Tamsyn Manou dines out on past glories

Just came across this foolish article when searching for something. What a fool the author is...Do some research! 'if we just picked the national champion from each country, the Olympics wold take 3 months'. - thanks Einstein! That's why the IOC and IAAF have qualifying standards. Manou, and many other Australians met those qualifying standards but were not selected because Athletics Australia chose to enforce a higher qualifying standard not required. Funnily enough, having just watched the heats of the women's 800m, not one woman in the entire field of heats managed the A qualifying standard set by Athletics Australia! Manou would have been Top 10 if she matched her best time this season and 2:07 was winning a heat....

Outstanding post Chris. Great to finally hear an informed point of view. And no, I don't know Chris or Tamsyn. Why some people feel the need to denigrate such a champion of Australian Athletics over such a long time, I have no idea. The sooner AA gets rid of Eric Hollingsworth the better, but that's a topic for another day.

Yes, the US system is harsh but as Cam Baker said (and you don't seem to realise because you keep referring to the US system), if Australia had adopted the same qualification rules as the US, Tamsyn would be in the team and off to London. Athletics Australia should be taking the maximum number of athletes eligible under the Olympic rules, as are the Australian teams for almost all other Olympic sports.

You are showing your ignorance. There are standards. An A standard and a B standard. Tamsyn has achieved the B standard on more than one occasion this season and ran 2.00.78 last year, one of 6 times she broke 2.02. With no Aussie having achieved the A standard, Tamsyn has qualified uner the Olympic guidelines but apparently that's not good enough for Athletics Australia.

Anon your views may hold some credibility when you disclose to us your individual sporting achievements or maybe your life achievements perhaps you are a leading businessman or doctor of medicine perhaps? Rocket science maybe? or just a stiff in the outer. So far you come across as the latter.

Jocelyn McLennan You are in serious need of counsel. You must try in future not to appear as a non achieving name dropper! Get it through your head real sports people give the best they have. Real sports people do not resile from the prospect of being beaten. Should your ill informed nonsense gain support there will be no fielding an Australian soccer teams on the prospect that other teams may be better. For your information the IOC has set qualifying times for representation in all athletic evets. The AA Board has set two criteria for automatic Australian representation. Win the selection trial & set an A qualifier. The selectors discretion determines representation with a B qualifier. Tamsyn has won the selection trial & has a B qualifier. The selectors deemed Tamsyn not suitable to represent Australia. Their inadequacies reflect your own.

That was a flurry of activity between 9.20pm and 11.00pm last night. Orchestrated? Jocelyn, thanks for a balanced article. I couldn't see any exaggeration. Someone had to speak out about her never ending whining. You've allowed comment here on this plodder when other journalists from other publications haven't or won't. "Tamsyn Manou dines out on past glories" is what this article was about. She has a track record of mediocrity in all World and Olympic Athletic Championships. INDOORS DOESN'T COUNT!!! She can't put 3 strong performances together over a week and that is what's needed at elite level. Look at those 2 races in Belgium early this month. Good performance in the 600 on the 5/7 and then 2 days later she blows up. B grade talent can win a lot of Nationals if there is no competition. She has wasted too much taxpayer's money over the years when selected for Australia. Pathetic excuses time after time when ordinary performances are put in. She was desperate to become a 4-time Olympian as she was to have that relay silver converted to gold in Melbourne in 2006. If only she had the heart to fight hard like Cathy Freeman or Sally Pearson. Stamina wouldn't go astray either. For the last 10 years her career has been 'treading water' performance-wise. Someone should suggest to her she would be better suited to a career in Synchronised Swimming while she still has some buoyancy left. Before any more athletes whinge about not being able to make the team with 'B' grade performances let's do something about getting the athletes from all countries who make the 'A' grade standard participating. Because of stupid quotas these athletes are barred from selection. I can't wait for the officials to change the rules to add quality 'A' performances and increase the current quota of 3 athletes per nation for major championships. Who doesn't want to see a steeplechase final full of Kenyans? For 'B' graders, an event could be held just prior to the Olympics to qualify for a set number of places or standard. If they wanted to try out for this event they would have to pay their own way though and then be added to their national team if they qualify.

You never know. I ran sub-2 minutes and never trained for 800.

Tamsyn could team up with Jana and start training for the bobsled team for the next winter olympics and see if she qualifies.

oldcker you have become obsolete hacker...Tamsyn is the best we have by a country mile. We all know our soccer team cant win the World Cup...do we participate or give up in despair...ask the soccer fans!

bewdy knackers you are right on the money...for the record Tamsyn doesn't get any government money...she prepares herself.

