Indoor athletics

My mother always said don't run indoors.

Aside from the obvious risk of breaking a nice vase there is always the danger of tripping over the edge of the rug.

So I can only imagine how horrified she would be to tune it at the weekend and see the World indoor athletics championships.

Thing is she would probably be the only person tuning in, certainly from Ireland. While we hardly have a team like the US or the Chinese our few really class athletes are not attending.

Derval O'Rourke and David Gillick, probably our two best known and most talented track athletes have both pulled out of this years World Indoors.

Like vintage music shops, both have good records indoors and like Steven Spielberg, they are citing Beijing as the reason for withdrawal.

The merits of holding this event, less than 6 months before the Olympics has to be questioned. Gillick stated that there was no point peaking for the season in March with the Olympics in August.

The power of the Olympics is undiminished. Expect the papers to be full of horrendous training schedules that these people go through as the Olympics draws near.

In the build up to the Athens Olmpics the Irish Times ran a series on the preparation of the Irish rower, Sam Lynch. It was like a Human Rights Watch report about Guantanamo. I was knackered just reading it.

Without doubt these people love their sport, and are competing for the love of pitting themselves against the best in the world.

However that competition is not taking place in Valencia this weekend, it will be taking place in the Birds Nest Stadium in Beijing in August.