Don’t get me wrong, UKA are doing some fantastic things for UK endurance at the moment to try and raise standards including a raft of opportunities to go and train at altitude in Kenya and Font Romeu. However, their recent selection decision to not take full teams to the European Cup 10000m championships in Olso is, in my mind, completely against their ethos to reward hard working athletes the chance to improve their performances.
Obviously I’m going to be biased towards Sonia, but here are some facts around why we feel her non selection was unjustified:
- She is currently ranked number 1 in the UK and number 3 in Europe
- She has achieved the EAA qualifying time for the event by over 2 minutes!
- She’s shown current form, running her 10000m PB only 4 weeks ago in the US.
- Together with Helen and Charlotte they would stand a very realistic chance of winning team gold at the championships.
- Such an opportunity to run a fast track 10000m are extremely rare (only 2-3 women’s races of such a standard per year outside of major champs) so why not give her a very rare opportunity to improve at the distance?
I did speak to UKA but they offered no explanation as to why their selection was made in such a way to exclude Team GB from a chance of winning a team medal.
We’ve tried all routes possible to influence their decision, however nothing can be done. Time to move on and focus on the next challenge. Good look to Helen Clitheroe, Charlotte Purdue and John Beattie in Oslo.
PS – please leave a comment and/or ‘like’ this if you disagree with the selection decision.
Nick
