I gotta say here that Max Jones going on about paying athletes to turn up and he rememebers the day when....well bollocks to that tosh. I am talking about the distance runners here.....The days have gone when you could qualify for an olympic games with 3.40.5(1980)as it is now 3.34.9 qualifying time, the day has gone when you can skip through the rounds at a major championship and the days have gone when you could run a sorry ass time over the 1500m and no one would give a shit. Nowadays you have your agent on your back, you scrape into a golden league if you have 3.34, you gotta earn money to keep you in the lifestyle to keep running fast and you had better be doing the qualifying time and the national champs and finish top two. So Yes give us money, we need it, if you want the real fast times then you had better reward us for it. Oh and did I say our UK automatic selection is now 3.33 for the worlds..Like I can afford other priorities... so go jump Max...