Athletics Australia has published its new high performance plan, leading up to the 2016 Olympics. I was pleased to see statements (on pages 16 and 17) which suggest AA has ‘downgraded’ the importance of the U18 World Championships and only athletes who can easily qualify and are likely to do very well should be sent to this event (ie they should not have to train specifically and try very hard to qualify). As my own research has shown, a tiny minority of U18 World Championship participants will ever progress to make a senior team, let alone do well at a World Championships or Olympic Games.
