England Athletics launches Coaching Voices podcast series
Every week for the next five weeks, England Athletics will be publishing a podcast in conversation with a renowned coach as part of a project called Coaching Voices.
This is a heritage project which aims to capture the knowledge, expertise and personalities of athletics coaches by conducting one-to-one interviews about their backgrounds and experiences. The interviewer is Tom McNab, who has enjoyed a long and successful career as a coach and novelist after initially competing as a triple jumper.
Tom McNab said: “This is the first of a series of coaching interviews in which we are trying to use the experience of the coach to gain understanding of what athletics is all about and how – not only the lives of young people and athletes can be enriched – but the life of the coach is enriched by this relationship.”
Tom, who also helped coach Team GB’s Olympic bobsleigh squad, started the National Athletics League and a national decathlon programme, added: “At the centre of everything is the fact that the main aim is to beat the man or the woman that you were yesterday. If you keep doing that, you’re a champion. If you build that culture into the sport, then you’ve got something of real value.
“I haven’t had a bad moment in coaching in my life. Never.”
Tom will speak to a range of coaches about the lives they have dedicated to athletics, reliving their triumphs, discussing their challenges and asking what they have learned along the way.
The first episode, in which Tom talks about his own career in conversation with the series’ producer Alex Seftel, is available to listen to now on regular podcast platforms Spotify, SoundCloud, Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts.
Listen to this podcast through your favourite platform: