IT SHOULD have been a night to remember for Kelly Sotherton, but it ended in a ticking off and floods of tears. Ten minutes after stepping off the podium as Britain’s first athletics medal-winner of these Games, Sotherton was torn off a strip by Charles van Commenee, her coach, who was furious that she had come away with the heptathlon bronze and not the silver.
One minute Van Commenee was calling Sotherton “a weasel”, the next “a wimp”. In the “green room” beneath the stadium, where the athletes are held after the medal ceremony while waiting for their mandatory press conference, Van Commenee’s face looked like thunder. As Sotherton wept, Bruce Hamilton, a Britain team doctor, tried to console her. “Enjoy the moment,” he said to her. “How can I?” she replied.
It was all so reminiscent of Paula Radcliffe’s public dressing-down by Gary Lough, her husband, after she missed out on a medal in the 10,000 metres at the 2001 World Championships in Edmonton. At least Sotherton’s humiliation did not take place before television cameras but the presence of three journalists, including your correspondent, ensured that the issue did not remain private.
Van Commenee was well aware of our presence. He walked from one side of the room to the other to tell us: “I am disappointed she only got the bronze. She should have got the silver. She ran like a wimp as far as I am concerned. She didn’t get the medal that was easy to get.” Sotherton had won her heat of the 800 metres, the last event, but not by enough to overhaul Austra Skujyte, from Lithuania, for second place.
Carolina Klüft, from Sweden, was the runaway winner, on 6,952 points, with Skujyte scoring 6,435 and Sotherton 6,424. The margin separating the Briton from the better medal was less than a second and she admitted: “You are supposed to be happy when you win a bronze medal. In a way I am, but being one second out . . . I didn’t give it 110 per cent to win the silver medal.”
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The wrath of the coach described by Sotherton as “a dictator” only two weeks ago, while training at the team holding camp in Paphos, Cyprus, was still evident after the press conference. Walking to the “green room”, Van Commenee had said that she had “run like a weasel” and now he said: “It’s a huge disappointment. I can’t believe somebody being happy with bronze when you can pick up the silver.”
In Paphos, Sotherton had described how Van Commenee “had me in tears at the start of the winter because I didn’t know how I could cope”, adding that she realised now “he is being harsh on me because I need to learn”. Sotherton, 27, has improved beyond recognition since giving up her job as a debt collector last year at Van Commenee’s insistence .
Van Commenee’s “my way is the only way” style was evidenced in his decision to drop Denise Lewis, whom he had coached to the 2000 Olympic title, after she entered into motherhood. He said at the time that he did not think he could coach her to gold medals while she had a child to look after, but took her back last year after her traumatic experience under Dr Ekkart Arbeit, a drugs-tainted coach.
After a solid first three events, Lewis’s challenge disintegrated in the 200 metres and long jump, at which point she pulled out, saying that she was “physically and emotionally devastated”. Before Van Commenee’s departure to the stadium for the final session on Saturday night, she told him that she was reconsidering whether to continue until the 2006 Commonwealth Games.
“I think it is probably temporary because she loves the sport so deeply,” Van Commenee said. “This is not the way to say goodbye and she wants revenge on herself.” He said that she had pulled out because “understandably she could not expose herself any longer to this humiliation”.
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“This was one of the worst days of my career and I have been doing this for 27 years,” Van Commenee said. “We would never have dreamt three or four months ago that this girl (Sotherton) would medal here. Nevertheless, she should not be happy with the bronze.”