Athletics: Power of Planet Football overshadows athletes' triumphs

Dave Moorcroft, the chief executive of UK Athletics, gazed out from the balcony of Bedford's International Stadium this week and sighed. Beneath the former world 5,000 metres record holder, and in front of no more than a smattering of spectators and not a single television camera, the latest generation of British talent ran, jumped and threw itself into an early-season meeting.

In just over a month's time, these same athletes – who included medal-laden sprinters such as Mark Lewis Francis, Dwain Chambers, Darren Campbell, Christian Malcolm and Jason Gardener – will have their moment in the sun as they seek to gild the Queen's Jubilee year at the Manchester Commonwealth Games. (Sorry, that should have read moment in the rain. Only joking!)

But right now, as Moorcroft's mild exasperation attested, these speed merchants might as well be plying their swift trade on the Planet Zargon for all the media attention they are likely to receive. Right now, we all inhabit Planet Football. Every summer, despite the fact that athletes are regularly winning their own equivalents of World Cup or European Championships, the sport receives a coverage far more patchy than it believes it deserves.

Take even the most recent high profile event, when Paula Radcliffe won the Flora London Marathon on her debut at the distance, shattering the women's-only race world record and coming within 15 seconds of the all-time women's fastest. Certainly the BBC made much of her success. But an equivalent achievement from the England football team would have had the nation in a paroxysm of ecstasy, and the nation's T-shirt printers on permanent overtime.

Ah, the equivalent game. It is one which has been played through the years by those who run British athletics with varying degrees of resignation. Logically it is a fair enough proposition. On that basis, however, we should currently be a nation of curlers, given that we have the Olympic and world champions within these shores.

And are we a nation of curlers? Answer this simple question. Who is Fiona MacDonald? For those who remember her from the victorious quartet in Salt Lake City four months ago, here is a further question. What announcement did she recently make?

Anyone who correctly recalls that she decided to retire at the age of 27 in order to focus on other aspects of her life, including her career, can give themselves a jolly big clap. The noise is unlikely to be deafening. The few hundred interested souls who attended the Bedford meeting may have been less than aware of it, but the spectacle they witnessed, though cheerful and relaxed, also contained some big clues as to why athletics is always fighting an uphill gradient in its efforts to command the public stage.

Big efforts have been made in Britain's major televised meetings to keep spectators abreast of what is going on as they witness an arena teeming with ant-like activity. But, in its raw state, athletics takes a lot of tracking.

There's a roar from somewhere. A javelin is soaring, and now shuddering in the ground. Blazered officials move urgently towards the new arrival as if it has fallen from space. At the other end of the field, a number of strong looking men are pacing restlessly about. "Was that Mick Hill?" the man beside me asks. He is the chief executive of UK Athletics. "I didn't see," I reply. I am an athletics correspondent.

Despite the efforts of an announcer, the Bedford event was not easy to follow, especially for the inexperienced – something that was simple enough to confirm as I witnessed it through the eyes of my two younger children, neither of whom had attended an athletics meeting before. We hit an early problem as both attached their loyalty to the fair-haired woman who established a commanding early lead in the 800 metres. Not knowing who she was – there was no programme, and we couldn't make out what the announcer was saying – we had to settle for cheering on 'fair hair' until, inexplicably, she gave up with exactly a lap to go.

As I attempted to explain the concept of pacemaking to the two crestfallen spectators beside me, I realised that this was a sport where knowledge was not just helpful, but essential. And in the course of any athletics meeting, an awful lot of knowledge is required.

Thankfully the sight of a woman judge stumbling backwards over the infield 40-metres marker soon convinced two young onlookers that this sport could after all provide satisfying entertainment. And when, later, they spoke to the man whom one of them used to call Linford Crispie, the impression seemed to have been confirmed. So far, so good. It won't be long, I'm sure, before they start talking about triple jump transition and starting technique.