from Triathlon Ireland Website This past weekend saw the first Talent ID day run by Triathlon Ireland in the excellent facilities of University of Limerick. The target for these days was to identify the next generation of high performance athletes with a timeline up to and long beyond London 2012. Please read on for more about the weekend by Mark Riseley……
Chris Jones, the head coach for High Performance, once again showed the benefit of his immense experience and versatility when dealing with athletes of all abilities and levels of development. Chris has identified the structure which triathlon in Ireland requires to get athletes on the radar through Talent ID days and regional development as well as the subsequent phases to convert to competing at the highest level. It was hugely exciting to see the first step of this process first hand and Chris’ skill in communicating with these young athletes and their parents.
The day started with the five budding superstars having a run video and drills session at the track. They later got into the pool for some swim analysis and finished the day off with an introduction to the overall facilities and support that are available in Ireland. This weekend was all about doing what its title advertises – talent identification. It’s not a training weekend to find out what a 12 year old runs kilometre reps off or swims 200m in. It’s about seeing what their capacity to do that in future years may be. However, it’s also not a complete ‘new to triathlon’ day. All the participants are already performing to a high level in under-age swimming and understand the commitment involved. However, there was no doubting their enthusiasm and competitive drive so overall the day was a definite success.
Triathlon Ireland are planning further days in the near future and hope to significantly increase the number of participants.
The weekend also saw the existing High Performance and Development squads get together for a bout of training. One of the great things being in Limerick is meeting squads and individuals in other sports. As well as having some company from an Olympic middle distance athlete for one of the run and core conditioning sets, the Tri squads had a 5am call to get into the pool for 2.5 hours with the Irish 2012 swim squad. It’s fun on the road to the top!
Thanks also to Peter Kern and Mark Dempsey for their commitment as assistant coaches to Chris.