Athletics: Share of limelight for a coach of the yesteryear

Alex Stanton, the guru who guides Paula Radcliffe, has no wish to turn professional

In the rush to acclaim Sven Goran Eriksson as UK coach of the year last week, one minor detail was largely overlooked. The Swede, who has been paid £1 million a year to guide England to the finals of the World Cup, shared his award with an athletics coach who has never received a professional penny for 20 years of service to his sport.

It is no reflection on Eriksson, who has more than paid his way over the past year. But Alex Stanton, coach to Paula Radcliffe, comes from the old school where payment cramps independence and coaches do their work for love not money. "I wouldn't want to be professional," he says. "You have to answer to people then. If you're not paid, you can try out your own ideas and if they go wrong, well, there's only yourself to blame. Paula knows that if I've got something to say, I'll say it without any complication."

At the end of each season, Radcliffe and Stanton have their ritual conversation. He says: "Do you want me to carry on?" And she says: "Yes, I'll stay with you for one more year, old boy." This has happened for roughly 10 years now.

Radcliffe pays her coach's travelling expenses for events and winter camps, but wages do not complicate a trust first established on the back lanes of Bedfordshire when Stanton rode his bike in a desperate attempt to keep up with the slight and ever-improving teenager running in front. At the age of 66, he is still riding his bike and looking after what he calls his "family of athletes", of all ages and varying abilities. He actually claims no credit for spotting the determination which has driven Radcliffe to become world half-marathon and cross-country champion and so agonisingly close to ultimate success on the track.

As a voice in the background reminds him, the real talent-spotter was his wife, Rosemary, who was also honoured with the Sam Mussabini medal at the Sports Coach UK awards lunch last Thursday. "From the very first, Paula had an attitude, a certain sort of 'Come what may I'll be around for a long time' bloody-mindedness," Stanton explains. "She just kept coming back. You can't put that in people. But Rosemary saw it, I didn't." Eriksson will be demanding much the same sort of character from his squad early next summer.

The shame of an increasingly prestigious occasion in front of HRH The Princess Royal at the Café Royal last week was that Eriksson was unable to share his coaching philosophy or his experiences with his audience. All his energy is rightly concentrated on preparing England for duty in Japan and Korea next year, but his position as coach of the national team sooner or later demands the fulfilment of wider duties to coaches in British sport who would undoubtedly benefit from his expertise.

Stanton, for one, wanted to meet his co-award-winner, not least because that was the first question his son asked when he returned home. "Did you meet Sven, dad?" But Eriksson had a game to attend and the Stantons had to hurry away to see two of their athletes off on the plane to the European cross-country champ- ionships in Switzerland.

Yet, in their different ways, Stanton and Eriksson are testimony to the belief that gifted coaches, no less than talented athletes, can emerge from the most unpromising of backgrounds. Eriksson was the son of a truck driver in provincial Sweden and an extremely average right full-back in a Second Division side. Stanton was a production-line worker at the Vauxhall plant in Bedford, his wife is still a pay clerk at the local bank. Neither has run competitively in their lives. Eriksson took up coaching on the advice of his friend and assistant, Tord Grip; the Stantons drifted into coaching when their daughter took an interest in the local athletics club. They learnt by listening, watching and reading.

"What makes a good coach?" Stanton ponders the question. "It's a matter of how you click with a certain person, develop a commitment and a trust," he says. "We're in touch with Paula every morning and every evening if I'm not with her. All athletes are different and you have to respect that. Paula likes to have me with her on the warm-up track before a race. I'm pretty laid-back, so I can calm her down. Liz Yelling likes to prepare on her own more. It's understanding what suits the athlete."

A couple of months ago, Stanton's club won the Southern road-relay race in Aldershot by four minutes, but the fact that a huge crowd hung on until the end to watch Radcliffe run gave him the most pleasure. "It was one heck of an afternoon," he says.

If he had not been flying off to the European championships in Switzerland this weekend at his own expense, he would have been at Bury St Edmunds for the regional cross-country championships. Not even the heftiest of pay packets can buy that sort of dedication.