Randy Huntington · Athletics Coach

The current world record for men’s long jump – 8.95m – was set 31 years ago, at the Athletics World Championships in Tokyo. It is the longest standing record in track and field history and surpassed the previous record, which had itself stood for 23 years. Randy Huntington coached that guy to that record and two Olympic silver medals to boot. He also coached another long-standing world record: the triple-jump record which stood for ten years and was set at 17.97m at the 1985 USA Outdoor Track and Field Championships. Randy coached the first Chinese guy to make a 100m final at the Olympics and who has run the fastest 30m and 60m splits of all time. The woman who was the first Chinese athlete to ever make an 800m final at an Olympics was coached by Randy, too.

The athletes, of course, are Mike Powell, Willie Banks, Su Bingtian and Wang Chunyu, and in addition to them, Randy’s coached numerous other world-class athletes. His tally includes eight Olympians, seven World Championship team members and six US top-10 all-timer athletes. He’s worked with Joe Greene, Sheila Hudson, Wayne Gretzky, Gary Carter, Michael Chang and several NFL professional and college teams. He’s been a national coach in China for the last eight years and has recently been working with athletes currently competing at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics.

I’ve had the incredibly good fortune of crossing paths with Randy in our common inhabitation of this gigantic country. And it’s been in personal conversations with him, in accounts from others describing their interactions with him and from interviews I’ve read or listened to, that I’ve been struck, in particular, by the generosity with which Randy has offered his time, his wisdom and his advice. He, who has so much reason to be aloof, is so humble and so easy to talk to. It was a joy to interview him and simply too good an opportunity to pass up learning from this master of high performance.

The recent games in Tokyo were your seventh Olympics?? 

1984 was my first Olympics that I helped people with, and then 1988, 1992, 1996… 2000 I kind of missed. I mean, I had people who made the 2000 team who didn't actually go to Sydney, unfortunately… So, you know, I don't know if I can count that one or not...

I think you can count that one!

And then 2004, 2008, 2012 – I was involved in some part of their training and preparation for those quadrennia, and then 2016 and 2020 [2021]… almost tenth!

Ten Olympic Games - surely, that’s a pretty exclusive club to belong to! There wouldn’t be many coaches of any sport that have been there that long…? Do a group of you “veterans” get together at each Olympic Games and reminisce or even tally up the heads of who’s still there?

Sometimes we do. These days almost all of them are in different countries, so the only time we're on the track together is if, particularly in Tokyo, we happen to have athletes in the same event. I don't get a chance to sit down with very many. And since I’ve been out of the States so long, a lot of people don’t know me. Mostly [I catch up with] people who are in China these days.

So, how have the Olympic Games changed over those ten Olympiads? 

This is really weird to say, but you're like, ‘Well, I'm at another track meet.’ And you have to kind of keep your energy as high as you can, even though for you, it could be like the… And it's difficult because you are at another track meet, it's just a different stadium and they give out different medals. It's really not much different between the World Championships and the Olympic Games, for me, in terms of preparation and things like that. They're pretty much the same these days. …And that's when you're feeling that, that some of your passion is waning.

What about the feeling within the village – it's different to a world championships where it's just your sport – you've got people from all over the world doing all different sports… And it's got something special because it's got that history and prestige, as well… 

It does, but in Tokyo it just didn't have that feeling at all. I actually get more of that feeling when I walk into historical Olympic stadiums. So, like, I go to Stockholm – to me, that is like, ‘Wow! I'm in Stockholm. I’m in the stadium in Stockholm.’ You know, and you think, ‘Jim Thorpe* might have walked over there.’ It's kind of crazy stuff… Or you're in Berlin and you're like, ‘Jesse Owens was here, Hitler was here.’ Those are the things that, historically, mean more to me than actually probably the present day ones.

I think 20 years ago, I probably still had that [excitement for the Games], but now the newness has kind of worn off and it's more business. It’s business now, this is what we do, this is why we're here. And also, probably, given that I'm with another country, I'm not as attached. I could never march at the opening ceremonies or the closing ceremonies – I’m not allowed to walk in the opening ceremonies.

*Jim Thorpe (Sac and Fox Nation) won the pentathlon and decathlon at the 1912 Olympics in Stockholm, making him the first Native American to win an Olympic gold medal. He also played American football and baseball professionally. You can read a fascinating account of Thorpe’s life here.

