British Athletics condemned for selecting only men coaches for Budapest 23

 

United Kingdom  Athletics has been accused of operating as a “boys’ club” after selecting 10 male coaches and no women for the World Championships.

The biggest event of the athletics calendar begins on August 19 in Budapest, but the British squad will have no female coaching staff on hand for support.

Alongside technical director Stephen Maguire, UKA announced a 10-man coaching team on Monday: seven of whom are UKA elite performance coaches, as well as three independent contractors who coach prominent athletes in the squad.

It is a backward step from last year

when two out of the 13 British team coaches were women at the Oregon edition of the event.

The 2021 European Indoor Championships marked the first time a woman, Laura Turner-Alleyne, was selected as part of the British team coaching staff for a senior major event.

 

Currently, UKA does not employ any female performance coaches on its elite Olympic programme.

While there will be female coaches in Budapest working with individual athletes — for example, Keely Hodgkinson’s coach Jenny Meadows — none will do so as part of the UKA staff.

In a statement to Telegraph Sport, a UKA spokesperson claimed that “a number of female coaches” had been approached to go to Budapest, but had declined the invitation.

Speaking on the condition of anonymity, a leading female coach told Telegraph Sport that the lack of women was “disheartening” and evidence of a “cultural problem” that negatively impacts the athletes.

“We can talk about the lack of opportunities for female coaches, but what we’re looking at here is we are not creating a diverse and inclusive environment for our athletes, when we know that people thrive when they feel safe and included,” the coach said. “It is a cultural problem in our sport, where we don’t value the diversity we need to provide athletes with those environments.”

A British athlete selected for the World Championships team called it “disappointing” and told Telegraph Sport: “The lack of female coaches makes us feel that we aren’t being seen or heard in our team environment.”

Female Coaching Network Founder Vicky Huyton, who has worked with UKA over the years to try to improve representation in the sport, criticised Maguire and chief executive Jack Buckner’s leadership on the issue.

“Since Stephen Maguire and Jack Buckner came in [last summer], there’s been no care for catering for the athletes or learning who the coaching workforce is,” she said. “Some in the athletics community [accuse me] of being ‘woke’, but we’re talking about excellent coaches not being chosen for teams because now the old boys are back in charge, they’re more insular in their bubble than I’ve ever seen, being involved in the sport for 15 years.

“This is the most tightly-guarded, secretive GB team that I’ve seen. There is absolutely no process, except that you’re part of the boys club, for being selected as a team coach.”

 A UKA spokesperson told Telegraph Sport it remains “committed to increasing the representation of female coaches on team staff for major championships” and added that the women they approached had been “unable to attend through other commitments”.

Publishing the coaching team is a relatively new step and something UKA agreed to do as part of the Gender Equity in High-Performance Coaching Action Plan it committed to in March 2022. Telegraph Sport understands that a team staff selection policy is currently being worked on.

This is the second controversy of the past week for Maguire, who was forced to defend the decision to take a slimmed down, 55-athlete squad to the World Championships.