MARGOT WELLS

• Allan Wells Powers To 100m Gold – youtube video
• On The Line – Allan Wells, Moscow 1980 – Olympic channel
• Danny Cipriani – Making The Impossible Look Easy – youtube video

MARGOT WELLS

People say to me, I was 25 when I started, how could you ever think that you could coach him (Allan Wells) to be the fastest man in the world, with no coaching qualifications? And I mean, we’re talking about an era where most coaches were a) men, and b) were 45/50 plus. And I said, it wasn’t that I thought I could, I never thought I couldn’t. But I have an amazing set of tools, which makes my life as a coach easier. So, I have a video brain – it will record every run he did in that session. On the way home he would say to me: “What was my pickup like on the second 60 of the first set?” And I could tell him exactly, because I would replay the video.

Like a photographic one [brain] for movement?

The other thing I can do is I can slow movement down. So he was running really, really fast. And to me, it was like slow motion. So I could tell what every part of his body was doing and be able to feed back. And I never lied. I never, you know, some people were scared to say to him, “No, that wasn’t very good”, but I never had that fear and I just used to say, no, no, I didn’t like that at all.

And he didn’t like the fact that I told him that I didn’t like it, but I would tell him something, I mean, it was a weird situation. You’d go back, and you would ask somebody else, and the person would say, “Oh, yeah, yeah, no, you never did that”. And then you would change it. It wasn’t easy to do. And whilst I still ran myself, I mean, people were always in Scotland would always come up to me and saying to me, “Oh, you know, you could have been this, and you could have been that, but you know, what, I don’t think I could have been and used the energy and the time I’ve spent on Allan, or watching Allan, and not have achieved myself, but you need to be really selfish. Selfish isn’t strong enough, you need to be, you know, bordering on narcissistic case. Oh but then everything has to be about them – they feed off your energy, they drain your energy, they drain everybody else’s energy, and it’s all having a team. I say this to the rugby players, you know, you need a team of people around about you, not your team. Yes, you need your team to support you, but you need your own individual team. So we had a really good, very small team of people who almost wanted Allan to win it more than he wanted himself. And he would feed off that energy.

Back then that would have been quite unique that they would have had that group because now, you know, you see that in some of the top, top-level athletes, they will have that team around them. But back then, that was unique.

My rugby players have that. I say to them, and it takes them a while to understand why they need that team. And sometimes things they’ve got to go pear-shaped for them to go “Oh, I see what you mean”. Everybody needs a team. I think it’s crucial. You know, sometimes the support players don’t get the credit for what they do. You know, the masseur, the doctors, you know, we get kind of forgotten a bit. I mean, I was lucky and I was unlucky, that I got a lot of publicity. Never really wanted it. I still don’t want it.

Would you then say as a coach you’d like to be prefer being in the shadows than in the sunshine?

Yeah.

I agree with that. I mean, my end goal for me is always to make myself redundant. So, I don’t need to go to the big games, I can sit in the stand, because I know that whoever I’m coaching know what they need to do. They’re aligned. They don’t need me anymore. So that’s my processes. But that’s not every coach.

Oh, no. Like now I would say it’s not about the performance it’s about the coach. And I just do not agree with that at all. It’s all about the performer. You know, the coach is… my role is to give the people I coach every physical and mental requirement to do this sport to the best of their ability. And as I say, bring me a head, bring me the right head, and I’ll give you the body to play whatever it is you want to do. The hardest thing is getting you know, the thinking process and some of them have it naturally, you know, easy ones, Danny [Danny Cipriani], Mike Brown…

Just for our listeners, Danny Cipriani, one of the probably the most talented rugby players of the generation. I remember when, you know, but he hasn’t had as many caps for England as he should have got and probably hasn’t received the plaudits that he should have done over his time. I remember when I was coaching England, we just finished a training session at the sevens at the gym and we shared our room with some of the England coaches. And they had a list on little magnetic strips of all the players and their kind of their player depth of all and Danny’s name wasn’t there, and I looked a bit further and he was about two feet down behind the water cooler. They put his name down there. And that was kind of that was physically where it was, but he was in their heads like that, that he was too much of a risk, too much of a maverick, all stuff that actually the right coach would have embraced.

