A fresh start

UK ATHLETICS CHAIR NIC COWARD IS KEEN TO PRIORITISE COACH DEVELOPMENT AND LONG-TERM PLANNING AS HE STARTS WORKING WITH THE GOVERNING BODY’S NEW CEO JOANNA ADAMS THIS WEEK

- JASON HENDERSON

He is speaking from the Los Angeles 1984 room at the UKA offices at the Alexander Stadium in Birmingham. It is apt because his passion for athletics was ignited 36 years ago when as a teenage boy his family won a trip to see the final day of those Games at the Coliseum. “It’s a hell of a memory,” he says. “It was my first athletics event which was quite a spectacular moment.”

These were the Games of Daley Thompson, Seb Coe and Tessa Sanderson and one of the athletes he saw that day was Dave Moorcroft. The former world 5000m record-holder did not have a great ’84 Games due to injury but 13 years later Coward found himself working with him to resurrect UKA from the ashes of its predecessor, the British Athletics Federation, which went bankrupt in 1997. It was a success, too, as Moorcroft, as chief executive, got the governing body back on its feet.

Not all Coward’s athletics memories are pleasant, though. “Doing the high jump as a youngster I got badly injured,” he remembers. “I was 13 years old in July 1979 and jumping on a damp day. I turned and I slipped and the result was not good. I suffered a catastrophic injury to my left knee. And that was it – my athletics and sporting career was over.”

Coward has managed the knee problem for several decades now but admits he’s probably looking at a knee replacement at some stage. He cycles to keep fit but adds wryly: “The UKA role has put paid ever so slightly to my exercise routine!”