitely a route his athletics career could take in the future.


The distance will increase in the next blog entry – this will focus on middle distance specialist Andy Duncan and half marathon runners Kevin Loundes and Ed Gumbley.

Aland track gets a wash and brush-up

The main story on the official Island Games website today is about the finishing touches being put to the refurbishment of the track. The full story is at

http://www.natwestislandgames2009.ax/article.con?id=4931&iPage=7&iLan=2

I'm sure I read last year sometime that the whole track was going to be completely relaid, but it seems they have gone for the next-best option of patching, re-coating and cleaning it. I think this is more or less what was done at the NSC when the Games were last held on the Isle of Man in 2001. The lanes are about to be re-painted and it should look good when it's finished. I mentioned recently that the track is very close to the stand - look how close the runners in Lane 6 will be to the spectators!

In 1991 it had a reputation of being a 'fast track' and many Island Games records were set that year. 5 of the track records stand to this day, although one is in an event that is no longer part of the programme. That was set by our own Brenda Walker in the women's 3000 metres. In addition, both the men's and the women's Half Marathon records set in 1991 still stand (Brenda again in the women's event) although I understand that there were the gravest of doubts over the course measurement on that occasion.

At least the track and the stand are there in Aland. When we arrived in Rhodes 2 years ago they had only just started building the stand and they hadn't even started on most of the field event areas!!

On a different subject altogether, I was a little miffed to pick up the Manx Independent today and find that much of the article about the athletics team had been lifted straight from one of the earlier entries on my blog! I'm always happy to help the media with publicising athletics, but it would have been nice to have been asked for permission to use my material, especially as a blog is effectively a personal diary and in any case is totally unofficial. The main problem I had with today's piece was that the information about the athletes who aren't going to Aland was used as the main part of the story, creating a bit of a negative article. A very similar article appeared in the press before the Rhodes Games 2 years ago. Had I been asked for permission to use material from the blog, I would have specifically asked for it not to be used in this way.

The next entry will focus on 3 of the athletes who are preparing for their second Games - Thomas Riley, Michael Haslett and Peter Richardson.

Raising the bar – to a new 'lap record'!

Yes, I know I said after the first entry on this blog that I would be focussing on the athletes who are going to the Games rather than those who aren’t – but I am going to break that promise already! The only reason the athlete in question isn’t going to Aland is that she is still a year short of reaching the minimum age for competing in the athletics competition, which is 15.

High jumper Reagan Dee has had a remarkable year. At the start of the 2008 season the IOM women’s High Jump record stood at 1.61m and was jointly held by Cheryl Done (set in 1986) and 2009 Island Games team member Hollie Bass (set in 2002). Reagan jumped 1.62m in the Inter Schools Championships at the NSC last May to break the record at the age of 13 - has any other athlete ever held an outright IOM athletics record at such a young age? I very much doubt it.

Already this season Reagan has quite literally raised the bar by upping this record on two further occasions. She jumped 1.65m in the early-season Manx Harriers Open Meeting at the NSC, and then last Saturday she won the English Northern Counties Championship at Gateshead with a brilliant clearance of 1.67m. Just 24 hours later, after a long road journey and a night spent on the overnight ferry back home, she cleared 1.66m in the IOM Track & Field Championships at the NSC on Sunday afternoon.

I was standing at the High Jump area during the Open Meeting in April, and Reagan was a joy to watch. She is very tall with a natural spring, and makes it all look so easy – as top-class performers usually do. She seems to have a relaxed and laid-back attitude to competition, and certainly doesn’t appear to think that she is a star even if the rest of us do! I know nothing about the technical aspect of high jumping, but those who do all think she has a great future. Let’s hope that what she has achieved so far is just the start.

For most of Sunday afternoon, I found myself in the announcer’s box at the NSC during the Championships. Not a role that comes naturally to me, but Andy Fox was unavailable after the first hour or so, and nobody else fancied it. Of course, the problem with speaking ‘live on air’ is that there is always the potential for unwittingly saying something absolutely ridiculous, and unlike typing a blog entry you can’t delete anything or hit the ‘undo’ button!

However, there’s nothing too difficult about reading out results and announcing medal ceremonies, and everything was going swimmingly – until it got to the presentation for the Under 15 Girls High Jump. Clearly, Reagan’s performances over the weekend deserved a bit more recognition than just being called up to get her medal, so I informed the assembled Manx athletics public that she had won the Northern Counties Championship the previous day with a clearance of 1.67m. Unfortunately, in the next breath I then added that this was ‘a new outright lap record for the Women’s High Jump’!

My only excuse for that piece of abject nonsense is that the TT is just around the corner and I must already have half a mind on that! I wonder if John McGuinness or any of the other road racing stars will ‘raise the bar’ with their performances on the TT Course over the next couple of weeks?

Introducing Aland...

So, what sort of place are we going to for the Island Games next month? I have done a bit of research on the Aland islands, and the constitutional position is unusual and a bit confusing! It is politically and geographically part of Finland, but is culturally much more closely tied to Sweden. The majority of the travel links are also from Sweden, and Swedish is the first language. Confused? Yes, me too!