Yeah, you’re right. I just think. When he trained here we did hurdle jumps and we had this thing where you would jump, jump, jump, grubber the ball along, run and chase it and pick it up, right? Danny would jump, jump, jump, flick the ball over his head, catch it, and then run. I mean, he is just, you know, a game has gone wrong he knows how to switch it. He can read a game. Phenomenal, just absolutely phenomenal. And all the, you know, the hype… I think he frightened coaches because he knows more than they do.

The best players in my opinion, always know more. And it’s the coach understanding that that’s the case and then using that, right?

Shut up and let him do it. And give him you know, his head. When I went to Australia, I was about to leave and one of the coaches rang up and said did I have time for coffee. Because I went there, before Danny’s first match for the Melbourne Rebels. The first thing he said to me was how do you control Danny? Because since you arrived in the airport, and Melbourne airport, his attitude’s totally different.

I said, I don’t control Danny Cipriani. I said why would I even want to control somebody? He says, Well, why did he listen to you? And you won’t listen to anybody else? It’s just I said, Well, I don’t try and teach him how to play rugby, I don’t try and put them into, you know, and it was an ex Australian rugby player. And I say to him, if you as a player, somebody came along and gave you every physical attribute you wanted to have to play the game how you wanted to play it, would you want to keep doing it?

Well, of course he said…so why you are stopping him doing what he wants to do that he knows allows him to play the best for you. He’s not playing for himself. He’s playing for you. And the fitness coach said to me, how will we know it’s you that made Danny quick and not me? Right? Well, if you well know I’m not prone to mincing my words. But I thought I’ll be polite, and I’d spent five days before the first game, restoring Danny’s speed. I said, I’ll tell you what, he’ll be the only one running fast. And you’ll be the only one running fast for a long time. Because he’s got brilliant muscle memory and I can tweak it and bring it back up really quickly because he trained with me for ages. And that’s exactly what happened.

Do you find like lots of coaches would struggle or shy away from dealing with the players that, for the reason you probably gave, they probably got more knowledge than the actual coach or they certainly will challenge? Are they the sort of athletes that you’re like? That’d be your go to?

I love them. Yeah, like, as I say, we’re all mad in our squad. Talented but mad.

So, what advice would you give to anyone then that’s dealing with a player that has obviously got talent, but perhaps they can’t quite work out how to get the best out of them.

Don’t try to make the talented one’s average. Everybody seems to be, every walk of life at the minute, is don’t go way up here. And can you deal with the people who are below average? The average is good. No, no in my squad average isn’t good. When we train, I have a sign in my gym which says, ‘I didn’t come here to be average, I came here to be awesome’. I didn’t make it, I found it. I have a lot of other things which are actually quite funny, like “If at first you don’t succeed, try doing it the way Margo told you to!’.

I guess at the beginning of your career when you were coaching your husband, you’re going to have to have fairly clear guidelines. So, you know where the coach is, agree standards of behaviour, roles, responsibilities, all that sort of thing? Is that something that you put in early with an athlete? And do you vary it per athlete? Do you have some non-negotiables Margo, like this is absolutely the way that we have to put certain guardrails in?

 You have to. I have standards and if you don’t match up to them, if you don’t agree with them… everybody’s always free to leave. I don’t have contracts with people, I don’t, you know, there’s the door.  Sometimes you’re ushered out of it, and sometimes you can leave. It’s entirely up to you. But you have to have. All the guys know it. Like with functionality, there is no leeway.

So, if you’re if you’re against somebody that’s listening to this podcast that might not be sure of what the terminology means. Can you explain to like a layman, ‘functionality’?

It is making the body move like it’s supposed to move. So, Roger Federer doesn’t hit the ball with his arm, he hits it with his body. So, if you… it’s all joined up right? You join the body up so the back supports the shoulder girdle; you anchor your shoulder girdle into your ass which is what it’s meant to do. You know, I harp on a bit of a flat back and everybody thinks I’m mad, but your back is meant to be flat. I’ve a grandchild with flat back. She was born with a flat back.

Don’t change it, right? And then what you do? So what you do is you join the body neurologically to your brain. That’s probably the easiest way, but the most scientifically mad thing I can say.

Yeah. So you’re saying almost those neural pathways, you’re lining them all up. So they’re faster.