I noticed in Tokyo that track and field and swimming athletes were given a few moments in front of the cameras – more than in the past, I think – when their names were called prior to their finals; is this a way of keeping the sports relevant, do you think, or an effort to please viewers who aren’t the typical die-hard fans of the sport? Admittedly, it was nice to see the athletes show a bit of personality!

Yeah, that's their way to get attachments. Most of these athletes have been to World Championships, Asian Games, all this, so they're kind of used to it. And they do it now in China – they announce them like that. So that is one part of the process which is really good, that they get used to doing that. In general, they're all pretty shy, so they don't really get into that, but they’ve had to, because it's demanded of them. It's out of their comfort zone, they don't like it. And I try to tell them, ‘Guys look, you’re actors and actresses, this is your stage. This is the few minutes in your lifetime where you get to be this, take advantage of it.’

And now you are home in the US after having spent several years living and working in China; is this a time of reflection for you? Is that a process you do a lot? And is there a formal structure to your reflections, or do you get out hiking with your dogs and just think?

In terms of reflection… Because I'm single, I don't have another focus, really, and so I am in, basically, in a constant feedback loop without ever really getting out of it. I mean, much to my detriment, probably. So, I don't specifically try to do it. It's just always there. I don't even know how to leave it anymore. …and I counsel younger coaches, ‘Don't get in this position. Find balance because this is not balanced.’ This is not balanced. And I try to make sure that they understand that you need to find that balance in your life, so that you can reflect on other things, because when you reflect on other things, sometimes the way your mind works is that when you move to that, this over here opens up and you can come back to it with a much better view of what you're trying to solve. The brain’s a mysterious place. The more you focus on something, sometimes the less you'll ever be able to achieve it, or it just goes away. And as you get older, that happens more often, by the way… At this age, I'm like, geez! I mean, I'm two and a half years from 70!

I've seen your photos on social media of being out in nature since you’ve been home; then is that an escape for you? Is this your chance to just get away from it?

Yeah, it's my only way of letting go of it all. Whether it's cross-country skiing or… Because cross-country skiing, mountain biking, rollerblading, all those things take balance, and you can't have a thought that's negative or bad, or you lose your balance. So, the beauty of doing things that need balance is that your mind has to clear. You can't be reflecting, you can't be thinking about anything, you have to be on task or you just can't do it. Hiking, on the other hand, maybe not so much. But when it comes to dynamic, active things where there's hills, or no hills, or small trails, if you're not on, you get in trouble really fast.

But if I can take you back to coaching and one of your career highlights, or at least, an achievement for which you are, arguably, best known: in 1991, Mike Powell broke Bob Beamon’s Long Jump record from 1968, with a jump of 8.95m – a record that stood for 23 years. It’s now been 30 years since then and Powell still retains the record – it’s the longest kept record in track and field history. That is phenomenal! Can you foresee it being broken any time soon? 

There's people who could break it. There's people who could have broken it. They just need to be coached better. It’s that simple. It's as simple as that. The guys that are coaching them are learning still. And, there's the kid from Jamaica; the kid from South Africa could have; a couple of kids in the US who’ve got a shot. So, there's a number of kids… When Mike Powell started, basically his jumping was around 7.90m to 8.05m. He’d had a couple fouls that were wind-aided that were a bit longer… But I mean, you’ve got some other kids jumping 8.50-8.60m right now. The Cuban kid: 8.86m or something. I mean, it's possible, but I'm not seeing it the way they're jumping. I'm not seeing it happen by design. I’m seeing it happen by happenstance, luck, whatever you might want to call it. So, I don't know that it's going to be anytime soon. If it was going to happen, it should have happened in Tokyo, because that was the fastest runway any of them have ever seen.

Will you feel some sort of sense of – what's the word? Not sadness, but you know – when it's broken, ultimately, will you… Is it just something that's great for the sport, ultimately? Or will there be a little bit of, ‘Oh, that’s a shame that’s gone now?’

Oh, it will be great for the sport. It's been so long, that it's not really that much a part of me. Except I do have the poster from Tokyo [World Championships in 1991, where Powell set the world record], and the actual final sheet with the official results. But I don't think there's gonna be any remorse for my part, no.

Some might say it’s been an awfully long time since that record was set – I was in grade 1 at school in 1991(!) – and you’ve been coaching much of the time since then; what does it take then, in your opinion, to be a world-class coach who stays in the game for as long as you have?

Well, you have to be a little off. As off, certainly, as the athletes are… You can't be normal. No, you're abnormal, for sure. 

