What does Charles Van Commonee - the man charged with delivering excellence at next year's Olympics - think of Twitter? "It's for attention seekers and clowns" the UKA supremo opined to the BBC yesterday afternoon. Van Commonee, who has seemingly forgotten that athletics isn't actually a team sport, was most upset when Phillips Idowu (World Triple Jump Champion and major prospect for Olympic Gold) supposedly announced to the social networking site that he was not to compete at this weekend's European Team Championships.
"These things are done personally, there are certain channels you have to follow" CVC gravely told the camera "I expect somebody with such a profile [Idowu] to follow these procedures". Somewhat embarrassingly for CVC, it seems that Idowu did follow these procedures and only told his Twitter following after emailing the UKA hierarchy. Whoops! It would be even more humiliating for the organisation hell bent on success next year if, say, they had dismissed a world-renowned sprint coach at the drop of a hat for not quite toeing the party line. Although that would never happen as everyone is expected to follow "certain channels" aren't they?
The Dutchman does have a point about Twitter users being attention seekers and clowns though. Just look at some of these Tweets: "In the words of ABBA 'The winner takes it all' - and that's exactly what the men's 4x100m relay just did in a Championship record time!" and "Did you know, this very stadium in Stockholm hosted the 1912 Olympic Games, which saw electric timing introduced for athletics? You do now!". This same user even found the time to re-tweet two of Mr Idowu's messages (unrelated to scandal) and ponder how a queue for toast may effect James Shane's race chances. This couldn't be a salaried member of UKA staff (known within the camp as Mr Twitter) who tweets under the user name 'UKA_athletics' could it?