If you are interested in reading up on Aland and its capital Mariehamn, these are useful links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aland

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariehamn

http://www.islandgames.net/cms/member_profile_11989.html

Perhaps the link the competitors and supporters will be most interested in is the official website for the 2009 Island Games.This is:

http://www.natwestislandgames2009.ax/

Population-wise it is very similar to Shetland where the Games were held in 2005, although the capital Mariehamn is about 50% bigger than Shetland's capital Lerwick. Another similarity with Shetland is the latitide of approximately 60 degrees north, although the climate in the summer months is usually much more pleasant! The islands claim to have longer hours of sunshine than anywhere else in the Baltic Sea, and it can get very warm at times in the summer despite the northerly latitude. In midsummer when the Games are on, it will barely get dark overnight. On a clear night it will still be half-light at midnight and there will be no more than about an hour of darkness.

Everyone I know who went Aland for the 1991 Island Games said the same - that it was a lovely place with friendly and welcoming people, and that the Games were very well-organised. Andy Fox often makes reference to the fact that athletics was probably the central sport of the Games in 1991 with big and very knowledgeable crowds every day at the stadium - the people in that part of the world really do love athletics. The stadium is also home to the local football club IFK Mariehamn who play in the Finnish Premier League, and play in front of crowds of up to 4000. The 6-lane athletics track is very close to the stand, creating a great atmosphere when there is a big crowd.

No more time tonight - I will continue with this in a day or two. I'll sign off with a couple more web links, to the BBC weather forecast for Mariehamn, and a live webcam overlooking Mariehamn's western harbour:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/weather/forecast/2616

http://www.ha.ax/weather/ha/index.php?link=4&camsize=1

On the left hand side of the webcam page there are a couple of links you can click on to see a 60-second snapshot of 24 hours from the webcam - this shows how little darkness there is now, and there will be even less next month!

The Newcomers

It's always an exciting but slightly nervous time before your debut in any big sporting event, and I'm sure the 5 debutants among the team of 20 will be feeling a mixture of both emotions at the moment.


The two youngest members of the team are 15-year-old sprinters Ciara McDonnell and Danielle Ross (Danielle will be 16 shortly before the Games). They will both be competing in the 100 metres and the 4 x 100m relay team, and Ciara is also likely to be in the 4 x 400m relay team. They have both achieved great success in the junior age groups in the sprints events over the last few years and are both members of Di Shimell's very successful training group.


Two years ago, Danielle won a gold medal in the English Schools Track & Field Championships as part of the Merseyside Junior Girls team who won the 4 x 100m relay. That event was televised live, and I remember Danielle featured prominently on the TV coverage as the 1st leg runner. She and her younger sister Alexandra - who is an excellent all-round athlete - have been part of the Manx athletics scene pretty much all their lives as their parents Wendy and Garry have been regular competitors in local events for many years. Danielle has had a couple of injury niggles recently and has not reached top speed yet this season, but her performance in the 200m during Wednesday night's Manx Harriers track league suggests she is getting back into good form at just the right time.


Ciara is an extremely talented athlete who in the future I think has the potential to be an outstanding 400m runner, but at the moment she is focussing on her age group distances of 100m, 200m and 300m. She was absolutely flying at the start of this season, but had the desperate bad luck to suffer a hamstring injury in the last few strides of a 100m race during the second Manx Harriers track night in early April. It really was an awful moment for everyone there that night. Thankfully, after several weeks of treatment, being very careful and doing all the right things, Ciara is now getting back to full training and I was delighted to hear that she came through a 200m race in the Inter Schools championships today with no alarms. Onwards and upwards for the next few weeks hopefully for both Ciara and Danielle!


The next two debutants are middle distance runners Tom Richmond (17) and Ryan Fairclough (19). With the 800m and 1500m events at the Games likely to be shared between Tom, Ryan and Andy Duncan it is not clear yet exactly who is going to do what. My guess is that Tom and Ryan will both do the 800m, with Ryan partnering Andy Duncan in the 1500. Both will also be vying for places in the 4 x 400m relay team - a team which is likely to be extremely strong with fierce competition for places.


Such has been Tom's progress over the last 3 years that it may come as a surprise to some that he is an Island Games debutant. His spectacular improvement in 2007 under the guidance of his coach Di Shimell came just too late to gain him selection for the Rhodes Games, but this only spurred him on to greater things in 2008. His time of 1.55.81 for an 800m race at Stretford last year cemented his place in the IOM team for the Commonwealth Youth Games in Pune, India last October - certainly the highlight of his career so far. Before travelling to India, Tom took some time out to do an interview with me for the Manx Harriers website, which left no doubt about his passion for the sport and his hunger for success. This is still online at http://www.manxathletics.com/manxharriers/mhtomrichmond.htm#Commonwealth2. Tom has not quite reached last year's levels so far this season (although 1.59 for 800m is still extremely impressive!), but he is training really hard and I'm sure he will be at his best when it really matters at the end of June.