No, I’m lining them all up so they allow the body to work as one piece.

 Okay.

Right. So if your feet don’t work, your knees, don’t work. If your knees don’t work, your hips don’t work, and all the way up. So, if your feet aren’t neurologically joined to your brain – don’t work. Right?

Everything breaks down.

So if you operate as a function, as one unit, you don’t get, I reckon conservatively, you will eliminate 70% soft tissue injuries. But what’s the really good thing is, when something does happen, I can get it back on. So the number of times I get a scan result, I’m going back to the right, have to play it back really quickly. And the number of times that happens. So, if you could,  Federer it is the easiest one, because everything is effortless. You’ll get far reaching out there, and he’s able to hold his hand up there, because it’s supported by his body. He’s not holding his arm up. His body is holding him arm up and then he will just flick his wrist across court and everybody thinks it’s amazing.

So, A) when they move, it takes far less out of them because, you know, everything’s joined up. It’s like joined up writing, in our body, and I watched world class sports, sportsmen in all events, and I can see why the people who win, win.

And I thought, well, that’s a bit unfair. If you see it, it’s actually quite amazing to watch how quickly the brain will change your body. And that’s the big thing. The big change for me.

I remember Lawrence Dallaglio saying in 2013, the change in Mike Brown is nothing short of miraculous. And it is, that’s exactly what he does. So, there’s people who have naturally functioning bodies, the Federer’s, the Messi’s, Danny, Bale, certain people, certain athletes, who were gifted that body. So to be able to understand what it takes to be the best in the world in your field, but then be able to recreate it. And it’s like having, it’s like borrowing somebody else’s body that’s a world class performer. Doesn’t matter what sport it is, they will make you perform.

I mean, my three day eventer has gone from zero to hero. And people are looking at her, and she’s got much more control. I mean, it’s fascinating, I love it. She’s got much more control with the horse. By giving her the body, the control, it’s not all about strength. I was a bit dizzy with speed, but I’m never decrying speed – speed is the ultimate gift that I can give anybody. I love it.

And I don’t know why people are not been allowed to benefit from it. Because there’s absolutely nothing you can do to defend it.

Yeah, across a number of sports. Right?

Across everything. It’s totally indefensible. It is the thing that gives the scary factor to everybody. And I mean, I did a talk once at rugby, and I said, you know, do you do a lot of tackling practice? They said yes, and I said, well, there’s not much point if you can’t catch them, you can’t tackle them.

But that’s looking at things in a perhaps in a way that a lot of classical coaches, that perhaps have gone through the system and got their badges, and all those sort of things. They almost feel that that’s the building blocks, they’ve got to look at it from the more pragmatic now.

You’re looking at it in a different way. Would I be right in saying that you almost do an MOT immediately. So, you have a look at someone running and you’ll immediately be able to, by the way that they’re running, look at what you need to do. And you’re not seeing any ceilings in performance.

 Oh, there’s never a ceiling in the performance. I keep telling them that. I say, you know, I’ve come so far down the ladder. That everything is easy. But as you say, I have no, I have no coaching qualifications. I’m totally self-taught. I taught myself the functionality because I needed to.

Did you ever have, when you were an athlete, what was your coach like that you had when you were younger?

He had a system that worked for a certain distance, a certain, you know, like it was the old pros. So they had the handicap system.

Yes.

But they never ran further than 120 in the sprints. And everything was geared. And the one thing I learned from that, and it did, it was successful. There’s a lot of faults that but then again, but now I look back and I can see a million faults. At the time I wasn’t experienced enough to realise but it’s like, one thing doesn’t fit all. One size doesn’t fit all. One fitness programme doesn’t fit all.

Everybody does the same thing. They just do more of it. And so everybody in my squad has different, I call them ‘fiddles’; functionalities have different fiddles. But if I’m taking my time to analyse your body, tell you what it is you need to do to make that, and they come to training without havingt done it. Oh my god, seriously.

There will be repercussion, Margot.

Serious repercussions. Trust me, right? And you get away with it once. Do not do it again.

And is that something that, day one, you explain to all your athlete? There are certain standards, and they agree them, I guess?

