ONE of Scotland's greatest athletes has hit out at the new generation of Olympic hopefuls for not training hard enough.
Liz McColgan claims that the latest generation of British athletes have been over-praised for under-achieving and have been hindered rather than helped by trendy training techniques.
The Dundonian has also spoken out about the extent of drugs chea
ting by Eastern Bloc runners during the 1980s.
Talking ahead of the Beijing Olympics, McColgan – silver medallist at the 1988 Seoul Olympics – claimed that current athletes are being praised for running times that she was slaughtered for 20 years ago.
She said: "We don't have the depth of talent that we had when the likes of myself and Yvonne Murray were running.
"It is frustrating to watch runners get praised to high heaven for recording times that are five seconds slower then we were doing 20 years ago.
"We haven't got a lot to shout about just now so we grab on to anything that's going."
The former BBC Sports Personality of the Year, who now lives in Carnoustie where she owns and manages the Liz McColgan Health Club, felt there was a real need to go back to basics.
"Running has become over-technical. It has gone away from what the sport is all about. To me, running is all about hard work and training.
"There is too much time spent going to psychologists and nutritionists now.
"What made people run faster 20 years ago was that we went out there and trained hard."
The Commonwealth Games gold medallist at 10,000m in 1986 and 1990 also claimed that athletes from the former Soviet Bloc used to routinely use banned substances to give them an edge.
McColgan said she witnessed Eastern Bloc athletes blatantly taking substances before races; snorting powder and even discarding suspicious-looking capsules by the trackside.
"All the telltale signs were there. They wouldn't run well all year and then all of a sudden when the championships came
around their performances would be transformed."
The runner, who went on to win the 1996 London Marathon, says she feels no ill will towards any of her opponents who did cheat, believing them to be victims of oppressive political regimes which demanded victory at any cost.
The mother-of-five has modest expectations for the British runners in Beijing and predicts a medal tally of no more than three.
Fellow 1988 Olympian Kirsty Wade, who now runs a B&B on the Isle of Lewis, has sympathy with her friend's views.
The Commonwealth Games gold medallist, who represented Wales, said: "There seems to have been a general drop in standards. Steve Jones broke the marathon record in 1985 and the current British competitors are a long way off that time.
"That said, there are some people doing well now and I wouldn't say they were not training hard enough."
But Robert Gibb, a coach with Motherwell Athletics Club, rejected the idea that the future was bleak for British runners.
"My son Lewis recently broke a Scottish schools record that had stood for 31 years, so I don't think standards have deteriorated. Our youngsters train really hard and put in 100% effort. It's not the case that kids aren't committed."
The full article contains 547 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