Otherwise, there's the basic things: education – you’ve got to do the work, educationally. You've got to learn about people. If you look up here [at the bookshelves behind me in my office], all those books and all those books and all these books are basically all psychology books, or winning, or whatever it may be, but something to do with the human mind. And you’ve got to find a way to do that... I would say I'm probably not very good at it. I think it's like with anybody, you're good at it with some people, not so good with others. There's a connection, and that connection is what makes the great things happen. Mike Powell and I had a good connection to get him to where he needed to go, and he believed in it. The kids here [in China]: I've got a good connection with Chunyu; Su I've got a connection with, but it's a little different kind of connection with Su. He is the consummate professional. So, I think all those things that you need to do as a human, you need to multiply those in terms of your ability to understand. And for a guy my age, one of the things that I think has helped me was that somewhere pretty young – because people always said I had an ‘old soul’ – I got in touch, intuitively, pretty well. So, I can feel things. And I can't really talk about it openly with people because they think I’m crazy, but I can feel when something's happening with somebody. I'll even ask my translator, ‘What's going on with them?’ And she goes, ‘Well, I'm not gonna talk to you about it.’ Well, actually, yeah, I want to know, because it's not gossip; it's me understanding the athlete, maybe I need to change his training... It's that sort of thing.

I'm not so sure anybody understands completely what it takes to be great. When it comes to anything, we sort of have all the same needs and desires, whether you're onstage as an actor, you're a musician, you’re a singer, you're in the movies, you're leading. It's all got the same variables that you're dealing with. And particularly inside, you’ve got to be pretty tough. You’ve got to graduate from wanting everybody to like you, which is where you start. Everybody starts in the same place. Because they think that's how you get trust, because they like you. I don't care if they're like me, at this point, it just doesn't matter to me anymore. I care that they respect what I say and they trust what I say. And it's really nice if they do like me, but I'm not gonna go to bed worrying about it, because nine times out of ten, they're calling you a #$@!% at the end of the day… And you understand that, so…

And it's a full-on profession, too – there’s lots of travel, and even when they’re not travelling, coaches seem to spend a lot of time ‘outside of hours’ still being connected, messaging or calling people, researching the sport directly or else reading around other topics that may be relevant, but less conspicuously so. It’s not just a full-time job, it occupies you completely.

It's your life. And when you are married and have children… I truly respect those that can divest themselves of that for a few moments and take care of business, which is your family. [And] it's not an easy path [being the spouse of a coach]; not many people can walk the same path. As a man, [trying to balance coaching life and family life can] eat away at him. It does. As a man who has a family, who's a husband and a father, that tears them apart that they can't be as good at that as they are at this. They realize they're not good, like, ‘Dammit, I'm not doing this well.’ You know, and then they beat themselves up over it. The problem is when they beat themselves up over it, they lash out easier. They get pissed, and they're almost never mad at somebody else, they're almost always mad at themselves. There's the old saying that ‘Depression is nothing but anger turned inward.’ And that's why a lot of coaches suffer from depression, they can, because they're angry. I mean, because you can't get it right. If you're a perfectionist, you're screwed. You're screwed. You're gonna be in trouble. Maybe go become a distance coach, I don’t know, those guys are a little weird anyways…

And that's another thing that you need to point out at some point that when you're a coach, and you're at this level or this age, you can pretty much coach anything. You just say, ‘What do you want me to coach?’ Because you already have all the fundamentals there, you just have to pick out a few tactical things and bring it all together. I coached the long jump and the triple jump, then all of a sudden, I'm coaching the 100m, then I'm coaching the 110m hurdles, then I'm coaching the 800m. 

So here is a question for you that I am asking all of my interviewees: this is not intended to be a website that necessarily seeks to be supported by scientific literature, however there is a whole academic area that addresses high performance coaching. Cliff Mallet, an authority in the area and an Olympic track and field coach, described high performance coaching as “a complex, social, and dynamic activity that is not easily represented as a set of tangible and predictable processes... And might be considered within a broader set of relations: the interdependence between a) the coaching tasks undertaken by coaches, b) coaches' relations with other people (e.g., athletes, other coaches, parents), and c) the coaching situation and context in which they operate.” It's “fluid” and “highly idiosyncratic”, and coaches must “attempt to control as many variables as possible” yet “still... be responsive to a dynamic environment in which there is, at times, limited control” (Mallet, 2008). Cushion and his colleagues (2003) called it “structured improvisation”. What is high performance coaching to you?

