British coaches in conflict over Lewis

World Championships: Row over heptathlete threatens British harmony

Trouble was brewing in the British camp yesterday as Denise Lewis's coach Charles Van Commenee took issue with comments made by UK Athletics Performance Director Max Jones following the Olympic champion's with-drawal from the heptathlon.

As Lewis prepared to fly home, her sense of frustration would have been heightened by the news that Eunice Barber, the favourite and defending champion, had dramtically pulled out of the competition after failing to record a distance with any of her three shot puts in the third of the seven disciplines. Her personal disaster came after two outstanding performances in the 100m hurdles and high jump, where she recorded a personal best of 12.79sec and 1.88m. Sadly for the British competitor, there was no going back on the confused events of the previous 48 hours.

Jones had said that Lewis's failure to be fit enough to compete at the World Championships here was due to her "Olympic festivities" after winning in Sydney, which had caused her to delay her return to training. "One thing will be said," he added. "She won't be making a late start next winter"

Van Commonee flatly rejected that analysis shortly before the heptathlon got under way yesterday, maintaining that there had been no question of Lewis not competing until she became ill last Tuesday. "I simply don't agree," he said as he gazed out at the hurdles being put up for the first event. "I think that is unfair. If you train 30 weeks, as we have, it doesn't make much difference in training 30 or 32 weeks. It does make a difference whether you have done two or four weeks, but not at 30 weeks. It didn't make any difference at all.

"I agree with Max that ideally we want all our athletes to return to training four weeks after a championship, but Denise was really badly injured after Sydney and she needed time to recover. We started training on 1 January. It wasn't possible to start earlier. She had no chance.

"You can see 100 athletes on the track. How many of them will have this ideal preparation? Maybe 10. Denise is facing problems all the time, and you have to change and improvise. I think we are quite good at it.'

Van Commenee also rejected what he saw as suggestions the Lewis's stomach complaint was not valid, and that she may have been influenced by the strong recent form of Barber.

"Reading between the lines, some articles are about whether Denise is ill or whether that is the whole story. That is the opinion of some people in the press. That is not what Denise and I feel. We are talking here of someone who was born with competitive genes. One day she will leave this planet in a coffin and still be competitive.

"From 1 January until last Tuesday there was no doubt about her taking part here. An Olympic champion does not prepare for such a long time and then come all the way to Edmonton just to pull out on the last day for other reasons.

"She was ill. She has suffered from this complaint for the last 10 years. Sometimes it happens every month, sometimes it happens twice a year. It is not a female problem, nothing to do with hormones or her cycle or so on. But specialists have not been able to find the answer.

"She is very, very down right now. It is very frustrating. We have prepared for these Championships for 10 months, because the business of rehabilitating began straight after the Olympics, and this is hard to deal with."

Jones had said earlier that there was no reason why Lewis couldn't return in time for the Goodwill Games later this month as she worked towards her ultimate ambition of a second Olympic gold in Athens three years' hence.

But he clearly ascribed her failure to turn out here to what happened in Sydney, since when Lewis has made numerous personal appearances. "I think the real cause is probably the Olympic festivities after her win," Jones said. "Not getting back to serious training until late winter meant everything then had to go according to plan, and what she didn't need was the two-to-three days of disruption she had this week."

"You wouldn't expect an Olympic champion to go back into training two days after they got back. But Denise said to me this morning, 'If I had started two or three weeks earlier there would have been a completely different situation.'

"In many ways it was more mental than physical. Physically she wasn't far away, but with a gruelling two-day event like the heptathlon you have to be 100 per cent ­ you can't go in there at 99 per cent. She just wasn't convinced that she could represent her country and bring back medals."

Van Commenee accepted that there was a mental element involved in her decision. "If you are throwing up, and you know that in three days five billion people will be watching you defend your reputation as Olympic champion, how does that affect you? Big time. If you feel you can't do yourself justice it's a mental case"