George Gandy has threatened to fly home from the World Indoor Championships after his gaffe-prone deputies "made a complete mess" of Tuesday night's training session. The self-proclaimed 'guru' slammed his assistant coaches for failing to allow the 5km group sufficient time to recover from their tempo run before moving onto hill repetitions. "That [the 5km error] was one of a number of things I was unhappy with" stormed Gandy from his Doha hotel, "I heard that we had people dropping out all over the place with 'stomach complaints' and some in the 800m group doing 20 minute tempo runs....a complete fiasco I'm afraid." It is thought the mix up occurred after Alasdair Donaldson sent an un-sanctioned email to the entire endurance group "clarifying" the training situation. "He [Donaldson] shouldn't have done that" said Gandy, "I'm the only one who can send emails".
This is not the first time things have gone awry in Gandy's absence. Late last year a Beacon Hill session was labelled "a disaster" by the guru when half the group trained at 11am and the other at 2:30pm. Several key athletes were hauled before Loughborough chiefs at the time to explain themselves. More recently, John Nutall was in hot water for running an "alternative" morning session on a Saturday. The pair had to be separated by stunned observers after Gandy threatened to revoke Nutall's campus car parking privileges.
Gandy has said that he spoke at length with Donaldson yesterday evening, but that in itself led to another foul-up. The Scot was supposed to be overseeing a Circuits session at the time and a whole minute passed without a single call- leaving some 'horizontal sprinting' the entire time. This was too much for 800m starlet Dani Christmas who branded the whole session a "waste of time". "I did 30 seconds too much on burpees," harrumphed Christmas calling Dame Kelly Holmes, "that could ruin my entire season now."
LSAC's Director is expected back in the East Midlands on Tuesday and will doubtless be hoping his program can remain in one piece until then.