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For Immediate Release
Monday, February 9,
2009
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Contact:
Jill M. Geer
Director of Communications
USA Track & Field
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Project 30 Task Force calls for revamping USATF
High Performance
programs
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INDIANAPOLIS -
The Project 30 Task Force on Monday, February 9, issued its final report,
analyzing Team USA Performance in Beijing and charting a course for programmatic
change to maximize Team USA performance in Olympic and World Championship
competition.
Central to its recommendations is the hiring of a General
Manager to oversee all matters pertaining to athlete development and
performance, including High Performance, Elite Athlete Services, Team USA
Management, Team USA Staff management, National Championships, Sport Science
application and Sports Medicine, Youth Development and Anti-Doping programs.
Additional recommendations include targeting development of technical events to
achieve 30 clean medals in London 2012, shortening the Olympic Trials,
terminating the National Relay Program, strengthening the sport's anti-doping
culture and establishing a well-defined Professional Athlete
designation.
"I want to express my heartfelt thanks to the members of
the Project 30 Task Force for the monumental service they have performed in
delivering today's report," USATF CEO Doug Logan said in his Shin Splints Blog
(http://www.usatf.org/about/leadership/ShinSplintsBlog/ ). "They have
objectively appraised the condition of the High Performance aspects of our
organization, pulled no punches, and given us a roadmap for the future." Logan
will examine the report for several weeks before staking out a course of action
responding to the Task Force's recommendations.
The 69-page report is
composed of an Introduction, Executive Summary, Findings and Recommendations.
Key findings of the Task Force include:
* Overall, there
is a lack of accountability, professionalism and cohesion in the areas the Task
Force studied.
* The International Team Staff selection system lacks
transparency and accountability, creating a culture of mistrust for coaches and
athletes alike.
* International staffs need more managers and fewer coaches.
* The criteria for selecting track and field's U.S. Olympic Team should not
change, but the Olympic Trials themselves should.
* Excessive travel and
poor long-term planning on the part of athletes, their coaches and agents appear
to be the greatest controllable factors negatively affecting Team USA
performance in Beijing.
* Spending more than $1 million in the last six
years, and with as many as 173 athletes taking part in it each year, the
National Relay Program has failed to produce results that justify the costs of
the program.
* Lack of communication between coaches and athletes, poor
management of the relay pools and questions over which coaches were responsible
for relays resulted in the 4x100m relay failures in Beijing.
* American
coaches and athletes under-utilize the facilities and USATF sport science
available to them.
* Inroads have been made into catching and punishing
doping cheats, but more must be done to strengthen the anti-doping culture.
* American athletes as a group do not conduct themselves as true
professionals, and USATF does not hold them to professional standards.
Based on its findings, the Task Force makes the following 10
Recommendations:
* Hire a
professional General Manager of High Performance.
* Create a transparent,
criteria-based Team Staff selection system.
* Restructure the composition of
Team USA staffs.
* Shorten the U.S. Olympic Team Trials - Track & Field
to five days.
* Terminate the National Relay Program.
* Establish a
comprehensive 2012 team preparation program.
* Target technical events for
medal growth and develop those events.
* Create a well-defined Professional
Athlete designation.
* Establish a more stringent anti-doping reinstatement
system.
* Promote and foster a self-sustaining professional athletes'
union.
Logan formed the Project 30 Task Force in mid-October.
Named the Project 30 Task Force to echo his goal of 30 medals at the 2012
Olympic Games in London, the Project 30 Task Force is composed of Carl Lewis,
Benita Fitzgerald Mosley, Ralph Mann, Mel Rosen, Aretha Hill Thurmond and Deena
Kastor. The USOC nominated to the Task Force Steve Roush, Doug Ingram and Jay
Warwick, making the Task Force a nine-person group.
The Task Force
examined more than 240 pages of documents, reports and reference materials
before embarking on a series of interviews via conference call and in-person
meetings. They conducted personal interviews with 30 people, including athletes,
personal coaches in various disciplines, national team coaches, college coaches,
athlete managers/agents, USATF National Office Staff and USATF volunteers. In
addition to these interviews, the Task Force met with the Athletes Advisory
Committee at USATF's Annual Meeting in Reno, via a Town Hall-style session. Task
Force members conducted countless "off-line", one-on-one interviews on a
personal basis, and many did their own statistical analyses.
If the Task
Force's recommendations are followed, it believes that the goals of Project 30
at the 2012 Olympic Games are realistic and attainable. The full text of the
Project 30 Task Force report is available online at:
http://www.usatf.org/about/leadership/project30.pdf |
About USA Track & Field
USA Track &
Field (USATF) is the National Governing Body for track and field, long-distance
running and race walking in the United States. USATF encompasses the world's
oldest organized sports, some of the most-watched events of Olympic broadcasts,
the #1 high school and junior high school participatory sport and more than 30
million adult runners in the United States.
For more information on
USATF, visit www.usatf.org
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