UK Athletics’ head coach’s future up in the air

London: It was Charles van Commenee who brought the issue up. Credibility, he said, was the crux of it. “If I hold athletes and coaches accountable every day, how could I work over the next four years if I am not accountable myself?” he asked.

The head coach of UK Athletics set his target at eight medals in this Olympics, including one gold. Fail and he would quit. “If I don’t hit my target and I stay in a job, that sends the wrong message to everybody,” he added.

And he’s short. Not by a vast amount, but enough. Take Mo Farah and Great Britain’s golden hour away and a lot of the track and field events have been a bust. Batons dropped, inferior times, gambles that failed to pay off.

Van Commenee picked Lynsey Sharp for the 800m ahead of four rivals with superior performances, and she tearfully failed to qualify. The rift with Phillips Idowu was a public embarrassment.

There really is nothing else for him to do but - stay. Of course, stay. Don’t be silly. Are you mad? Four gold medals? Four gold medals and we lose the coach? What are we, the Football Association?

We need a little perspective here. In one hour alone at the Olympic Stadium, Van Commenee did four years’ work. That was before Farah became the UK’s greatest Olympic runner.

Charlie is a controversial character, true. He ticks people off. He makes enemies, no doubt of it. But he also gets results. Not as many as he would have liked, but in the part of the medal table that matters.

Only the US and Russia have won more gold medals than Great Britain in track and field at these Games. The last time Britain had three different gold medallists was in 1984 when Sebastian Coe, Daley Thompson and Tessa Sanderson triumphed at a Games that did not include Russia or the Iron Curtain countries.

Given that the US boycotted Moscow in 1980 - when Britain won four golds - this is surely Britain’s best performance in athletics since Lynn Davies, Ken Matthews, Ann Packer and Mary Rand were on top of the podium in Tokyo in 1964.

In Olympic terms, David Coleman coined it when calling the 400m hurdles in Mexico City in 1968. “Hemery wins for Britain,’ he said. “It’s Hennige in second place and who cares who’s third, it doesn’t matter.”

Turns out quite a few people did as the bronze medallist was British, too. Coleman was forced to eat humble pie on the subject for years. Yet his instincts were right; because while you will probably have heard of Olympic gold medallist and former world record- holder David Hemery, the name John Sherwood won’t ring too many bells.

Hemery was Sports Personality of the Year, the first president of UK Athletics and a Commander of the British Empire. Sherwood taught PE for 37 years at Firth Park Community Arts College in Sheffield.

Once your team have got gold, the other podium finishes are all but irrelevant. Kelly Holmes took an Olympic bronze medal in Sydney in 2000 but don’t anticipate seeing it on screen any time soon. There is more chance of a lost Pete and Dud sketch turning up in the BBC archives than an outing for Dame Kelly’s third place, erased from memory after her double gold in Athens.

So Van Commenee may not have delivered precisely on his original promise, but he exceeded all expectations in the area that truly matters. If he had won nine medals, eight bronze and one gold, he would have beaten his target but it would not have felt like success.

If he had won 10 but no golds at all, there would be no clamour for him to remain. Yet four and the greatest night in British Olympic history? Van Commenee must stay for the same reason that Roberto Di Matteo deserves to be manager of Chelsea this season. Di Matteo won the Champions League; so, in his own way, did Van Commenee.

The Dutchman continues insisting that he is done now. He spoke to his employers at UK Athletics on Saturday and, despite Farah-related euphoria, reiterated his belief that six medals was not enough.

Challenged, he says he will go on holiday and think about it; except nobody will be waving him goodbye and good riddance at Heathrow Airport as he once predicted. If he goes, Van Commenee will leave the crowd wanting more.

He gets results, even if his standards are higher. Is he always as smart as he thinks he is? No. But we knew that anyway.

There is more than a bit of Fabio Capello in Van Commenee. Yet just as the World Cup in 2010 was a sobering experience for Capello, who discovered his regimented approach did not translate successfully to a foreign tournament, so Van Commenee’s greatest worth now is as a man with the clearest idea of how to prepare for Rio in 2016.

Capello learned from the disappointment of South Africa and changed. The same could be said of Van Commenee in 2016.

He WILL know where he went wrong. This was his first Olympics as a team-specific athletics coach - he had previously worked with individuals and his position at Beijing in 2008 was technical director to the Dutch Olympic Committee, not just the track-and-field operation - and there must be lessons in his handling of Idowu, or his unnecessarily confrontational stance over Tiffany Porter.

No nation that fumbles the relay baton as much as Britain can be said to function effectively in team disciplines, either. These are the areas in which it is to be hoped Van Commenee revises his thinking: if he can be persuaded to stay.

His main character trait is stubbornness. Capello had that, too. And some are convinced that, like Capello, Van Commenee is searching for a way out, and sticking to his eight-medal target is a way of engineering that departure. In which case, it is time for Niels de Vos, chief executive of UK Athletics, to do his job.

There will be plenty of other countries looking at Super Saturday with envy, plenty who will be viewing the medal table and thinking their own team needs the sort of shake-up Van Commenee could provide. Not least the next Olympic hosts, Brazil.

There is no point in focusing on legacy if we do not give the best coaches the chance to build on what has been achieved at London 2012.

The biggest challenge for Van Commenee, meanwhile, is still here: to maintain the impact of the last nine days, swallow his pride and carry on. It would be quite the achievement; on both fronts.

— Daily Mail