Bill Bridge: Britain's Barcelona gold haul helps Dutchman silence many doubters

Perhaps a little exultation is in order; we didn't have much to celebrate while our inept footballers were in South Africa and, such is the feeble opposition provided by a featherweight Pakistani Test team, our cricketers are hardly going to set the nation's pulse racing with victory in their four-match series.

So let us applaud our medal-winners from the Catalan capital and also salute those who may not have captured the headlines but who improved their personal best performances and in doing so set themselves on the road to possible glory in London two years from now.

We should also follow in the example of Jessica Ennis, Mo Farah, Phillips Idowu and our other champions in acknowledging the role played before and during these championships by the Dutchman Charles van Commenee, the chief coach of British Athletics and a man who has brought new professionalism to our country's approach to track-and-field.

Van Commenee first came to national attention as coach to Olympic champion Denise Lewis and that success underpinned the thinking behind his appointment, even though some of us – albeit far removed from the sweat and graft of the training camps – had our misgivings.

Those doubts have been swept away by the way van Commenee has transformed a sport that was slipping into a deluded comfort zone with too many of our potential winners taking their funding but not providing the reciprocal success in their chosen discipline.

Andy Turner, the winner of the gold medal in the 110m hurdles, was one of them. He had his funding cancelled last year and admitted in the afterglow of his triumph in Barcelona: "I have two kids to feed so it was tough. But it wasn't just the money; it was the loss of faith."

Turner responded in exactly the way van Commenee wanted, by knuckling down to training, working his way back to the necessary levels both physically and mentally and having his efforts rewarded in tangible form. He and his children will treasure that gold medal for the rest of their lives.

So British Athletics are to be congratulated on their foresight. They will also – without breathing a word, of course – have been relieved that Dwain Chambers was eclipsed by Mark Lewis-Francis in the 100m. Chambers has been an unwanted guest at the athletics party since his return from suspension for taking illegal substances.

He was never going to be selected for the Olympic team, thanks to a lifetime ban imposed by the British Olympic Association, but his continued presence on the scene cast a shadow over the bright-eyed youngsters who aspire to win their medals "clean".

And it is on a related subject that we have just the hint of a quibble over van Commenee's Barcelona campaign. At the beginning of the championships he asked Linford Christie to address the team and the former Olympic 100m champion was delighted to accept the invitation, knowing that such acknowledgment from the top of British athletics could only improve his chances of attracting new talent to his coaching business.

Far better for Christie to have been kept at arms length. We all know of his success on the track but his achievements were soiled by a failed drug test in 1999 and confusion over another test at the 1988 Olympics.

Thanks to van Commenee and his hugely-talented, highly-motivated squad British athletics take the high road to London with a new confidence; far better that they should arrive without unnecessary baggage.

THERE was no suggestion of Yorkshire County Cricket Club members taking to the streets pleading for a change of mind, no flood of tearful cricket lovers ringing the infernal phone-ins, not so much as a smattering of debate round the bar at the local; so understated was the reaction to the impending departure of Stewart Regan from Headingley Carnegie that it bore the stamp of Divine Intervention.

The move to Glasgow, where he is to become chief executive of the Scottish Football Association, was, according to Regan, a career opportunity that was too good to miss.

His departure at the end of the season and the taking over of much of his work at Headingley by Colin Graves, the cricket club chairman, will also offer Yorkshire a financial lift as they do not plan to replace him before next summer, saving a good few quid along the way.

It is on the shoulders of Graves that the entire future of the club now rests with no profits from staging a Test now due until 2012.

We have had and thrived on autocracy before – the names of Lord Hawke and Brian Sellers spring to mind – but they had proven committee structures, hard-working gentlemen in the roles of secretary and treasurer and a loyal membership behind them.

Graves will rightly point out that he still has good men on board – not least Martyn Moxon, Kevin Sharp and Andrew Gale – but from the end of the season Yorkshire will be to all intents and purposes a one-man band. It will be interesting in these difficult times for county cricket observing the workings of a man who made his name as a cost cutter.

and another thing...

DEAR old Arsene Wenger inhabits a different world to many of us, a place identified by red-and-white banners and an ancient howitzer, a London gentlemen's club fully at peace with the madness of modern-day football.

Arsene has been quiet recently but with the new season almost upon us he was driven to make public his thoughts on the acceptance of the Premier League of a squad system of 25 players, a belated attempt to promote home-grown players and increase the numbers available to the national team.

He has spotted a flaw in the system, a problem which might follow the signing by Arsenal or whoever after their 25-man squad has been named, of a new star. "When a big club employ a player and he has to go to a smaller club there are only two solutions," says Wenger. "The smaller club has to pay above their own potential or the bigger club pays part of his salary. In either case it is not satisfactory."

Wrong, Arsene, there is another way: the player regarded by the big club as surplus to requirements takes a pay cut. That's what happens in our world.