Jones takes Britain to the Max

First comes the World Cup, then the world order. Simon Turnbull reports

Unlike the last coach who guided a team from these shores to a World Cup, Max Jones does not have a blonde television presenter tucked away in his personal closet. "If she is there, I hope she stays there," the man in charge of the British men's World Cup athletics team said.

Jones is no Sven Goran Eriksson. That much was clear last Monday night in Bradford. In his job as performance director of UK Athletics, which includes the role of chief coach to the British track-and-field team, Jones was taking part in a roadshow to spread the gospel of his beloved sport. There was no pressing public mob, no prying masses of the media, just a handful of aficionados.

"It's probably in direct proportion to how big football is, compared to athletics," Jones said, contrasting his public profile with that of the Swede. "You just look at the column inches. We struggle to get athletics on the back page. Athletics is big compared to other sports, but football is so huge." The fact is, though, that Britain's athletes are hugely successful, much more so than Britain's footballers.

They won 12 gold medals at the Commonwealth Games in July and seven at the European championships in Munich little more than a week later. Even at the end of a long track season, the British men are aiming for fourth place in the World Cup in Madrid's Comunidad Stadium next Friday and Saturday. And that would mean beating Brazil, Argen-tina and Mexico put together.

The quadrennial competition involves combined teams from the continents of the Americas, Europe, Africa, Asia and Oceania, as well as the might of the United States, the host nation (Spain) plus the winners (Great Britain) and runners-up (Germany) from the European Cup in Annecy in June.

In four appearances, the British men's team have never won the World Cup and, unlike England's football coach in the lead-up to Japan and South Korea, Jones does not entertain thoughts of a famous victory. "There are three superpowers in athletics – Africa, Europe and the USA," he said. "Come what may they will probably finish in the first three.

"Our task is to finish as high up as we can, and I think fourth place is a possibility. But basically I'm just pleased that we've qualified. That was our aim at the start of the season and now there are some great opportunities for people like Dwain Chambers, Jonathan Edwards, Colin Jackson and Steve Backley, because there are some top-three world- ranking spots to be decided."

Jones was a top-ranked athlete himself as a teenager. A native of Thornaby-on-Tees, he held the unique distinction of being the county schools hammer champion of Durham and Yorkshire at the same time. He was good enough to represent the Amateur Athletic Association, but at the age of 21 switched from competing to coaching. Now 55, he has worked as a full-time coach for the national governing body for 21 years – since 1998 in his present role.

"It's been exciting," Jones said, reflecting on his four years as performance director. "We've had Lottery funding and that's made a huge difference. Most sports spend all of their money on today, but we've chosen to spend half on tomorrow. We've invested in building High Performance Centres, and in the next two years we're going to have these indoor athletics centres coming on board – in Manchester, Loughborough, Birmingham, Gateshead, Sheffield and London. I'm really optimistic. I can see us moving up another notch, being No 2 in the world to the USA in 10 years' time."

In the meantime, No 4 in the World Cup would bring a highly satisfactory end to a highly successful season. It would also, of course, be more than Sven's boys achieved in their World Cup.