Charlie Walsh

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Charlie Walsh Road cycling
To person
Full name David Barry Vivian Walsh
Date of birth 13th March 1941 (age 79)
nation AustraliaAustralia Australia
discipline Road / train
End of career 1978
Team (s) as coach
1980-2000 National team Australia
Last updated: September 26, 2018

David Barry Vivian "Charlie" Walsh , OAM , (born March 13, 1941 ) is a retired Australian cycling coach and racing cyclist . He is the most successful national cycling coach in the country to date.

Career as an athlete

Charlie Walsh was a professional cyclist from 1963 to 1978. He started in twelve six-day races, of which he won two: 1967 with Sydney Patterson that of Adelaide and 1968 that of Whyalla with Keith Oliver . In 1969 he won the world's oldest track race still taking place, the Austral Wheel Race .

Activity as a trainer

In 1980 Walsh became the Australian national coach at the Australian Institute of Sport (AIS) and worked as such until 2000. In these two decades, the Australian athletes won a total of 78 gold medals (seven Olympic, 35 World Cup medals and 36 gold medals at the Commonwealth Games ), 50 Silver medals (11 Olympic, 20 World Cup medals and 19 Commonwealth Games) and 51 bronze medals (16 Olympic, 27 World Cup medals and eight Commonwealth Games). The athletes he supervises set 44 records, twelve Olympic, ten World Cup and 22 Commonwealt Games records.

A highlight of Walsh's work was winning the gold medal for the track four at the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles . This was the first Olympic gold medal in cycling for Australia since 1956 . The successful ones among his protégés were called "Charlie's Angels" .

After the Olympic Games in Sydney in 2000 Walsh resigned from his position as national coach. He later stated that one of his reasons for resignation was his “frustration” because of the international doping problem in cycling.

Honors

In 1982 and 1984 Charlie Walsh was named Coach of the Year by Australia, and in 1993 and 1995 both Individual Coach of the Year and Team Coach of the Year . In 1987 he was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia .

Walsh was inducted into the Sport Australia Hall of Fame in 1992 and the Cycling Australia Hall of Fame in 2015 .

Criticism from athletes

Despite his successes and honors, Walsh was controversial as a coach. The Olympic champion in the road race in 1992, Kathy Watt , reported on the climate in the national team under Walsh: “It was very male, very chauvinistic. Charlie Walsh was against anybody not within the system ”(“ It was very masculine, very chauvinistic. Charlie Walsh was against anyone who did not fit in. ”). She had seen a report by sports psychologists in which the words "subservient" and "submissive" (both means "submissive") were often used to describe the atmosphere in the national team. Watt himself ended her cycling career because of Walsh in 2000; However, after Walsh resigned from his coaching post after the 2000 Olympics , Watt returned to the sport in 2003.

In 1998, the Australian-Belgian driver Matthew Gilmore decided to start for Belgium in the future because he did not want to go under Walsh's wing and was therefore regularly not nominated for international competitions.

In 2014, 1988 Olympic gold medalist Scott McGrory published a critical article about Walsh's handling of the riders. He accused this of “coaching by fear of dismissal” (“training with the fear of being thrown out”). There was an atmosphere of merciless selection without personal address under Walsh. Former racing driver Baden Cooke said: “He tried to crush me as a person. I was lucky I was one of the guys who came out strong after it. "(" He tried to destroy me as a person. I was lucky, I was one of those who became strong as a result. ") Other drivers, however, are" been destroyed. Drivers like Dean Woods defended Walsh with reference to his successes.

The Australian journalist and former racing driver Jonathan Lovelock published an article a few days after O'Grady entitled The human cost of gold medals - The dark secrets of the Charlie Walsh era , in which drivers like Billy-Joe Shearsby , Darryn Hill and Robbie McEwen confirmed the information provided by O'Grady. Ewen put it more vividly: “Charlie threw eggs on the wall, and the four that didn't break were on the team.” Hill, whose father Brian reported in an interview in 1998 that the athletes were afraid of Walsh: “Today I'm still paying for the sh ... we had to go through. ”It took him a long time to overcome the consequences. His father Brian confirmed in 1998 that there was also sexual harassment in the team, but did not want to comment on details.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f Sport Australia Hall of Fame: David 'Charlie' Walsh OAM - Coach - Cycling. In: sahof.org.au. Retrieved March 8, 2017 .
  2. ↑ Roger de Maertelaere: Mannen van de night. 100 years of zesdaagsen . De Eecloonaar, Eeklo 2000, ISBN 90-74128-67-X , p. 216 .
  3. ^ The Austral Wheel Race: the world's oldest track race. In: - CyclingTips. December 16, 2016, accessed September 26, 2018 .
  4. ↑ a b c d Scott McGrory : Reflecting On A 'Legend': Charlie Walsh. In: Cycling Tips. March 4, 2014, accessed March 8, 2017 .
  5. ^ Reece Homfray: Doping woes frustrated top cycling coach Charlie Walsh. In: The Advertiser. July 25, 2015, accessed September 26, 2018 .
  6. ↑ Reece Homfray ,: Coach Charlie Walsh honored in cyclings hall of fame. In: The Advertiser. November 13, 2015, accessed September 26, 2018 .
  7. ^ Brian Oliver: The Commonwealth Games. A&C Black, 2014, ISBN 978-1-472-90844-5 , p. 138 ( limited preview in Google Book Search).
  8. ↑ Watt plans Olympic comeback. In: theage.com.au. June 3, 2003, accessed September 26, 2018 .
  9. ^ How Australia lost an Olympic silver medalist to Belgium. In: smh.com.au. May 11, 2002, accessed September 27, 2018 .
  10. ^ A b c Jonathan Lovelock: The human cost of gold medals. In: Cycling Tips. March 5, 2014, accessed September 25, 2018 .
  11. ^ Dean Woods responds to Charlie Walsh Criticism. In: Cycling Tips. May 13, 2016, accessed September 26, 2018 .
  12. ↑ Memories of Green: A Tribute to Robbie McEwen. In: - Bicycling Australia. March 13, 2018, accessed September 27, 2018 .
  13. ^ A b Karen Tighe / Laurie Cousins: The Australian Track Squad Crisis. In: autobus.cyclingnews.com. August 8, 1998. Retrieved September 26, 2018 .
personal data
SURNAME Walsh, Charlie
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Walsh, David Barry Vivian (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Australian cycling coach and racing cyclist
DATE OF BIRTH March 13, 1941