Canada is losing one of its top track and field coaches to London’s Olympic efforts.
Kevin Tyler, coach to 400-metre runner Tyler Christopher and 400 hurdler Adam Kunkel, has been hired by UK Athletics as its strategic director of coaching and development.
“I’m looking forward to doing what I do on a world stage,” Tyler told The Canadian Press in a phone interview from his home in Edmonton.
The 45-year-old Tyler will work under new head coach Charles Van Commenee, who was Holland’s chef de mission at the Beijing Olympics but was hired in September by UK Athletics CEO Niels De Vos as part of Britain’s track and field overhaul.
Great Britain won one gold medal at the Beijing Olympics in 400-metre runner Christine Ohuruogu, and finished with four medals overall – just shy of the team’s goal of five. UK Athletics would like to increase that number when London hosts the 2012 Olympics.
“I think absolutely hosting a home Olympics, everyone’s (medal) targets are going to be higher,” Tyler said. “Hopefully I can go over and in a small way contribute to that.”
Priscilla Lopes-Schliep of Whitby, Ont., captured Canada’s only medal on the track in Beijing, a bronze in the 100-metre hurdles, in Canada’s first podium performance in 12 years.
The news of Tyler’s departure comes less than a week after Canadian Peter Eriksson was hired as the head coach of Britain’s Paralympic team. Eriksson coached Canadian wheelchair racer Chantal Petitclerc, who captured five gold medals at the Beijing Paralympics, and he was honoured as Athletics Canada’s coach of the year for 2008.
Tyler leaves behind one of Canada’s strongest sprint groups in Edmonton that includes Christopher, the bronze medallist at the 2005 world championships, and Kunkel, the 2007 Pan American Games champion in the 400 hurdles.
Tyler plans to accompany his sprinters to a training camp in Arizona on Dec. 30, before heading to Birmingham, where he’ll begin his UK Athletics job Feb. 1. Longtime colleague Derek Evely will take over coaching the Edmonton group.
Tyler, a former sprinter and member of the Canadian Olympic bobsled team at the 1988 Calgary Games, was also the head of the Canadian Athletic Coaching Centre at the University of Alberta.
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