The coach of four-time Australian Olympian Lisa Weightman has taken a sarcastic swipe at Athletics Australia in the wake of her well documented marathon snubbing.
Weightman was controversially overlooked for what would have been her fifth Olympic berth in Paris when Athletics Australia chose Jess Stenson, whose qualification time was slower than Weightman’s, Sinead Diver and Genevieve Gregson.
Athletics Australia used its discretional power to choose Stenson over Weightman because of her proven track record at major championship races, like the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games where she won gold, and her ability to take on hills, given the undulating course Paris had set.
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Stenson more than justified her selection when she was the first Aussie across the line in 13th, having even led the race around the halfway point.
But veteran long-distance running coach Dick Telford, who has mentored Weightman for the past 15 years, chose to take a different view.
In a social media post dripping in sarcasm, the 79-year-old appeared to insinuate that Athletics Australia were compromised in their selection process, given they employ the coaches of Stenson, Diver and Gregson.
“After 15y as your coach @LisaWeightman, I have to admit you chose the wrong man,” he wrote.
“Better to have an @AthleticsAust employee coach/manager close to selection/management action.
“Sinead and Gen (both Nic Bideau), Jess (Adam Didyk) and Andy replacing Brett (both Bideau), chose wisely.”
Telford’s salty post was in response to a question posed by running fan and three-time marathon finisher Brendan Tohill, who couldn’t work out why Weightman wasn’t rushed in as an emergency when Diver battled injury — just as Andy Buchanan replaced Brett Robinson in the men’s.
“Asking for a friend @AthleticsAustm why wasn’t Lisa Weightman taken as a reserve for the women’s marathon?” Tohill asked.
“As a sideline, Robbo wasn’t able to take his place in the marathon and was quietly and efficiently replaced by Andy Buchanan.”
Diver started the race, but got through just 1.2km before pulling the pin, citing totally unexpected spasms and cramps in both quads.
Robinson gave up his spot on the men’s team to Buchanan a week before the race due to a glute injury.
The difference between the two, though, is that Robinson had been carrying the injury for some months and made the call to hand his spot to Buchanan well before the Olympics even started.
That meant Athletics Australia had ample time to pivot to Buchanan instead of Robinson, and fly him over to Paris for the race.
Diver, on the other hand, despite battling some manageable Plantar fasciitis, was otherwise totally fit to run the Olympic marathon when the day arrived.
She then sustained the quad injury in her warm-up for the race, making it impossible for Weightman to take her place.
There were initial question marks over how Diver could have sustained an injury less than five minutes into the race without having known about a pre-existing problem, but both she and her coach have been publicly adamant that the injury was sudden.
“I’m aware of some of the negative commentary during and since the race but this time I’m not going to listen. This is what happened. If you choose not to believe it, then so be it,” Diver wrote in a statement on Monday.
“Thank you to everyone else who has shown kindness and empathy and sent messages of support to acknowledge that we are all human and sometimes things happen that are out of our control, no matter how hard we try.”
She added that: “The lead-in to this race has been one of the most challenging times of my life.
“The vitriol online has had a significant impact on my mental health and I have no doubt that has played a part in my body breaking down in this way. The culmination of stress over the last few weeks has finally taken its toll.”
Diver’s coach Bideau was prickly on Wednesday in response to suggestions that she shouldn’t have been at the start line.
“The day before and the morning of the race, she went there ready to run,” Bideau told SEN.
“If you wanted to rule out people who had an injury, there’d be no starters. Just about everybody who starts an Olympic marathon is carrying some sort of niggle.
“I mean, Eliud Kipchoge, the greatest marathoner ever, couldn’t finish the race. Plenty of people fail at the Olympic marathon. Plenty of people carry injuries into the race.
“The injury that stopped Sinead from running occurred during the warm-up. It wasn’t present, (there was) no mention of it, no sign of it at all, until she started to warm-up and her quads cramped.
“The medical people tried to work on it, tried to get it loosened up, we’re still not sure of the cause, but she was ready to run a marathon, she was ready to start, and I fully expected her to finish as we got to the warm-up area.
“It was a new injury, and it’s just disappointing that some of the media coverage (was) suggesting that it was an injury that she’d carried for a long, long time that caused her to stop — it wasn’t. The problem (was) on the day.”
Diver’s injury was cruel timing for everyone, not least for Weightman, who won the Australian half-marathon national championships on the Sunshine Coast the same day that Diver pulled out of the Olympic marathon.
But Bideau again snapped at the suggestion that Weightman was unfairly snubbed from the team, even rushing to the defence of Stenson, who is not one of the veteran coach’s athletes.
“(Weightman was better placed) than who? Than Sinead? Sinead’s the Australian record-holder,” Bideau said.
“There (was no one) questioning Sinead’s place on the team (in the lead-up to the Games). The person that she questioned their place on the team was Jess Trengove (Stenson), who came 13th.
“Lisa Weightman’s been to the Olympic Games four times, I don’t think she’s come 13th ever.”
Weightman came 33rd at Beijing 2008, 17th at London 2012, 17th at Rio 2016 and 26th at Tokyo three years ago.
But Telford wanted to make sure everyone was regularly reminded of Weightman’s career-best form in the lead-up to the Paris Olympics from which she had been excluded.
“Continued best ever form from @LisaWeightman, running 48:41 in Athletics Victoria’s 15k certified course road champs yesterday,” he wrote on August 5.
“Just outside Aussie best ever time, it follows her three best ever marathons over the last 18 months. A demonstration of resilience, love for our sport. Very proud.”
