The Herald reports

From black gold to Olympic gold

DOUG GILLON, Athletics Correspondent February 09 2008

MAN WITH A PLAN: Tommy Boyle is charged with implementing the new strategy. Picture: Colin Mearns
Tommy Boyle invested years in maximising the potential of two of Scotland's most successful athletes: Tom McKean and Yvonne Murray. Now he has been signed up to help deliver maximum potential for the whole country. It is a remarkable and visionary brief for an exceptional individual.

The aim is revolutionary: to harness business and sport to help deliver sweeping cultural change. If successful it will not just put more Scots on the podium at major championships, but will also make every Scottish child a winner, instilling life skills, good habits, and reversing national physical and moral decline.

The man with the vision is Sir Bill Gammell, the entrepreneurial chairman of Cairn Energy, who is responsible for bankrolling the Scottish Institute of Sport (SIS) Foundation. Yesterday it was announced that Gammell had been co-opted onto the sportscotland board, one of three survivors transferring from the institute board which is being wound up.

A Scotland rugby winger in the 1970s, Gammell would surely be the ideal chair of a revamped sportscotland, but has a £3000m oil exploration company to run. However, anyone who can build such an enterprise from scratch in under 20 years can claim to be a winner, and now he wants to create a nation of winners, with Boyle helping drill the exploratory wells.

When McKean and Murray retired, Boyle backed off coaching, "reclaiming the years when I'd spent so much time on athletics," as he put it. It ended with him managing an international computer plant in Livingston. He was recruited eight months ago as project manager with the foundation, by Gammell and executive director Graham Watson, to help design and launch a series of projects shortly due to be rolled out.

Former Scotland rugby international Gregor Townsend and Commonwealth shooting gold medallist Susan Jackson are also working on these.

The key project originated at Stanford University, and will be tested over two years by four Scottish local authorities. Positive Coaching Scotland aims to pursue standard coaching goals but also deliver life lessons which address alcohol and drug abuse, health, crime, and respect. "Tommy evaluated the project and we're very excited," said Watson.

The foundation have purchased it on licence (first country outside the US) and will invest £250,000 in the pilot. Several sports are on board, including football, athletics, badminton, cricket, golf, rugby, swimming, and tennis. "Once it's up and running, and we've proved it works, we want all 32 local authorities to pick it up," said Watson. "Others must roll it out and develop it. I genuinely think PCS will become an epidemic, and take over."

Gammell and colleagues have already secured more than £3m of their £7.5m target to deliver the overall programme. Government co-funding has also been secured. Gammell's aim is to "challenge conventional thinking and draw on the similarities between business and sporting skills to develop a Culture of Winning".

Boyle's former employers wanted him to move to France. " I knocked it back for family reasons," he says. "I've two sons in primary, and I felt whatever time I was going to have left in life, I'd like to try to make a difference in sport. Sir Bill is a visionary, a catalyst for change. You just hope other organisation see these opportunities and run with them."

It’s almost impossible to be a world-class amateur coach and produce world-class athletes today. It takes 30-40 hours a week. How do you do that and hold down a day job?


The foundation identified that Boyle had unusual attributes - business and coaching acumen at a high level.

He and car franchise entrepreneur Glen Henderson devised the first successful sport back-up team in Scotland (McKean and Murray). "That was 22 years ago, and here we are still trying to replicate a system which produced two world-class athletes over a 10-year period. I was an amateur coach, driven by a business person who saw the need for professionalism. But he also saw the need for a hard-nosed business approach. I think we've brought professionalism to sport, but I question whether we've brought the business approach yet. This applies to most sports. So the attraction for me was to work with Sir Bill, a highly successful business person again.

"If this kind of job, say as director of performance at scottishathletics, had existed 20 years ago, I'd probably have taken it, but they didn't exist, and there was no career pathway. Personal and financial sacrifices are immense. It's almost impossible to be a world-class amateur coach and produce world-class athletes. It takes 30-40 hours a week, typically. How do you that today, with the cost-of-living pressures, speed of life, family, and hold down a day job?

"Research by the foundation, among Scotland's 30 top sports experts, was almost unanimous: a coaching pathway still doesn't exist and must be developed to produce world-class athletes. Salaries, then and currently, preclude higher-level coaches who tend to be successful people in their business life.

"We need to create positions in Scottish sport which attract and retain coaches who'll make a difference. It's like business. What's the point in training up someone for 25-30 years, and then losing them. Two tremendous examples of people lost to coaching because of a lack of a career pathway are John Anderson and Frank Dick former Scottish national coaches. This is damaging across all sport. If a business loses its best people, it's at a disadvantage to the business next door, and competitors in other countries.

"Coaching is under-valued. Until we as a society recognise the importance of sport, physical education will not be given the curricular importance it deserves. We are sitting on top of the biggest timebombs society has ever faced: obesity and moral decline in society. And sport is probably the best vehicle there is to resolve that.

"Our parents, our grandparents, and teachers taught us the standard values in society, but sport is the greatest vehicle we have to deliver this. One by-product, if you do it properly, is that you get more children involved. Coach them properly, teach them properly, appropriate skills at the right age, then they'll enjoy sport, and stay in it. We'll retain a bigger percentage, and the cream will rise to the top. The 99.9% who don't become champions will move into society. They won't go on alcohol or drugs, and will be fit for life."

"Sir Bill has identified a need to enlist the business community to support specific projects. The foundation is in a unique position, being able to sit at the table with business. We must bring additional resources to current structures, not do things they should be doing."

This article was originally posted on 9-Feb-2008, 09:06 by Hugh Barrow.
Last updated by Hugh Barrow on 9-Feb-2008, 09:18.