Oh, it's chaos, for sure.

Chaos. And it's certainly a lot of cognitive dissonance. I was listening to you describe what Cliff had said and it just takes me back to the old sociology of sport, the concentric circle domains, and you're here, here and here. It is very much like herding cats. 

Then, the golden question, how would you describe your coaching philosophy?

My basic philosophy, and people find this kind of trite, but – and Bill Roe* said this – I've always kind of liked it; it's ‘Train dogs, educate people.’ It just hit me that that was something that we needed, because too many coaches say, ‘Go do!’ They don't tell [the athletes] why, they just tell them what, and most of the time, they don't even tell them how. They just tell them what to do, not how to do it, and they sure as heck don't tell them why you're doing it. 

And the other thing which I touched on earlier, if you look at those different domains [of coaching], the one that's most important, and the hardest one for male coaches to get is to find the intuitive side of themselves. It takes a long time to one, listen to your intuitive side, and then trust it. It's one thing to listen to, it's another to trust it. [My coaching philosophy involves] an intuitive approach to trying to understand each athlete’s psychological needs. Their physical needs are pretty easy, that's kind of the easy part of coaching: you test; technical needs, that's easy: you test, you watch, you video. But what happens between the ears is the real art of coaching and it's the most difficult to do when you're in a different culture and a different language. People think, oh, you know, ‘Su [Bingtian] ran 10 [seconds] flat, it's easy to get a guy to 9.8.’ Well, try doing it in another language and a different culture! And I always use the example – and you may have heard me say this – it's an old movie couple, Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire: she does everything Fred Astaire does, but in high heels and backwards. That's what coaching is like! That's how difficult it is and why you have to respect Ginger Rogers, because that shit was not easy! [We’ll talk more about Randy’s time coaching in China a bit later.]

But yeah, as a general philosophy, I’m athlete-centred. I'm caring, holistic. I look at their health first. I want to make sure nothing's wrong, if possible.

*Bill Roe contributed tremendously to track and field within the USA as well as internationally, including completing two terms as the president of USA Track and Field, from 2000-2008, and being a member of the IAAF cross country committee. Sadly, Roe passed away in 2020; you can read more about his achievements here.

I've also heard you talk about this before: can you please explain the difference between ‘coaching knowledge’ and ‘coaching wisdom?’

The ‘coaching knowledge’ is, well, it's back here [gesturing to extensive bookshelves behind]. This is all coaching knowledge back here. ‘Coaching wisdom’ is that when you're able to take what appears to be chaotic pieces of information from everywhere – and I may take something from an African American history book over here and relate it to a physiology book over here and relate it over to some ancient Roman or Greek thing over here – and you find a way to create connections where they're not apparent. That’s the difference between knowledge and wisdom; it’s taking such unlike information and pulling it together to create the pathway that you need to follow. Something that people keep saying, and I don't know if I should be offended by it or not yet, they keep saying, ‘God, you say things so simply, Randy.’ I don't use big words, and I try to keep it as simple as I can, because when you lecture in a foreign language, you get down to the lowest common denominator. You have to.

“‘Coaching wisdom’ is that when you’re able to take what appears to be chaotic pieces of information from everywhere... and you find a way to create connections where they’re not apparent.”

I’ve heard you call yourself and other coaches ‘dream weavers,’ which made me smile because [my husband] Anthony has always, somewhat jokingly, told me that he is a ‘dream maker!’ Do you ever stop to think about the huge impact that you, as a coach, have on your athletes’ lives? People sometimes talk about what they will think about when they're on their deathbed, and perhaps your athletes are going to go back and they're going to go, ‘Wow we had this huge thing happen. We made these big improvements, I managed to do this thing and I had Randy's help to do it.’ That’s pretty special.

It is, and it's interesting for me because I don't think, at the elite level, that happens as much as you might imagine. People aren't terribly appreciative at the elite level because they're still way too focused on themselves. It's not for about ten or 15 years later that they go, ‘Wow, Coach, you’ve really helped me.’ I've had those phone calls, for sure. So, when I look at how I've impacted people… I'll never know how I've impacted people in China, really, because they can't tell me. The men will never tell you. That absolutely will not happen. Chunyu [women’s 800m finalist at the 2020 Olympics] is very appreciative. She's very sweet in that way. 