I do it before we even start. I lay down the law before they start. In fact, sometimes, you know, some of these, one of the players just sit down and say to me, do you not want them to come? I said, well I do, but I just want them to realise before they come, this is my expectations. I am not lowering them. I’m telling you before you start.

You’d certainly say that you put down very clear black and white, from day one. Everybody’s clear. There’s no grey. There’s no grey in your programme.

But they still muck it up.

What do you put that down to?

Well, they get overconfident. Those youngsters. arrogance. Oh my Lordy. I had one try to tell me how to hit the speed ball. Well, I just thought I’d try. Because I’m giving coaching things as I’m sitting there, and I said to her, I said, “Can you not hear me?” Because the ball does make a noise. “Oh, yes. But I just thought I’d try it my way”.

Youngsters seem to take it for granted. And then when they get, you know, better than, you know, the, up the ladder a bit. Well, the arrogance is unbelievable.

One of the things that I see a lot in a lot of the teams that I’ve worked with, or consult with, is that you do get these athletes that are, certainly when they get better, that they’re very competent. And in fact, they get over competent. But then if you’re not careful, they get overconfident with it. I suppose what you’re saying is some of the best athletes that you’ve worked with, so Danny Cipriani, you know, 50 plus caps Mike Brown, that you talked about, and Kyle Sinckler who’s going to have a huge amount of caps. Do you think they still want to learn, and that overconfidence never creeps into them because they feel so competent in what they can do?

Never. I have never ever had an issue with them. I mean, what the youngsters don’t realise is how much effort these guys have been putting in behind the scenes. You know? Like, you know, Browny would come back from holiday, land at Heathrow and you know, I’m just going to dump my case and he’ll be here. Danny was the same. Like, I was on holiday. I was due to land at five at Gatwick. So, by the time you get through, and you get your car, and whatever. I got home at seven, and Kyle Sinckler and Danny were in my gym. But people see them on the television and think, Oh, well, yeah. They didn’t realise that off the field they’re actually putting in more work. So, you know, they do this stuff at the club and stuff. But then they come and do more. You know they are working even harder? Like, Allan’s training, my training sessions, never mind Allan’s. I’ll be teaching somebody and obviously I used to do that over 100 metres, and they can’t do it over 30. And they’re looking at me like, you know, it is not the volume. It’s the intensity of the training. So the sessions are short. They are not long sessions.

But, Dan Lugar once said to me, the difference between my training and somebody else’s training was my training, you actually cannot do any more. But its other people training, you can keep going for a long time, but at a reduced pace. But I didn’t allow the reduced pace.

And so your noise, you are  actually cutting down your noise by just having the single voice and you’re deciding when enough is enough because you’re seeing how they’re moving. And their form and I guess you’re going, Okay, we’re not going to get any more quality out of it now. But until that point, it’s full on and it’s intense. Is that right? Is that about right?

Yeah. And recovery.

But how would that fit in? So in a modern… if you suddenly went into work for a top Premier League Football Club, and you didn’t want to use all their, all their various extras. How would you persuade them that that was the right thing to do? How did you get hired for that? Because I’m, I’m with you. I agree that there’s so many things that actually just create a lot of noise, and you don’t actually see the signal which is making someone better. But it seems that those type of coaches are being slowly pushed out of elite sport because of the technology that’s, it’s almost something that you’ve got to have.

I was asked into Man United and they said what did you think of our gym? I said that it was quite nice, but I wouldn’t use 90% of the stuff in there. We were laughing because Mike Brown did a circuit in my gym the other day, and he never moved. He got up and then waiting on the floor. And then he sat on the bench. Why do you need a big gym? Obviously, we’ve got more people, fair enough. But there were two strips of running track, inside the gym, 20 metres long. I said, what you do on that? Well, we don’t know what to do on that. I said, what’s the most important distance in football? And they had to think about it, but they said, nothing to five, and I said well you can do nothing to 5 and you have got room to slow down! Oh, well that’s great!

Know what you’re talking about. So, I mean I’ve coached clubs. I started at London Scottish and I had a green field, twice a week. And you played on a Saturday. I had no gym. Nothing.

 I remember it well, because you also were running at different distances then, when you were getting to that, that lactate threshold.

