"Having trained in Jamaica with Simeon Williamson, the British 100 metres champion, last winter, Powell believes sprinters from these shores are lazy. “When Simeon started doing practice he was actually dying,” Powell said. “It was the first time he’d trained that hard. We do lots of over-distance running so you build up serious lactic acid in your legs — 200s, 400s, 600s.”

In my opinion he is right, it appears that since lottery funding was introduced (it pretty much grants a decent income to mediocre athletes) our perfomances in track and field have gone down the shitter.

Anyone agree or disagree?

Didn't Britain only win 1 track medal at Beijing?

Yep, but it was GOLD, good old Christine Ohuruogu

But PA is right, UK Atheltics still use anarchaic training methods, the new system of a performance based quota for lottery funding is a good move but it'll take a good 2-3 years before we see any benefits from it.

TBH, i can see us only picking up 4 or 5 medals in the World Championships in Berlin next month with Ohuruogu again our only hope for a gold, one to watch though in my view in the Heptathlon is Jessica Ennis, she is a great outside bet for gold now that Carolina Kluft is doing the long jump instead.

From my fairly vague memory British athletics had already gone down the shitter, lottery funding didn't make much difference. What it did do is allow Britain to win lots of medals in non-track and field events, usually of the kind that you hear about and say "what? That's an Olympic event!?"

Interestingly though, the sports that have done really well or improved massively, Swimming, Cycling and Boxing for example have all completely changed their coaching approaches and spent their lottery money wisely, for me athletics is more like football, they get more money and don't really change anything with most of the money just ending up in the athletes pockets.