Coaching changes and risk

A flurry of coaching changes in the past month has seen Olympic champion Lamont Jacobs, World champions Fred Kerley, and Dina Asher-Smith and Commonwealth champion Ferdinand Omanyala all making big moves. The changes run against the view that coaching continuity is preferable as the Olympic year approaches.

Jacobs, Kerley, Asher Smith and Omanyala axed long-time coaches Pablo Camossi, Alleyne Francique, John Blackey and Duncan Ayiemba, respectively, after disappointing performances at this year’s World Championships in Budapest, Hungary. With a lower back injury hindering his training, Italy’s Jacobs was, like Kerley, eliminated in the 100-metre semi-finals while Asher-Smith and Omanyala reached their respective finals, but were well adrift of the podium.

They all said grateful goodbyes to their former coaches, but only Kerley, who won the silver behind Jacobs in the 2021 Olympics, acknowledged the danger.

“Choosing to make changes is always risky, even riskier during a year like the Olympics,” he said as he moved to the tutelage of 1992 Olympic 400m-winner Quincy Watts after a sojourn with Grenadian World Indoor 400m champion Francique that started at Texas A&M University.

It can take as long as two or three years for the athlete to assimilate a new coaching routine. Yet, for 2019 World 200m-champion Asher-Smith, frustration at low finishes in both the Budapest sprints was clearly a factor in the ending of a 19-year collaboration with Blackey.

“I’m almost in disbelief. I know myself and I know that I feel good. I came here for a new personal best,” she said following the Budapest 100m.

She moves to Texas and the coach of St Lucia’s Julien Alfred, Edrick Floreal.

Jacobs was succinct. “Change is sometimes necessary,” he said when he announced his move to coach Rana Reider who will also welcome the return of 2021 Olympic 200m champion Andre DeGrasse.

Camossi, a former triple-jumper, led Jacobs to the Olympic title, the European gold and the World Indoor 60m title.

Sometimes, sponsors can demand that their investments be protected by the coaches they prefer and that may explain the move of young Alana Reid to the Dennis Mitchell camp that has tutored world 100m-champions Justin Gatlin and Sha’Carri Richardson. Instead of spending the Olympic year with Hydel coach Corey Bennett who led her to 2022 World Under-20 200m bronze and a national junior record of 10.92 seconds in March at Boys’ and Girls’ Championships, she instead is now with Mitchell’s group in the United States.

Conventional wisdom might have deferred all these latest coaching changes until after the Paris Olympics next year. For this reason, all of these sprinters will be under the microscope in 2024.

By contrast, Budapest men’s 100m and 200m-champion Noah Lyles has been with American expert Lance Brauman since he turned pro in 2016. Richardson has worked with Mitchell since she left Louisiana State University in 2019, and 200m-queen Shericka Jackson has been a member of the MVP Track Club since she left Vere Technical a decade ago.

Hubert Lawrence has made notes at track side since 1980.