Athletics: Blincoe lured home to work with youth

Adrian Blincoe. Photo / Herald on Sunday

Olympian and New Zealand 5000m record holder Adrian Blincoe is helping identify and develop New Zealand's future talent in a new job at High Performance Sport New Zealand.

In his role as high performance athlete development advisor, Blincoe will work with targeted national sport organisations to put systems in place to identify and develop athletes so they can succeed at international level.

HPSNZ chief executive Alex Baumann said the overarching goal is to get more talented athletes into our high performance system so New Zealand can continue to succeed internationally.

"New Zealand has to compete on the world stage with much larger countries, whose sheer size means they will always have access to a number of top athletes," Baumann said. "As a smaller country, we need to take a more systematic approach to finding and developing our athletes, and Adrian's role will be crucial to that."

Blincoe has spent the past 12 years living in Philadelphia where he spent nine years running professionally for Team New Balance and seven years coaching at Villanova University.

He was assistant coach of track and field and cross country at Villanova University and focused on identifying and developing young talent.

Blincoe competed for New Zealand at Olympic Games, Commonwealth Games and world championships and holds the national record in the 5000m (13:10.19). He was a finalist at the 2006 and 2010 Commonwealth Games, and competed in the 5000m at the Beijing Olympics. An ankle injury prevented him from competing at the London Olympics.

"I'm very passionate about helping athletes develop their potential, and I am excited about the opportunity to do this here in New Zealand," said Blincoe, who started work in the job on October 15. "I'll be working with targeted sports on both specific initiatives and their overall athlete development systems so we can find individuals who may one day stand on the podium for New Zealand."