Seeing What They Could Become

Talent Identification Isn't Talent Prediction

One of the great privileges of spending more than three decades teaching and coaching is occasionally seeing something in an athlete before they can necessarily see it themselves.

I've never believed talent identification is about predicting champions. Nobody really knows where an athlete's journey will end. Sometimes, though, you notice qualities — competitiveness, movement, speed, endurance, determination or simply the way someone responds to a challenge — that make you think, there's something here worth encouraging.

I've been fortunate to see that in several very different athletes.

I taught Michael Matthews and also coached him in basketball. That gave me the opportunity to see his athletic ability in a very different environment. He was clearly a gifted athlete — competitive, coordinated and with physical qualities that made you take notice.

I encouraged Michael to seriously pursue cycling because I felt that was where his abilities could really take him somewhere.

He went on to become one of Australia's most successful professional cyclists, winning stages at the Tour de France and, in 2017, winning the Tour de France Green Jersey as the winner of the points classification.

That's quite a journey from coaching a young Michael Matthews on a basketball court to eventually watching him stand on the podium in Paris wearing the Green Jersey.

There's an important lesson in that for anyone involved in junior sport. Our responsibility shouldn't necessarily be to keep a talented young person in our sport. Sometimes good coaching and teaching means recognising that their greatest opportunity may lie somewhere else and encouraging them to explore it.

I first taught Leanne Pompeani when she was 14. I remember telling her that she had gifts as an athlete. Years later, I've had the pleasure of coaching her and watching those gifts, combined with an extraordinary amount of hard work and commitment, develop into performances at the highest level of Australian distance running winning National titles on the track and road.

Her journey reinforces something else I've come to believe strongly: sometimes young people need someone else to recognise their potential before they fully recognise it themselves.

Then there is Riley McGown, whose story challenges the idea that talent always has to be identified when someone is 12 or 13.

Riley didn't even start athletics until he was 21 years old.

His first 800m with me was 2:16.

There was certainly nothing about 2:16 on a results sheet that screamed future Australian champion. But there were qualities there worth developing, and Riley kept improving.

Five years later, at 26, Riley won the Australian National 800m Championship.

That same year he ran 1:46.06.

21 years old — 2:16.

26 years old — 1:46.06 and Australian champion.

Riley's story is a wonderful reminder that we shouldn't put an expiry date on talent. Some athletes are obvious at 14. Others haven't even found their sport at 20.

And then there is Kieran Shepherd.

When Kieran came to me at 13, he wasn't the best distance runner in Australia. He finished around 43rd at the National Cross Country Championships.

But there were interesting signs.

He was an athlete. He could high jump 1.72m, long jump over five metres, had speed and coordination, and loved competing.

Three years later, at 16, Kieran ran 8:00.24 for 3000m, became Australian U20 1500m champion and then ran 3:42.25 to finish 8th in the World U20 1500m final.

The important part of Kieran's story isn't simply the 3:42.

It's everything that happened before it.

Junior development shouldn't be about discovering how much training a talented 13-year-old can tolerate or how quickly we can produce results. It's about gradually building their capacity while preserving the qualities that made them talented in the first place.

When I look at Michael, Leanne, Riley and Kieran, their stories are completely different.

Michael reminds me that sometimes you need to encourage an athlete towards another sport. A young basketball player I taught and coached ultimately found his pathway in cycling and went all the way to the Green Jersey at the Tour de France.

Leanne reminds me how important it can be to tell a young person when you recognise something special in them.

Riley reminds me that talent doesn't have an age limit and development doesn't follow a predetermined timetable.

And Kieran reminds me not to judge a 13-year-old by where they are today, but to think about where they might be in four, six or ten years.

That's probably the biggest lesson I've learned.

Talent identification isn't talent prediction.

I couldn't have predicted exactly where any of these athletes would eventually go.

What I could see was possibility.

And sometimes our most important job as teachers and coaches is to recognise that possibility, encourage it, provide the right environment and then give people enough time to discover just how good they might become.

These four very different journeys have shaped much of my thinking about talent identification and long-term athlete development — a topic I'm increasingly interested in sharing with junior sporting clubs, coaches and schools.