What is it about Nic Bideau that rubs so
many people up the wrong way?

I mean here we have a coach who has guided
Craig Mottram to a bronze medal in the 5000m at last year’s World Championships
and Benita Johnson to a win at the World Cross Country Championships in 2004.
Outstanding results at any time. Even more so in what has been an extended
period of mediocrity in Australian athletics.

Now he’s backed these results up at the
Commonwealth Games, with Mottram’s silver in the 5000m, Johnson’s fourth
placing in the 10,000m and stablemate Melissa Rollison’s silver medal in last
night’s steeplechase.

With these sort of runs on the board you
would have thought the only problem Bideau would have at the moment is fighting
off the backslappers.

And, yet, the mere mention of his name
continues to put noses out of joint in Australian athletics circles. Only
yesterday Raelene Boyle took a swipe at him in The Age.
Her take on Bideau – essentially that he is a domineering control freak – is
not uncommon.

Boyle went on to say that she couldn’t have
trained under Bideau. Fair enough, his approach is not to everyone’s taste,
but, obviously, there are athletes – some of Australia’s
best – who have thrived under him.

Perhaps Bideau’s image problem can be
traced back to one of the first athletes he worked closely with, Australian
national treasure Cathy Freeman. Theirs was a double-edged relationship in
which they were coach/manager and athlete at the track, and a couple at
home.

When things went sour on both fronts –
culminating in Bideau bringing court action against Freeman – Bideau copped
most of the fall-out. The cynical take on things seemed to be that Bideau had
been using our Cathy all along as the means of setting up his coaching
empire.

But now that Australian athletics finally
seems to be getting back on its feet, I think it’s time due credit was paid to
one of the key figures in its change of fortunes. If you strip all of the
emotion from the debate, you’re left with someone who is passionate to the
extreme about athletics and, in particular, Australian athletics.