Athletes retention vital: Miller

National athletics coach Albert Miller has stressed the need for the national body to retain their experienced athletes within the sport.

Over 100 participants, mainly young athletes turned up at the Commonwealth Games trials at Suva’s HFC Bank Stadium on Saturday.

“I was looking at the 100 metres today (Saturday) there’s no senior athlete as its all secondary school kids so to us that’s a wakeup call for the national body,” Miller said.

“For athletics Fiji, we need to wake up and start retaining some of these athletes otherwise it’ll be the same old story year in, year out.”

Lone Fijian track athlete to the 2024 Paris summer Olympics in France Waisake Tewa was included in the Fiji men’s sevens training squad by head coach Osea Kolinisau last month.

“It’s early in the season and I bet you 90 per cent of these athletes, it’s the first time they are competing as some of them doing off-season training but no competition so this is basically the first time they’re running in their event,” Miller said.

“It’s hard to expect any outstanding times for example, 11.1 was the winning time so it’s way off the qualifying standard so I mean it’s a starting point and it can only get better from here, at least the athletes know where they stand.”

Miller was concerned with the quality of the format of competition structure for the Commonwealth trials.

“I know some of the schools are using it as their time trial and trying to get their teams for the Coca-Cola ready so in that sense it sorts of defeating our purpose,” he said.

“I mean this is the time trials for the commonwealth games, so I think we need to start looking at things like that where we prioritize our athletes who are vying for a spot in the national team.”

Miller added that it was vital to prioritize athletes who are keen to represent the country in important competitions like the Commonwealth games.

“All in all, we’re just glad we’re getting the number of athletes maybe we just need more competitions,” he said.

“We got 10 heats of 100 metres then if you’re trying for a spot in the commonwealth games, you’re waiting around two, three hours at the end of the day its not fair to you.”

Miller said they will need to improve the quality of the competitions for their national athletes.

“All in all, I’m just glad athletes are showing up in numbers and hopefully the standards will improve in the coming months,” he said.