Mandatory camp outdated

I have not been convinced about this business of a mandatory camp for our senior athletes, especially one that lasted for as long as the current gathering: a week and a half in Birmingham. None of the reasons that have been put forward by those who support it stand up to scrutiny. All the talk that it builds great camaraderie and whips up great patriotic fervour is true in theory, but I have spoken to too many athletes and coaches who see it as more of an encumbrance than anything else.

In team sports, camps are vital because the success of the whole depends on the success of the individual parts, who must all work together in one accord to achieve success. Track and field is too much of an individual sport for it to be necessary for everyone to be in the same geographical space in preparation for the big events.

Those who insist that camps should be mandatory for Team Jamaica are really only talking about the track and field people. Is Samantha Albert a member of the team? Sure, but she is an equestrian, and clearly the camp setting would not benefit her at all as there clearly would not be the facilities to assist with her sport. So she couldn't be at this mandatory, camaraderie-bulding camp. What of Alia Atkinson and Kenneth Edwards, who will be involved in swimming and tae kwon do, respectively?

Clearly, a mandatory camp wouldn't be for them since there wouldn't be the expertise in the camps to assist them with their chosen discipline. So these sports persons were allowed to stay away.

We insist on mandatory camps for track and field participants because we perceive that national coaches would be there to assist with the athletes. But the irony of this is that in these mandatory camps, the elite athletes all have their personal coaches anyway, and, therefore, the national coaches are not needed.

So what really is the point?

During the crucial week before the Olympics, the athletes need to be with their own coaches. Many of these individual coaches cannot be accommodated at these mandatory camps, and, therefore, the athletes have had to use other more interesting ways to stay in touch with the people who guide their careers.

The smikle case

The case of Traves Smikle is one such case, which I think is truly unfortunate. ('I needed more time with Smikle', Sunday Gleaner, July 26) Traves threw 67.12 metres to win the national trials in the discus and booked his spot on the Olympic team. In the last two World Championships, 67.12 would have put Traves on the podium, so he does have an outside chance of medalling in London. No Jamaican has ever medalled in the throwing events at the Olympics, which means Traves has a chance to make history.

Traves' coach is Julian Robinson, who has guided his career since he was a fourth-former at Calabar. For reasons that are still to be properly explained, Julian was not included in the official list of coaches going to London, even though he is, by some distance, the best throwing coach in the island, and he has an athlete there with a genuine chance.

That is strange enough, but surely this should be a case of "if Mohammed can't get to the mountain, then the mountain should get to Mohammed'. Surely, having Traves Smikle in a camp in Birmingham, thousands of miles from the man who knows him best, who has conditioned him for years, is counterproductive.

Traves should have been in Jamaica if Julian couldn't be in London. It's as simple as that. The MVP people, for the most part, missed a lot of the camp for the simple reason that the powers that be there feel that it is in their best interests to prepare elsewhere. There are already whispers of possible sanctions again.

I can't see why. Sometimes I wonder if these mandatory camps are for the athletes, or for the administrators. Except for relay practices, I don't see how forcing athletes to be in one camp, far away from their personal coaches, and from conditions with which they are familiar, can be the best preparation for performing in an Olympics.

The idea of a mandatory camp in this day and age is outdated.

KLAS sportscaster Orville Higgins is the 2011 winner of the Hugh Crosskill/Raymond Sharpe Award for Sports Reporting. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.