Monday 31 December 2012

Twitter leads to under-performance on field of play, says Lord Coe - Telegraph.co.uk

However he said that the mis-use of the site by athletes can lead to distraction.

"I have walked past my parents [and] close friends an hour before a race and not even recognized them or registered them. I just find it bizarre that people can be sitting there figuring out in 140 characters what they would say to the world at that moment. Just go out and win the bloody race," said Lord Coe.

Lord Coe did not name athletes, but members of the British athletics team have got into trouble in the past for Tweeting.

Phillips Idowu, the triple jumper who failed to win a medal in the London games, angered his management when he withdrew from last year's European Team Championships on Twitter.

At the time Charles van Commenee, the then-head of UK Athletics, said that athletes need training when it comes to Twitter use.

"You can't forbid athletes to use Twitter, this is an issue we have to deal with in modern times," he said.

Some athletes have admitted that social media sites cost them dear in last summer's games.

Emily Seebohm, the Australian swimmer who was favourite for an Olympic gold in the 100m backstroke but narrowly missed out on the medal, admitted that she stayed up too long on Twitter and Facebook in the lead-up to the games.

Following her defeat in the race she said: "I just felt like I didn't really get off [social media] and get into my own mind."

Matt Brown, an Australian swimming coach, said during the games that he would like to "throw away some of those phones".

Dr Victor Thompson, a London-based sports psychologist, said that there is no direct relationship between the amount of time that sports stars spend on Twitter and their performance.

"It may indicate to some that you may be less dedicated or are not focused on the right things but spending an hour on the computer doesn't necessarily have a bearing on how you spend the next 23 hours of the day," he said.

However he said that people's performance could be affected by negative comments that they read on the site.

"You are going to get the extremes of comments about you as an athlete – the real positives and the real negatives. People will use these when they evaluate their own performance, rather than what they think or the coach thinks. And that really influences their mood and how they bounce back," said Dr Thompson.

In the summer Andy Murray, the tennis player, said that athletes should not be on Twitter "too much".

"It's a bit like sitting on a computer 20 minutes, 30 minutes before your match. You wouldn't be advised to do that. The same applies with Tweeting or mobile phones," said Mr Murray, who won Olympic gold last year.

However there are many athletes who would argue with Lord Coe's theory. Prolific Tweeters who can not be said to have under-performed on the field of play include Sir Chris Hoy, Usain Bolt and Jessica Ennis.

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