I'm hoping that people realise that I tried to help them. I mean, I'm not very close to any of the athletes anymore. I've not talked to my ex-athletes… a couple of them at Michigan State who were mostly freshmen who were just coming out of high school. Now, I think your junior high… and I'll tell you this, and you may have heard me say this in some [of the previous interviews/podcasts]: I oftentimes go back to junior high/middle school and coach, to just kind of remember what it is to have people who don't know anything, you know, and how difficult it is, and you get your fundamentals back. I was coaching back in 1982 at Monroe Junior High, in Eugene, Oregon, and I was also coaching at the University of Oregon at the same time. So, I’d finish my coaching at Oregon and I’d run over to the middle school, because, well, that's what you did back then because you couldn't afford to eat any other way. And I'll never forget that is where you have an impact. And we had one kid on the team, his name was ‘Spaz’. Now you can imagine what this kid was like: he had absolutely no control over any part of his body. And you don't get them for very long. In that eight-week time period, this kid went from Spaz to Team Captain and winning the 400m in the district meet. And his mother wrote me the sweetest letter thanking me for helping her son move through that awkward stage of not being accepted by anybody to being a leader of his class, because he gained his confidence as he went through. In the beginning, I didn't think he was gonna do anything – I put him in the 400m because I didn’t have anybody there. It was one of those accidents that worked out. So, you feel that gratefulness and the appreciation which I think is, in the end, probably what we really desire. Appreciation goes a long way. More than money does.

Aside from this appreciation, what has coaching ‘given’ you?

What has coaching given me? Not as much as I've given it.

Does that come with a feeling of resentment, or is that just how it is?

No, it doesn’t come with a feeling of resentment, but It does come with a little feeling of regret, which is a little different emotion than resentment, because resentment is focused on somebody else and judging almost, but regret is not having done something that you thought you could do. So, I think that… I mean, I’m usually a glass half-full [kind of person], but sometimes you look at this, and you're like, ‘What didn’t I accomplish in my life? What did coaching stop me from doing or what did I stop my self form doing and blamed coaching?’ I mean, I'm obviously okay at it, I do a pretty good job. I'm not the best, but I consider myself one of the better ones, I've had a chance to work with great athletes – and of course, you’ve got to have that to even show that you're one of the best. It certainly hasn't given me money until the last year, really, until this last contract I did. I wasn't getting me much money, so throw that away. It didn't really give me fame, even though people know my name, but that's not something that I’m very aware of. So the only thing that I can certainly feel is a sense of… I mean, I probably should have been a priest… But it's that sense of knowing that you helped somebody – and that goes back to the dream-weaver – knowing that you helped somebody achieve their dreams. And that's a pretty powerful feeling, to be honest. And I sometimes portray it as a painter: the athlete is a painter, but they don't have any arms, or they can't see, or some other physical disability; I can help them see that picture and paint the picture for them, because I've been to the top of that mountain, I've been down in that valley. And I can help them see these things, even though they're still going to go through their own processes over here. You're never going to stop that. You don't want to. Because that embroiling chaos of disappointment and success is really what creates learning and success.

“... I’ve been to the top of that mountain, I’ve been down in that valley. And I can help them see these things, even though they’re still going to go through their own processes over here. You’re never going to stop that. You don’t want to. Because that embroiling chaos of disappointment and success is really what creates learning and success.”

You’ve said a couple of times that you haven’t been famous, that you may not be well known in the US, especially with the newer people, however, I have been told that coaches flock to you. For example, when you were at the Tokyo Olympics, I’ve been told that people gathered right around you in the dining hall and that you also make time to talk to everyone. You know, I take this interview as a perfect example, and I'm very grateful. Furthermore, reading and listening to interviews with you, I’ve heard you openly share data on your athletes. You talk about their power data and you give the exact numbers – that doesn't happen very often; people often consider that like sharing state secrets! So then, do you feel a sense of duty or responsibility to assist other coaches and pass on your knowledge and wisdom? Or do you just like helping?

Yes and no. I know that I can give them all the information, they can't duplicate it anyways. So, I don't worry about it. I mean, a number is just a number, but they better have Su's tibia length and femur length and glutes, and I mean, it just doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is bragging rights, if you wish, or to motivate somebody like you use that to say, ‘Look, [so-and-so is] better than that, by the way. You’ve got to up your game, buddy!’

