Steve Doig

Endurance

What is your athletics background?

I first got involved in the sport in the autumn of 1976. I remember watching the Olympic 10,000m final in Montreal and being captivated by the performance of Brendan Foster. Following that race I spent weeks asking my dad to take me along to an athletics club so that I could become a distance runner.

He eventually gave in to my constant badgering and I became a member of Fife Southern Harriers, which was a club based in Kirkcaldy. As happens with many parents my dad also got involved, after he was asked to help with coaching, and he became one of the coaches of the junior group.

I competed for Fife Southern throughout my secondary school years and then joined Clydesdale Harriers when I moved to Glasgow for college.

After graduating I moved to London and was briefly a member of Shaftesbury Harriers before joining Old Gaytonian’s, now Harrow AC. I was a member of Old Gaytonians for around eight years competing in middle distance events such as 800m, 1500m and 5000m.

What brought you into coaching?

I started coaching in around 2006 when my daughter, Shona, became interested in joining Fife Athletic Club (Fife Southern had amalgamated with Fife AC around 15 years earlier).

I worked with a small group of 9 and 10-year-olds and we trained once a week on a Monday evening.

As that group progressed, we began training twice a week, then three times and finally reached a point, after a few years, where the athletes who had stayed within the group were training four or five times a week.

My interest has always been in endurance running, so that has been my main focus, but when the group began, we spent time on movement skills and experimented with a variety of events. I still remember our gym hall hammer sessions using plastic bags and footballs!

How long have you been coaching and in what field?

The main focus of my coaching now is endurance running and I work mainly with Under 17/Under 20 and senior athletes. The athletes within the group focus on middle distance but we also have a small group of road runners.

I still coach younger athletes and the original Monday evening session, which started in 2006, is still going strong and is a general session for 9 – 13-year-olds.

A significant development occurred in early 2016, when following discussions with Richard Brickley, Chairman of Disability Sport Fife, Owen Miller began to train within the endurance group. Owen is an ambulant T20 Para athlete and when he joined us his goal was to break four minutes for 1500m and to gain selection for the Paralympic Games having missed out in 2012.

We are now in the extremely fortunate situation where we have six ambulant para-athletes, and another athlete who is on the autistic spectrum but without a para classification, training within the group. These athletes are part of our main training groups, and we aim to provide a very inclusive training environment for everyone involved.

What do you consider your biggest achievement from a coach perspective?

The introduction of Owen to the group provided the opportunity to have an athlete perform at Paralympic level. In 2021 he became the Tokyo Paralympic Games champion in the T20 1500m final. This was the culmination of five years of hard work and was a great reward for the dedication and effort he puts into the sport.

Stepping back slightly from this performance I think the biggest achievement from a coaching perspective is that over this period we have, as a group, managed to support Owen’s training and racing to enable him to improve year on year and eventually win his Paralympic Gold Medal. His victory was an outstanding personal achievement, but its foundations were facilitated by the efforts of his training partners.

I’ve been lucky as a coach to work with a group of athletes, who all have their own ambitions, but who were prepared to also devote time to helping with this process.

What is your coaching philosophy?

My coaching philosophy is I guess the same as many other coaches – to work with athletes and to help them fulfil their potential within the sport.

It’s long been my belief that we could help individuals achieve their goals if we worked collectively as a group. I’ve been fortunate to have the assistance of several assistant coaches who have embraced this idea of ‘the power of the group’ and with their help we have created a strong group identity.

This way of thinking works very well with endurance athletes, and I think the sense of group identity and responsibility also helps individuals within the group develop as they always have the support of others in training and in competition.

The addition of Para athletes to the group, and the ease with which they were accepted and included reflects the value of this group approach.

What keeps you motivated?

I enjoy the day-to-day involvement with athletes at all levels and it’s a great feeling to help people reach targets that they have set. Whether it’s an 800m/1500m runner trying to break 2 minutes/4 minutes or a road runner trying to break 40 minutes for 10k the sense of satisfaction for the coach is the same.

I was lucky enough to work with two outstanding endurance coaches – Brian MacAusland and Bob Parker.

Both of these coaches had a massive influence on me when I was an athlete and I hope to have the same impact on the athletes that I work with. I think this is a great way to honour the work that they did with me.

What are your ambitions for 2023 and beyond?

In the short term there are Para World Championships in 2023 and looming ever closer are the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games.

The ambitions going forward are to get several of the athletes within the group involved in the British teams and in the T20 1500m the aim is to try and win more medals in this classification.

Looking slightly further ahead it would be nice to get an athlete/athletes involved in a Scottish Commonwealth Games team. We went close this year but unfortunately it wasn’t to be. Hopefully it will be a different story in four years.