What is any sport’s primary resource?  Money?  No.  A nice big shiny Headquarters?  No.  Lots of lawyers and accountants and admin staff making the decisions?  Absolutely no. 

A sport’s primary resource is its participants.  If you don’t have them, you have no sport. 

Sport, and by this logic, its participants, should not be hampered by bureaucracy.  In recent weeks In The Winning Zone has witnessed both tennis and rugby in Scotland being shrouded and suffocated by the very same red tape that they wrap themselves up in, losing important coaches and athletes in the process. 

Faceless officials in the boardroom are too busy writing the rules to allow our sportsmen and sportswomen, our primary resource, to go out and play by them.

But at In The Winning Zone, we don’t do moaning, we do winning.  And Brian Whittle’s career is a classic example of how simple sport, and winning, can be, based on preparation, determination and perspiration.  It takes little more than that if you really want to be a winner.

On the athletics track, Brian represented Scotland in the Commonwealth Games and Great Britain in the European and World Championships and the Olympic Games.  A multi-disciplined runner, he specialised in the 400m, 800m and 400m hurdles, winning three European 4x400m titles, two European indoor silvers and a Commonwealth silver, as well as finishing fifth in the World and Olympic 4x400m relays.

And now, as the Scottish National 400 metre coach, Brian is nurturing today’s generation to do likewise, and he is both honest and realistic in how best to measure the success of himself and his athletes.

“The definition of a good coach is whether their athletes are moving forward, rather than how good the athletes are,” he says.

Gauging success and failure is a problem that Brian has had to contend with as an athlete throughout his career.  In athletics, it is difficult to define winning and losing.  An athlete can finish last in a race but still run a personal best, a scenario that Brian witnessed at the 1988 Olympics in Seoul.

“My coach and I decided 45.2 was the 400m time I needed to run to make the Olympics.  I got within 2/100ths of a second of that time [45.22] and made it to the Olympics, but I got blasted out in the semi final.  Even though I had made that target, the 400m world had moved on.  Bruce Reynolds ran 43.3 that year, though subsequently he was found to be a bad boy.”

Brian ran the 400m in a time when there was a vat of talent in his event.  At the same time he shared locker rooms with and competed against the likes of Kriss Akabusi and Roger Black, two of Britain’s most celebrated athletes. 

He was their equal.  In races they often shared the spoils.  One day it would be Kriss crossing the line first, the next day it would be Brian, the next it would be Roger.  There was little between them on the track.  Unfortunately for Brian there was much more of a gap between them off it. 

“I was funding myself by racing, which is not the way you want to go.  You want to race because it’s good for your development, not to pay the mortgage.  Finance and sponsorship in Scotland was very poor.  A lot of my contemporaries down south were earning a lot of money through sponsorship and they were winter training in America.  Meanwhile I was wintering in Troon.  I couldn’t afford it.

“But you have to reconcile yourself.  The fact of the matter is that you want to be the best athlete you can, and that this is your lot.  I think at times I was so focused on training, on the next session, getting better, that I didn’t think about sponsorship and funding.  But you have to use it as part of your motivation.  You can’t let it eat you up.”

Without the luxury of sponsorship and warm weather training with his counterparts, Brian often spent cold January mornings in the sleet with only his dog as a training partner.  But he also attributes much of his success against such adversity down to the influence of his coach, Hugh Muir.

“He’s 70 years old now and is still one of my best friends.  He had a way of dealing with me, because athletes can be notoriously self centred, hot headed and difficult to work with, though I don’t think I was that hard to deal with!”

They worked together as a coach and athlete team for 21 years during which, Brian says, they only had two minor fallouts.  Their secret to success, he says, was taking a business-like approach to training.

“Like any good business, at the end of each year we would review the season and make a plan for the next year.  We would argue across the table about what we should do and batter out a plan.  And once we had done that, he was in charge.”

Reviewing and planning, planning and reviewing.  Just like a business.  Brian was the product which needed to be invested in, and every move he made needed careful consideration and analysing.  It is a simple, well tested technique.  A technique Brian Whittle, also in corporate business with his company, PB Events, still believes strongly in today.  It is absolutely essential to progressing an athlete, he insists.

“It is massively important.  How on earth can you plan without debriefing?  With all my athletes just now, I ask them to keep a training diary, so they can look back on it year on year.”

The reason why?  Well, like any good businessman, Brian has a case study which he can refer to:  “I am working with a very good middle distance athlete right now called Kevin Kane.  He is ranked three or four in Scotland over the 800m and 1500m.  He is very much a developing athlete. 

“By looking at his training diary, a pattern emerges as to how he responds to certain training.  And you can look at what pushes his buttons.  You can see what he did before he had a really good race.  A certain process works for him, as all athletes are different.

“For example, before a major race, traditionally you would do two major training sessions the week before.  If you race on a Sunday, you would usually train on the track Tuesday and Thursday.   But we have discovered that if he does one session on a Wednesday, he works very well off that.  Only by reviewing what has worked for him.  It is incredibly important.”

Another keyword in Brian’s coaching mantra that comes direct from his own on-track experience is ‘belief’.  “You can’t afford the luxury of a negative thought,” he quipped, before relating it to another pivotal moment in his career.

In 1991, Brian was enjoying one of his best seasons.  He was fit, healthy and at the peak of his physical ability.  At the World Championships in Tokyo, Japan, he was hotly tipped by several illustrious individuals to hit the big time in a big way.

“I was doing silly things in training, ridiculously fast sessions.  I was winning races all over the place.  I was a real contender for the 800m.  But I bombed out.  I was last at the bell.  They ran away from me.  I felt terrible.  I felt ill.”

All he was lacking, he says, was belief.  “If you don’t believe 100%, sport will eat you up.  I was thinking ‘what if’.”

“If you have a physical problem it is very easily analysed and fixed.  If you have a mental problem, which every athlete has at some point, there is no linear, analytical way of dealing with it.”

Brian admits he has his share of disappointments in his career, regardless of the success he may have enjoyed.  But the benefit of that comes from the knowledge he can pass down to his own protégées.  And to put the winning and losing debate to rest, he issues a very simple ethos to his athletes when it comes to measuring their own performance and success.

“The bottom line is that athletics is a simple game.  It is getting from point A to point B as fast as you can.  So when you walk off the track and it is as fast as you could do it and you were beaten, there is nothing wrong with that.  As long as you can say ‘That is the best I could do today.’ 

“If you do that, no matter what happens, you have done well.”

RO

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