Ryan's great talent as an athlete has been obvious for many years, and he has achieved a lot of success both on the track and at cross country. For a guy who specialises in the 800m and 1500m events he really is a very good long-distance cross country runner, and he certainly has no worries as far as endurance is concerned. He has been in cracking form at the start of this season, his long and relaxed stride making it all look very easy and giving the impression that he always has a little more to give - which I think he has! Over the past few months he has put his football career on hold (he plays for Ramsey) and joined Andy Fox's training group, both of which have helped him focus more on athletics than he has probably ever done before. I think Ryan will make a big impression in Aland this year, and hopefully well beyond.


The final debutant in the team is thrower Marit Zahkna. Marit has had a slightly different route into the team than the others, as she is an Estonian national. She moved to the Isle of Man to work about 3 years ago and is now eligible to represent the island in the Island Games. I first came across Marit when she started coming to Chris Quine and Graham Davies' training sessions a couple of years ago, and she did the odd cross country and road race. What I didn't know at the time was that she was a champion hammer thrower back home, although she hadn't competed for a few years. That all changed last summer when she joined Manx Harriers and competed in the Northern League and Lancashire Championships. It would be fair to say that she was a sensation! She smashed the Lancashire Track & Field Championship record by 10 metres, and finished the season with a best throw of just under 50 metres - yet such are her standards she still wasn't happy! She is also likely to be competing in the discus event at the Games and is probably good enough to compete in 2 or 3 other events as well. Oh, and if any of the younger members of the team are struggling with their maths, Marit is just the person to help - she is a maths teacher at King William's College!

The Team

It's very nearly that time again! As I type this there are only 38 days until I begin my 2-day trans-European journey to the Finnish islands of Aland for the 2009 NatWest Island Games, and I am looking forward to these Games possibly more than ever before. I've been to Shetland in 2005 and Rhodes in 2007 to support the athletics team and thoroughly enjoyed both, although I doubt whether there have been two more contrasting Games in the event's 24-year history. Put bluntly, Shetland was miserably cold and damp but superbly organised - Rhodes was stiflingly hot and humid, and an organisational shambles! We are all hoping for a combination of the best bits of the last 2 Games with decent weather and efficient organisation, and I think we have good reason to be optimistic on both counts.

Firstly, I would like to say congratulations and very best of luck to the 20-strong team (10 male, 10 female) who will be competing in Aland. It's a great honour for anyone to be invited to represent the island whether in sport or anything else, and I'm sure this team will represent the Isle of Man with pride. The team is:

Men

Ben Brand
Andy Duncan
*Ryan Fairclough
Darren Gray
Ed Gumbley
Michael Haslett
Kevin Loundes
Peter Richardson
*Tom Richmond
Thomas Riley

Women

Gemma Astin
Hollie Bass
Charlotte Christian
Sarah Dowling
Rachael Franklin
Gail Griffiths
*Ciara McDonnell
Harriet Pryke
*Danielle Ross
*Marit Zahkna

* = Island Games debutant

The management team is Andy Fox and Di Shimell, with Andy Watson providing sports massage support.

This is a strong-looking team which I hope will achieve plenty of success and do the island proud. Several members of the team were Island Games debutants in Rhodes in 2007, and most have raised the level of their performances significantly over the past 2 years - in some cases by spectacular margins. It is still a generally young team, but with a solid backbone of established senior athletes and more experience than we had in Rhodes. There are 5 debutants in this year’s team – from memory I think there were 13 in Rhodes. I feel genuinely excited by the team's prospects and I am really looking forward to supporting the team in Aland.

For the record, 4 athletes were selected but have since withdrawn – they are Keith Gerrard, Martin Aram, David Munro and Rachael Tewkesbury. Undoubtedly these withdrawals have affected the overall medal potential of the team to some extent, but at the same time there will now be added responsibility on others, hopefully lifting them to greater heights (or longer throws and faster times!)

Others would certainly have been there but for injury problems, including John Halligan who ran so superbly in Rhodes in 2007, winning gold in the steeplechase and silver in the 10000m. Unfortunately a long-term foot injury has kept him out of action for most of the past year and continues to do so.

A word of sympathy also to Sarah Astin who has achieved so much success since coming into athletics a few years ago, only to be hit by persistent injury problems over the past couple of years which have ruined her hopes of going to Aland. Thankfully, Sarah now appears to be over the worst and is steadily building her training back up again – I have no doubt that she will be a major success when she makes her Island Games debut 2 years late in 2011.

IOM Long Jump record holder Phil Riley has also been out of action for most of the past 2 years with a badly broken arm, and this will be the first Games Louise Kneen has missed since making her debut in 1991 - coincidentally also in Aland! Louise has a tremendous record in the throwing events over many years, and if she has reached the end of her Island Games career she can look back with great pride on her achievements. She's still good enough to come back again though I reckon.

However, from now on the blog will concentrate very much on the athletes who will be in Aland rather that those who won't. In the next entry I will look in a bit more depth at the chosen team, as not all will be familiar to the Manx athletics public. I will also post a few thoughts as to what sort of place I am expecting Aland to be.

See you on Sunday at the Northern 10 or the NSC Track (Day 2 of the IOM Track & Field Championships).