Yeah. But we’re running athletic distances, which to this day, people try and copy, don’t believe it, and don’t leave enough recovery to get, I mean, when you have training sessions here, and the hardest session, which is the one we’re talking about, they were in a bad mood when they got here because they knew how hard it was. If you do lactic acid right it crawls up your ass and there is nothing, I mean, absolutely nothing you can do. They couldn’t walk. I remember Lawrence Dallaglio and Steve White Cooper walking across there, and I thought if they turn round and see me laughing they’ll die. But they looked like, you know, John Wayne on horse, but that they were able to run fast for 80 minutes or however longer they needed. That’s what I mean about giving you the qualities you need to play. I mean Kyle Sinckler is running around, you know, all over the place. And he was furious the other day because he took them off with five minutes to go.

And they took him off five minutes to go, based upon, probably some data, perhaps, that they’d seen or, but not actually looking at the player and seeing that he’s actually [he’s fine], yeah, he could actually be in better shape than everybody else.

Yeah, what prop runs around, like he chases kick-off, he chased the kick-off with the winger and got there at the same time. If COVID’s done anything it has allowed me to get where I used to be, which was 12 weeks in, just my training. Nothing else. Those players went back to the club in the best shape they’ve ever been in for years, because no longer do I get, lucky if you get three weeks.

 Yes, it’s short windows now, isn’t it?

You know, so I’m working out…what happens if there’s no scrum, or what happens if they’re limited scrums or whatever…you’re going to have to run mate, and he wanted to run, and he loves it.

You’ve just reeled off, and for those of you that are listening that aren’t necessarily into their rugby, a lot of top-end internationals that you know, have had their ups and downs on and off the field, perhaps because of lots of different reasons, I suppose. But how would you then sum up how your relationship is with athletes? What’s your coach athlete relationship like? So once you’ve created that, you tell them what your black and whites are. And then you get into changing them and helping them become their best version. Inside that, what sort of environment do you create when they’re working with you on a day to day basis.

They know that I’m totally honest. If I don’t like what I’m seeing, you’ll hear about it. They appreciate that. They appreciate the honesty.

I was going to ask. Do all of them appreciate it?

All of them appreciate it. And if I’m really mad, which not so much now, but in the olden days when I was really mad at people, it was a case of, they knew the one thing that annoys me, and my players just don’t do this, is when somebody does not give 100%, right? Now, they never did that. But you need to know when to give somebody a hug. When to give a kick up the ass. You need to understand your player. And so, I know that. I know what makes them tick. I know when, I remember saying to Danny, once I said, I said my problem is I care too much. And I keep, you know, going mad because I care too much. And he said, Margot, that’s why we love you.

Do you think it’s really important to get to know that athlete world, to find out what their why is, what their drivers are?

You have to. And it doesn’t matter if there’s 30 of them. I mean, when I coached London Scottish I knew what made every one of these players tick. And I mean, I never like when I started coaching rugby, well, I knew there was backs and forwards but didn’t know what anybody did. It just looked like a whole mess to me. But I learnt off the players. I still learn off the players. I’ll say, you did this, what? I didn’t quite get that. And sometimes they’ll say to me, that was setting up this play. And yeah, I was meant to do this and all sorts of things. I’m, okay, fair enough. And I do respect their decision because you know, they are intelligent players, you know, they are experienced, intelligent players. And I mean, I’ve got a young rugby player, he’s 18. Danny has taught him how to kick, Kyle Sinckler did passing work with him on the park. I said to him, you are the luckiest person in the world to have access to, and at one point, you know, I say to him, I gave you that session with Danny today. You didn’t deserve it. You didn’t earn that session. Now you want that to happen again? Then you start to pull up your socks and you earn that.

And do you think they feel that they’ve got, they’re in a safe environment, where you’re obviously being honest, 100% honest to them, because you’re trying to get them to be better. Do they feel safe enough to be able to say exactly how they feel as well?

Yeah. I do. didn’t always agree with them, right? Or sometimes they’ll go, oh, poor me. Oh, poor you. But they know that I’ve done what they’ve done, what I’m asking them to do.

Do you think you can still get the best out of somebody if you actually don’t bother getting to know them? They just turn up? Why don’t you think that because some coaches do? Some coaches think they don’t, you know, yeah.