Of course, and as you alluded to, a coach or athlete can have the numbers or the training drills or programmes, but they need to be able to apply them in the correct context as well. But your wisdom is a different thing, as we've already spoken about, and talking to people and helping them through, helping them to develop their ideas and that kind of thing is a pretty special thing, I think, to be able to do.

I don't even realize I'm doing it most of the time. It's like, ‘What do you want to talk about? Sure!’ I mean, I have a hard-drive I keep with me that’s got about 15,000 articles on it, and I give that away. When people haven’t heard of [something], I go, ‘Here, go ahead and take it.’ Because one, I'm not at a university or anything, I can't take this stuff with me. I want people to be better because I want the profession to be respected. I mean, sometimes coaching is like salesmen – there's just no respect. I mean, I'll be here at home and people will go, ‘What do you do?’ ‘I coach.’ And the first thing they say, ‘Oh, you coach at the junior high or the high school?’ ‘No… I don't.’ And you don't even want to say where you coach because then it looks like you're, you know, you’re trying to… you’re boasting… And my nature is not to boast. It is to try to teach. My background was training as a teacher at the University of Oregon, so that was just it was drilled into us. And the education at Oregon was incredible: we were the number one PE school in the country, if not the world, at the time in the early 70s. So that's always stuck with me. And on top of just being a little bit more left of centre, politically and socially, so that, to me, the human being is something that you have to really have empathy for and try to understand what they're going through so you can help them change. So for me, it's really being, for lack of a better word, ‘agents of change’ (that comes from an old book called, ‘If it Ain’t Broke…Break It!’ by Robert Kriegel and Louis Patler) – that concept of helping people change and finding the pathway for them to understand change.

All right, then what would be the ideal model for you for coach education and development? Is it just a matter of time on the job? You've previously said, ‘We fail our way to success.’ Could things be a bit better directed than just time on the job? You mentioned having mentors, as well, earlier…

I think in coaching there has to be a modicum or a basal knowledge base that has to exist. And then from there, mentorship, apprenticeship. I think a one- or two-year apprenticeship – just like you do in a labour union and when you're doing the trades, you're an apprentice – but you have to have the scientific knowledge and then you go into your apprenticeship. And then from there, you can go into a level of coaching in which your fundamental knowledge has to be put to use. You can't go into coaching beyond your fundamental knowledge, because if you don't practice that, then what's going to happen when you get to the elites, you're not going to recognise that they're missing it. And I've said this before, too: if I'm lecturing, the very first thing I’ll do is ask, ‘Who are the middle school teachers here? Please stand up.’ And I'm telling them, ‘You're the most important people in this room, because what you do changes everything the rest of us have to do and if you don't do a good job, then we have to make up for it later, which delays the success of that individual athlete.’ It's not meant to… it’s actually telling them how important they are. ‘You guys, you're the middle of the hourglass!’ It's the sands of the hourglass – this is your knowledge and all of that – comes through… there's middle school!

It’s always stuck in my mind that, when you were here for one of the competitions in Hong Kong and we went up and had dinner together afterwards, you told us about the barbecues or street parties you’d have back home in the States with a whole bunch of your neighbours who also happen to be Olympic coaches – Dick Fosbury’s name sticks out in particular. You would have had your very own High Performance Sport Guild right there! Does that kind of environment help to support one to become a better coach would you say? And what have the masters taught you?

Myself, I started with Dennis Whitby, who used to be the head of Hong Kong Sports Institute. So, Dennis was my first mentor… He's my second mentor, really. My first mentor was… I started out coaching women's gymnastics, because I wanted to learn how to train my eye to see, because if you can follow a double-backflip, flip-twist, whatever, without getting killed or getting knocked in the face, then you can pretty much see anything in track and field. Track and field is easy, it’s in slow motion after that. And she was German, Henriette Heiny, and so she taught me, essentially, a German system. Dennis taught me the British system. And then I had Andrzej and Elżbieta Krzesiński, who were Polish, and they really distributed the Polish system. And then I had Russian coaches that I knew very well, and you learn what the Russians were doing, and then the Bulgarians. And you get all of these models and you analyse them and you synthesise them into your own. Then you apply different analyses and syntheses to different athletes in different events. 

What are you still learning then? 

Oh, personally still learning? As I delve back into other events, I'll go back and look at… I mean, it's 25 years ago that I coached the 800 metres… I'll go back and look at things that I was writing, like I have some workouts still here in my files, and I'll go back and look at that and revisit some energy systems I haven't really had to play around in a whole lot – 100m runs them all, but not to the same level.

