What was the secret of US track and field athletes’ success at Paris Olympics? Max Siegel, USATF CEO, reveals | Sport-others News

The Paris Olympics ended last week in one of the most thrilling photo finishes on top of the medals tally with both USA and China ending with 40 gold medals each. Team USA did claim the top spot, thanks to the athletics contingent contributing to over a quarter of their medals. In fact, if the American track and field contingent were a separate country at the Paris Olympics, it would have ended up in the eighth spot on the medals table with 14 golds and 34 medals overall.With the next Olympics being hosted in the USA in four years time, does this kind of success add more pressure on USA Track and Field to better their medals tally at LA 2028?
“We enjoy pressure. We started to see a trend with athletic performance starting with the World Championship in Eugene. It (The medal haul at Paris 2024) does set a really high bar. But it gives our athletes something to work towards,” Max Siegel, who has been the CEO of USA Track and Field since May 2012, tells The Indian Express.
Siegel points out that the bar for US Track and Field (USATF) for major competitions like the Olympics and the World Championships is 27 medals, plus or minus two or three. So anywhere between 25 to 30 medals is a “solid benchmark performance” for USATF.
“Probably our worst performance came at Beijing 2008 when we had 19 medals. Our goal is to stay around that 25 to 30 medal range. That’s our goal,” says Siegel.
At the elite level, it’s the fine margins that separate a medal winner from everyone else. And while athletes get plenty of credit, the federations (called National Governing Bodies in USA) also must be doing something to aid medal winners. So what is that the USATF does that separates it from other federations around the world?
One of the key factors is attitude: despite the USATF being the top medal fetching governing body across the world, it constantly looks at what other nations or athletes are doing.
“We’re constantly trying to identify sports disciplines that we need to get better at. We look at the best practices, what the coaches are doing in training, what’s happening in terms of science and support,” says Siegel.
“There are a lot of global athletes who train in the USA and go to our schools. We collaborate with them. We have our elite coaches hosting monthly calls where they invite other coaches from around the world to discuss latest techniques among other things. We also occasionally have elite athletes stay in the USA and train with us. Recently we had Japan’s running and relay teams training,” adds Siegel.
The United States’ women 4×100-meter relay gold medals, from left: Sha’carri Richardson, Gabrielle Thomas, Twanisha Terry and Melissa Jefferson, stand on the podium at the 2024 Summer Olympics, Friday, Aug. 9, 2024, in Saint-Denis, France. (AP Photo)
How NCAA helps federations in USA
Siegel does admit that thanks to the NCAA collegiate system, they get a lot of assance in terms of early talent identification.
“We have a really good development system with high schools, colleges and universities. We’re then able to partner with athletes’ personal coaches at their training enclaves to support what they need in their training. We identify about 281 athletes that we give different types of support to, from cash, coaching stipends, health insurance. We invest heavily to keep them healthy from the medical side,” Siegel says. “But besides this, we do have a robust grassroots program. We start with run, jump and throw programs for elementary school kids. We do programs for high schoolers with Olympians. And then we have a youth competitive circuit, indoor and outdoor circuit.”
Talent Protection Program
USATF supports these 281 athletes via a couple of programs. While India has the Target Olympic Podium Scheme (TOPS), which is funded and operated the central government, the USATF has a Tier system for athlete support besides a Talent Protection Program (TPP).
“We identified the need to help post-collegiate athletes who have potential, but have probably not peaked to bring them into the tier program. They get financial support (under TPP), a lot of services from the perspective of mental health, sports psychology, nutrition,” says Siegel.
“We have a high performance committee which comprises athletes, coaches and staff members across the sporting industry. We have about 25 to 30 employed members in the high performance staff. But then there is the volunteer executive committee who are really accomplished professionals who help out. So at any given time there are 30 to 50 people who are taking a look at the high performance area. And while this deals with athletes in the elite pool, then there’s a development committee which looks at the next wave of athletes,” he points out.
Unlike many other countries like India, a majority of the funding for National Governing Bodies in the USA is generated through private sponsors.
“We’ve brought on 19 corporate partners. We take that money and deploy it in our high performance programs. We don’t get any government support financially. 70 percent of the revenues for USATF comes from corporate sponsors. 10 percent of our budget comes from the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee under their high performance grant,” says Siegel.
In India, each federation submits an Annual Calendar for Training and Competition (ACTC) where it details the competitions that their athletes are targeting and annual funds needed besides highlighting how many medals they’re expecting from their athletes in upcoming major tournaments like the World Championships, Commonwealth Games, Asian Games and the Olympics. Siegel points out that USATF has an annual high performance plan, where targets are set for events. This plan is regularly reviewed every few months. Their high performance plan for the coming year was just set after the Paris Olympics. Of course, this plan is separate from the “quad plan”, which is a blueprint for an entire Olympics cycle.
And finally, in the last mile of the athletes’ journey to the podium, USATF took great care to ensure that no detail was overlooked at Paris.
“Our international team staff is headed four-time Olympian Rita Thurman. Every detail of how their kit was packed and what supplies they would need was looked at. We put a lot of effort into the training camp and the high performance centre (at Eaubonne in the outer suburbs of Paris) for our athletes,” says Siegel.
But after all of this, ask Siegel if he had to pick a handful of reasons which are the secret of American athletes’ success at Paris, he says: “Of course, you got to have amazing athletes first to begin with and great coaches with them. Everything else comes from that (starting point).”