Most coaches do I think

But we don’t get measured as a coach as much on if you know their family, their friends, you know what their why is. You have those small conversations. A lot of coaches feel that that’s again, they’re not the measurable stuff. So they don’t they don’t manage it, they do it. Whereas what you’re saying, and a lot of very experienced world class coaches that I’ve spoken to, they say the same, they put the person first They say it’s about getting to know them. What would stop you then if you’ve got an athlete that you don’t actually get to know about? Why would you think they wouldn’t then achieve their best, if you don’t do that human side of things, you just treat them as a spreadsheet, almost?

 

I wouldn’t even know what it’s like, because I’ve never done it.

Have you come across athletes that come into your programme that have been treated like that?

 Yes.

And what quick benefits, what changes do you see, so if it was a young coach or young manager listening to this, and perhaps they weren’t spending the time they should do getting to know a player, what benefits do you think there are of getting to know that person, that athlete?

You see, I have a huge benefit over most coaches, because for the minute they arrive in my squad, I will make them faster. And they’re sitting in the palm of my hand, because everybody wants to be faster. Then I make them faster, just by teaching them how to run. Just teach them how to run and you’ll make them faster, if you know what you do. And then they’re like, they’ve got a grin from ear to ear, because they feel the difference. And I mean, I’ve had kids who say, no, I didn’t feel any faster. And I say, ah, you’re lying. Because I can see it.

You’ve got them, because they’ve immediately seen a benefit in training.

What’s the point in training if it doesn’t make you better? Yeah, that’s what coaches need to realise. You only train to make you better. And if you don’t get any better, you as well, do nothing and at least you’d be fresh. Somebody, a coach, and in a very high up position, said to me, what you expect your players to get better after every session? I say, yes. And they do. Otherwise, what is the point of it? You’re just wasting everybody’s time.

What do you think then? There’s, I mean, we’ve both probably come across coaches in the past that have been very successful. And they also think like that. How do you think they keep their jobs? Why do you think they stay where they are, those coaches, that have that sort of attitude?

Either, the person at the top appoints people who’s not going to have a go at them. They’re not going to question what they do, they are, in inverted commas, ‘yes people’. They want on their CV, for it to say that they are part of that high situation, doesn’t matter where, who, what I put behind Allan Wells winning the Olympics, or mercy they’re always going to come second best. I could, like, I did a talk once. And he asked me for a CV, and I had to go and come up with one. But as you well know, but I am not a yes person. I’m not going to, you know, if, if I’ve got a problem, then you’re going to hear it. Right. So I’m never going to work with what I call a bully.

Would you say then, you as a coach, you’re very authentic?

 How you, if you’re not allowed to question what that person’s doing, then how are they going to get any better? And then they might have something that everybody could learn from, but they’re not going to let you in because it’ll expose other weaknesses.

I know my own weaknesses. And I will, you know, they are not training, they’re certainly not functionality because nobody else knows how to do it. So somebody asked me, I was talking to them about functionality, and he asked me if I had a qualification in it. I said, what would you like me to be because I’m the only person that does it. I can be anything you like. And it’s like, I got an honorary degree from Edinburgh Napier University, which entitles me to use the term doctor, and I put it on my website just to annoy people. Because he kept saying I had no qualifications. Oh, there’s our doctor.

Have you come across any coaches that you’ve that actually have been very open to you because they know that they, you know, you don’t know what you don’t know as a coach? And so there’s a lack of knowledge that you can provide them with, and rather than bruise their ego and push you away, they’re very happy to bring you in to help their team, their athletes, their organisation get better?

Zinzan Brooke wanted to do it. It never happened because I said no, in the end, because the rest of the team wasn’t as open to change, and thought I knew nothing about rugby. My argument is, I have learned so much off my players, and they’ve all played British Lions, international, whatever, so I must have learned something. But Alistair McHarg, who was a Scottish coach at London Scottish, who brought Allan in, it wasn’t even my job. Allan in. And we look, we watch the game and I said to Allan, make them run faster, make them run faster and for 80 minutes. And you are going to win games. They can pass and catch. They’re going to win games.  And he adopted my training methods, because Allan kept going away with a bobsled team and leaving me with his team. He adopted my training methods and change them into the way he coached.