I started coaching the 110m hurdles last year – I haven't coached them in forever. Fortunately, Ralph Mann [former American hurdler and sprinter, and biomechanist] was there and we went through some analysis. I told him what I thought I was seeing. He agreed with me. And he said, ‘But Randy, you don't have enough time to fix this.’ And he came back in three months and we’d fixed it. He goes, ‘Yeah, what you just did is pretty incredible.’ Unfortunately, the guy ended up messing up his foot doing something stupid away from the track, but I think we could have got him 13 flat... 

So, you're learning different things, like now I'm working with winter sports. So I have to go back and read some stuff on speed skating. I mean, the energy systems, the physiology and stuff is easy; the biomechanics, you’ve just got to pick up on it. You know, bobsled: you don't really have to deal with death, but you do have to deal with injury and things happening at really fast speeds. And, of course, I take a different view, so I'm watching things happen, as an example, I'm watching the speed skaters slow down going into the curve. And I asked the coach, ‘Why are they slowing down going into the curve?’ He says, ‘Well, they're traveling too fast and they just can't feel the curve yet.’ I said, ‘Have you checked their vision? Maybe they can't see the curve.’ So, they test their vision and yeah, they couldn't see the curve, so they hadto slow down. And then in bobsled and skeleton, reading the track, it's coming at him at 140 kilometres per hour+ or something like that. It's fast. And I asked them, ‘Have you tested his vision. Are you doing vision training? Are you teaching their eyes to teach their brain to react faster, so that it slows everything down for them? And their body's like, “Oh, this is cool. Yeah!”’ Like they smoked a joint before they went down the track. Yeah, it's probably not a good idea, but if you can slow everything down and make it so that – it’s like you can see the parts of the tennis ball as it's coming at you – that changes how you read the track and everything else. You need to start training the brain, the vision centres in the brain, and there's plenty of ways to do that. 

So, things like that, in which I take what look like dissimilar situations and create similarities, so that they can functionally help the athlete. And today, my learning kind of goes in a direction away from track and field. It goes into environment and policy, more into what's happening worldwide, where's this planet going, that kind of thing. We have to find a better way than what we're currently doing, or we're going to be in trouble.

Who are the coaches that you admire, and why?

Probably the person I admire the most is Dr. Joe Vigil, arguably the most experienced and successful distance coach in US history. Just because he's got it. He's got it. You know, he's got what it takes, and everybody kind of understands it. I really admire not only his knowledge, because he's brilliant, I mean, he was a professor of physiology for 32 years andthe track coach, at Adams State University in the United States. And so, I really admire what he's doing.

I look at what Jenny Lang Ping did with the women's volleyball team particularly in 2016 [where she coached China to win Olympic gold, becoming the first person to win gold as an athlete and coach]. You look at – when you watch the movie [Leap, 2020, directed by Peter Chan] – what she went through, when you see what they did for her to do what she did in 1984 and 1988, it's amazing. And so you have to respect that. 

I tend to go to other places like – I know this sounds crazy – I would go be an extra in movies so I could figure out how the director dealt with the egos. So things like Peggy Sue Gets Married, Howard the Duck, Tucker, The Addams Family, things back in the 80s. Animal House was my first movie, and then Personal Best. But you look at who was directing those, and you're watching them deal with the set, the lights, the tech, you're looking at how they make this really intricate, artistic system work, which is also technical, because a lot of a movie is technical direction: camera, lighting, da da da. And I got to see some of the best there were: Robert Towne and Personal Best, and Francis Ford Coppola and Peggy Sue Gets Married. So you go to other places to see how they deal with performance art. 

And then I had to find some way to do it myself, like, ‘Okay, Randy, how are you gonna challenge yourself to be completely naked, if you wish, in the rawness of what it's going to take to make somebody better?’ Because that's what they're feeling: they're naked, they're raw. And so I went and joined a dance group. I couldn't dance, obviously. And so for two years, I actually performed onstage. It's stupid stuff, but the fact is that you had to put yourself in front of an audience doing something you were absolutely uncomfortable doing, and you weren't very good at it! And we weren't half-naked like the track and field kids are – they're out there, their bodies are showing and they're really conscious of it. But you learn what it feels like to make mistakes, to hide your mistakes, if you wish, by just being, and nobody notices them but you. And you're doing something that is just challenging the shit out of you, and you're like, ‘I am not good at this!’ But you learn. So I figured I'm gonna go learn from others and then I had to subject myself to something really uncomfortable, and performing in front of people in that manner – performing in front of people doesn't bother me, but in that manner, in dance – aye aye aye!