David, you hit the nail on the head with everything you said. Jocelyn how could you possibly believe that young kids would not be inspired and enthralled by watching a 17-time national champion athlete competing on the biggest international stage? Tamsyn is incredibly popular at grassroots level and she has always made the effort to interact with and motivate young children at numerous athletic clubs across the state. I find it very difficult to agree with your implication that young athletes would be uninspired by Tamsyn competing at the Olympic Games. She comfortably won the trials and has run the IAAF qualifying standard which certainly gives her solid grounds to appeal, coupled with numerous other factors. If you were to take a look at the results from the previous Olympics in the Women's 800m, Tamsyn was one of only 5 athletes to run under the A qualifying time. So for you to suggest she would finish last, or close too, in the heat stage, when most athletes didn't even break the 2minute barrier in the heat stage is rather far fetched. She is a proven racer and competitor and is in fantastic shape at the moment, emphasised by her recent 600m Australian record she recently posted FYI. The 2.03 you refer to is also incorrect, as her latest 800m race prior to you publishing this article she ran a 2.01.57, on the 8th of July, after going through the first lap in a swift 56 seconds against the Olympic champ. She has proven that she is able to match it with the best on the international stage and that in an event such as the 800m, a slow time can often win the race. You also state that "we don't have anyone near her in the 800m", but that is also incorrect. For your information, Kelly Hetherington is a young Victorian athlete who has run a quick time of 2.02.46 this season and showed great promise. She unfortunately succumbed to injury, but otherwise she too would have pushed strongly for Olympic selection. As noted by David, it is very unfortunate you feel the need to gloat about Tamsyn's non-selection, when she has been such an ambassador for the sport of athletics over the past 17 years. Only 3 Australian female athletes have EVER ran the current A qualifying standard being adhered to by Athletics Australia, with one of them being Tamsyn herself. You clearly have it in for Tamsyn and instead of lashing out you should be supporting athletes such as Tamsyn, who have dedicated their life to representing Australia and have achieved the necessary IAAF standards to compete.

Wayne and James, you made my day. Well thought out and well written. We need to keep things in perspecitve and give respect whereit is deserved. When the critics complete a session of 10 x 300m reps at race pace, then we will consider their comments. C

If you gave up 5 years of your life, in your fittest years, I would put my house on it that you couldn't get inside 10 seconds of Tamsyn. Get a grip.

Sorry Jocelyn you are wrong on so many levels. You can't accuse someone who won this year's national title of dining out on past glories. She has more than a good chance of reaching a semi. In almost all major competitions running 2:01 would get you through your heats. How much of taxpayers' money do you think it will require to send her to the Olympics? She's already living in London and wouldn't even necessarily want to be in the Olympic village! In almost any other country, she would be going to the games. She has hit the IAAF's qualifying standard, but is short of AA's. if we want to encourage young people into sport surely they should be encouraging everyone they can to compete in the green and gold. I don't know about you, but I think even getting selected to represent your country in the Olympic Games is a pretty inspiring thing, and unlike you- I don't think the Australian public are going to take an elitist stance and look down on her when she's seen giving it her all and not landing on the podium.

Jocelyn, I can't find your athletic results anywhere. Could you please direct us where your PBs might be. If you are including yourself in this story to be compared to Tamsyn Lewis who is a 17x National Champion maybe we should know your achievements. Exaggeration is a common practice in journalism these days so keep up the good work. Even if we did have 200 national champions competing in the women's 800m it would only add one more round of runs. Two hundred competitors with 8 in each heat is 25 heats. Top 2 in each heat go through giving us 50 runners for the next round. That is the same number that competed in round 1 last Olympic Games. In fact, you could just make it winner only goes through (after seeding heats), to make it 25 runners in Semis. Therefore only three runs. Tamsyn has been our top 800m runner since 1998 and still is in 2012, and easily. The standards for Olympic qualification differs for different countries. Some competitors in Round 1 of Beijing Olympics couldn't get within 30sec of Tamsyn, but they were still there. The A qualifier for Australia is just outside the Australian record set in 1976. That particular A qualifier would have seldom been reached by an Australian woman since then. With the World Junior Championships on in Spain at present, we do not have a representative in Women's 800m. I would suggest that the A qualifier will not be met by an Australian woman in quite some time. We will have to get used to not seeing any Australian's in this event in the near future. Why not send Tamsyn. She could make the semis with a 2.03 as Jelimo did in Beijing. Tamsyn has done a lot for what is a dying sport over her time at the top. I've seen her at many free clinics speaking to aspiring athletes of all ages. Although she goes off the handle often she is good for the sport. I say let her go as an appreciation for her dedication and inspiration in athletics since 1994.

Never understood those people who can't wait to write champions off as 'has-beens' - my Dad was like that and it was always irritating. Why should Tamysn 'fade quitely into retirement' when she is still a world-class athlete has done the hard yards to qualify for one last Olympics (not something I am aware of any of any of the nay-sayers having done?) She isn't asking for a 'wild card' - she won the trial and has run the IAAF qualifying standard - which, if she was American, would guarantee her a place in the team. The odds are against her making the semi-finals - but if every country applied that standard for selection, they wouldn't need to run the first two rounds. Like you, I was never remotely good enough to qualify for the Games in any event. Like you, I was always envious of the ones who did have the talent. Unlike you, I didn't feel inclined to gloat when they missed out because selectors applied unreasonable selection standards - and I have seen that many times over the years. BTW - as some posters apparently haven't been paying attention - Tamsyn has been paying her own way to Europe for the last two years. So taxpayer dollars really don't come into it.

Given that Olympic participation is generally reliant on tax dollar based sponsorship please be as harsh as you feel comfortable. I for one couldn't give a hoot about any of it, but if athletes are using my money to pay their elite way, then please feel free to actually be elite ! If not, then pay for it yourself & go for glory ! Just don't use my money do so.