So instead of doing 10 scrums, he would do three, and have a rest, and everything was at pace. There was no jogging around passing the ball. You cannot train high volume and expect people to play with high intensity. They are two totally different, you know, and all this now, being in the club from half seven till four o’clock, to me is not a good idea.

What would you do? If you’re in charge, you are in charge of a club?

I would do an hour of functionality before we get started. So everybody going out there is physically prepared, bodies physically prepared and functioning as a unit to do whatever is coming next. Now Zinzan Brooke and I, he wrote, and this is a long time ago, I said you write your perfect week with training sessions. And I wrote mine with fitness sessions, and they completely doved in [dovetailed]. That’s why I kept the conversation going, until I ended up walking away.

Sport is not a nine to five job. Sport, the breaks away from sport, mentally and physically, to me, more important than what you do when you’re there. And all these meetings, and Oh, God, like a player said, sitting there and thinking, why am I in here? You are the coach. You work it out and tell me what you want me to do. Right. And that’s how it used to be.

I totally agree. And it’s my philosophy as well. And in fact, when you’re saying that, didn’t you, before the Moscow Olympics, did Allan have some sort of injury, a lower back injury or something, that meant that you had to reduce the training going into Moscow.

Yes. And it was a huge benefit, because what happened was, two weeks before he left to go to Moscow, his back seized but he was screaming fast. He was too fast, too early. What people didn’t get. You know, if you look back in the Olympic year, Allan ran three races before Moscow. Three. Now they run 103. And so we had the team working on him. There was a physio in the hospital working on him four times a day, the doc was overseeing it. He never did a sprint start before, because I left just before him to get to Moscow. He never did a sprint start till we got to Moscow. But he was just in the best shape. And he was so comfortable with Moscow, the stadium, the place. He was psyching other sprinters. Menea’s coach took him off the track because Allan looks so good. And there’s a whole load of tricks in sprinting that nobody ever knows. I will be on the warmup track. And I could tell who was, knew they were running fast, who had fear, you know, by the way they warmed up. Allan wasn’t looking  at them. Everybody was looking at him. So I’m looking at them going well, okay, you are no worry. But the importance to the team was, when Allan run, he went back to village after, I’m sitting there watching every heat, noting down every athlete, what the wind condition was like, who ran flat out, who looked good. I mean, so when the second round came, and it was totally loaded, it was terrible. But anyway, it was what it was. We could chalk off who had run, it’s not just turning up and running and keeping your fingers crossed. There’s actually a method in this, to prepare your athlete to be the best. I mean, I remember my brother saying to me, why were you so exhausted? You looked knackered.

I said, just moving between the warmup track, trying to get back to the village. All Allan did was run.

But you then that’s because going back to what you talked about earlier, and we’re unlucky we’re under the cover here because you might be able to hear the rain just rattling in on the wrought iron above us, but you talked about how you put the performer first, the athlete first. So it doesn’t matter, I guess, or does it matter, if you’re burning out the people around you?

No doesn’t? When you’re at the Olympics, it’s a funny old thing the Olympics, because people win it that wouldn’t be expected to win it. People win, like Coe and Ovett, won, in inverted commas, ‘the wrong race’, when people outperform themselves, people underperform, and we went there at that time knowing that we’d left no stone unturned. We’ve done everything we could. Now when I look back, I think there is a whole load of other things we could be done, like functionality, but I didn’t know that then. And you go in the hope that you win a medal. Well, as it gets closer and closer to the fact you actually might win the gold medal, silver becomes a disappointment.

If I look for my one and only experience with the Olympics, if we had not won a gold medal and gone home with silver it would have been, I would have been devastated.

Yeah, and people watching don’t realise it. Did you know it’s like on an individual sport everything’s heightened because you live and die by your own efforts. There’s no blame, there’s nobody to accuse of not giving you the ball and oh, whatever and I’m trust me I’m not demeaning your achievements. But yeah, an individual I’m biased because I think track is the hardest thing to do.

Look, as soon as I finish the Sevens I spent every day at the track watching. I love track and field and everything about it, and like you say one slight, slight movement, or one decision, or something goes awry, you know, like you’re not even on the podium, let alone in gold.

 Great athletes, great athletes have not won Olympic gold medals over the years.

Yeah, Colin Jackson is a good example.

