Simon Lawson bombshell
Friday 12 March 2010
In a shock announcement, Simon Lawson, who will be 20 later this month, has quit athletics despite having won the European Junior championship 10,000m silver medal last year and seeming to have a successful career ahead of him.
Although now recovered from injury, Simon has blamed UK Athletics' and Welsh Athletics' lack of support for his disillusionment with the sport.
He told Athletics Weekly, "Over the past year, I seem to have made many people turn against me and have found that so many aspects of the sport, both locally and at a higher level, are such that I no longer want to continue doing what I do. Not conforming to the norm meant that I have always been critricised locally."
When Lawson's application to UKA for Lottery funding last autumn was rejected, he said, "I felt that my performances were what the funding should be based on - not an ability to create colourful progress graphs and a detailed account of your day-to-day training schedule for 12 months."
Lawson had also complained that UK Athletics had not allowed him to double up at the European Junior Championships last summer in Novi Sad, believing that he was capable of winning a second medal in the 5000m. "This left me disillusioned with the sport I had put so much into in training and was refused a race by people who didn't know the first thing about me", he commented.
Simon's philosophy was that he wanted to be able to take on the African runners and, in order to do so, needed to train harder than any other British athlete. "The mileage (150 miles or more per week) was never aimless", said the self-coached Lawson. "It was all planned, well thought out and I had hoped to coincide my best marathon years with the 2012 Olympics, before qualifying as a doctor the following year and focusing solely on my career. I never saw athletics as a long term thing.
"I just feel that people in the sport are spoiling it and would rather call it a day now, instead of sacrificing so much only to be let down again in the future when it really matters. Over the last few weeks, I've been happier than ever, able to run and do other sports without worry or pressure"
Simon has featured on this website frequently and was the club's athlete of the month twice in recognition of his fine achievements. It is a pity that such a promising career has ended in this way and he will be missed. Unless he can be persuaded to change his mind, we shall never know whether his (admittedly controversial) training regime would have proved the doubters wrong.
We can only wish him every success in his chosen medical career.