Colin Jackson, Steve Cram, the middle and long distance runners, the Australia guys and the New Zealand guys at the time, who were brilliant. But, you know, people, you know, the public are great. They are so used to knowing me, in Edinburgh, they say see when you come back with a gold medal, and I’m like, arrghhh! But genuinely the public are great. Like obviously I wasn’t in Edinburgh when Allan was running. But a friend who arrived in Edinburgh, she said it was like a ghost thing. Nobody was on the street, the pubs were full. And my mother used to say to me, the bit you didn’t get is that when Allan wins it’s like New Year, in July. She said you make the country happy. But we never saw that. Because we weren’t there. You know, you didn’t get that lift. I mean, we did when we got back from Moscow because we got the open-decked bus. I said to Allan we will just sit in the bus, because nobody is going to be on the streets between the airport and, nope, they lined the whole way. And it was raining. It was this. It was like, I mean, that to me was …

Did you get satisfaction out if it? Because we talked a lot about other people’s whys, and getting to know the athlete, but what about you? What’s your Why? What’s your driver to do what you do?

I just like seeing people achieve their dreams. That is my, that’s why I do this job. And I’m so privileged to actually be able to say that. Now a dream to one person is not winning Olympic gold. The dream is playing first team at school. A dream is, you know, just didn’t necessarily mean ‘caps’. It doesn’t necessarily mean, sometimes it’s just being a professional rugby player. And that’s their dream. And that, to me is equally as important as achieving.

Yeah, I agree. And has that always been the case? Because one of the questions I was going to ask right at the beginning was the very start of your coaching career to now, has anything remained the same? And I’m sure there’s lots of things that you’ve changed because of experience and everything else, but has there been anything that you’ve used all the way through?

Speedball

Speedball.

I love speedball.

I got told once that your legs can only move as fast as your arms can move. Is that right?

Your arms control your leg.

Okay.

Right? That’s different. They control the stride length. They control… If you want to teach somebody to run fast, change their arm. Most people run with their legs. They think legs. Kids think you’ve got to have a high knee lift and a long drive. They are comparing themselves to people who are phenomenally strong and fast and powerful.

Like Michael Johnson.

Yes, because you cannot see that. Look, why is a child trying to adopt a running technique that an adult, a highly seasoned performer uses, because you cannot do it. And then they make themselves slower by using that technique. The confidence you give a kid by making them faster, and they can feel it. You know what, kids are the best because they don’t lie. You know, they just tell you how it is, and I love that.

One final question I’ve got for you. All the things we’ve talked about, and perhaps take the functionality to one side, and look at the rest of it creating a high performance environment. What’s the one thing that you think probably gives you your kind of biggest bang for your buck? What’s the biggest single thing that you think is absolutely vital to have when you are working with athletes to get them to be their best?

Speed is my comfort zone. Speed. I adore speed, because of what it gives to people immediately. And it’s the one thing everybody craves, and not to have it, I tell you what, what is worse than not having it, is having it and somebody else taking it away. That is my biggest bugbear is that happening because all the confidence goes.

But you’ve probably heard it a lot on TV where somebody just screamed up the side-line to score a great try, and the commentators always say, well, yeah, that’s the one thing you can’t coach is speed. And they always say that.

You can.

But Margot you’re proving that that’s possible and, and for anybody that, you know, that gets a chance to see some of these athletes that we’ve talked about that are playing rugby, then just have a look at their movement and you’ll, you’ll see some of this.

 It’s been an absolute pleasure.

 I really enjoyed it, Ben. Thank you for coming. And thank you for asking.

Perfect, thank you very much.

Thank you.

I really hope you got  lot from that chat. Margot, well, she ruffles feathers. I’ve always enjoyed that as a coach. I want people to speak up and say what they think and how they generally feel. However, in professional sport, those feathers are too often attached to egos or rigidity and protocol that cannot see beyond the norm. Just like some of the players she mentioned, she probably knows a lot more than those people that deride or downplay her. But speak to those athletes she works with, and they can see the difference she’s makes and the value she brings. It’s a great example of always keeping an open mind on how you can help people be their best versions. Help and wisdom and talent doesn’t always come in neat, well-behaved, box-ticked packages.

You’ve been listening to the Ben Ryan podcast, part of the sports Podcast Network.