Out of interest, what style of dance was it?

It was folk dance – all kinds of folk dance, though. So, it was everything from, believe it or not, Baroque all the way up to Balkan, Israeli, swing, jazz, tap… so we went all the way… I didn't do ballet – we did everything up to, basically, formal ballet. I did none of that. And, the dance instructor - and the reason I'm saying this is he's somebody that I admire – Dr Ken Aldrich was just this robust, big guy, and did not look like a dancer at all, and here he was leading this dance group. He could dance his ass off! And this was the days of Saturday Night Fever, and we did disco, as well, on stage. And so when we went into a club, we cleared the floor! It was fun because we could throw, we could twirl – we could do everything in swing and in disco at that time. But Ken showed me how to get people like myself, who are incredibly uncomfortable, who knew nothing about what they were doing, had no skill whatsoever, and how to bring them to the point where they actually could be onstage, performing, doing something that four months before they just were incapable of doing. I think every coach should have to do that. It's just like, to me, all throwers should have to do folk dancing, because it's quick feet, it's very structured – and yet not, but it teaches them how to have quick feet and spin. I mean, I remember taking my first dance class, because we had to take it as PE majors, and I had a woman in the class who was the discus thrower on the University of Oregon track team. She was the lightest person on her feet of everybody I worked with, and she weighed about 180 pounds and was like five-nine – she was just a massive girl. But you could move her like a feather. Because she understood it and could feel her body.

“Ken showed me how to get people like myself, who are incredibly uncomfortable, who knew nothing about what they were doing, had no skill whatsoever, and how to bring them to the point where they actually could be onstage, performing, doing something that four months before they just were incapable of doing. I think every coach should have to do that.”

You mentioned in a previous interview, for the Just Fly Performance Podcast (episode #103), that some might say coaching [Mike] Powell and [Willie] Banks and the others would have been enough, but that you felt you needed to fulfil yourself, there was something more that you needed to do in coaching, and so you made the decision to go to China to coach eight years ago. What is/was that “something more”? Have you done it?

I think I've done it: I think it's legacy. Because I don't have children, I don't have a legacy. My only legacy is my work. My only legacy is what I've accomplished in here. And with Powell and Banks… Well, obviously, Willie was already great. Mike was not great, but he achieved. But then people go, ‘Oh, that's just a one off. You can’t ever do that again.’ And I'll give you an I example of that: So, Powell was in 1991; in 2006, I went to Michigan State [University] to coach. And I walked on to the track at the Big 10 [Outdoor Track and Field] Championships and nobody knew I was there yet. I ran in to a couple of coaches; they went, ‘Oh, damn, you're at MSU now? Now we're going to have to coach.’ And one of the coaches came up to me and he said, ‘Well, now we're going to find out if you actually can coach.’ And that is the attitude…

And that’s 15 years later!

Yeah, but it still stuck, because I couldn't get a job in the United States to save my life – 300+ applications, not one interview.

Do you think it's because people thought that, because you've done these amazing things (in coaching Powell to the world record and Banks, as well), either you're too good to work with them, or you think you’re too good… Or you're not willing to learn, or even that you’ll make them look bad?

Probably all the above. They probably thought that. None of it would be true – very few people understand how much of a team player I actually am, and that I want to see everybody succeed, including those people who I am coaching with. 

I think it was also a period of time, even though I'm older than most of them, where female coaches were finally getting their due and were getting jobs. Mind you, with no experience or little experience, but they were being given jobs that should have gone to experienced coaches. Because in my view, if I'm going to coach, I want to learn how to coach, and if you've never coached much, you don't know how to coach yet. So, the people that have problems with that are the athletes because they're the ones that suffer. I don't suffer. Your coaches don't suffer. The athletes suffer because you don't know what you’re doing. And too many of those young women, and some of them did, but many of them did not have a mentor coach. They're thinking, ‘Oh, I coached for a year, I could be a head coach now.’ And the problem is, that was true. You cannot learn enough in a year, [and] they were 24-25 years old. So that created a problem for many of the male coaches, particularly white male coaches in the United States at the time, because we just couldn't get employed. So many of us in the profession. And the worst part is, I am a woman's coach. I want women to succeed. Anyways, so I never had an interview in almost 16 years.

So, your legacy now: it's what you've produced, it's how you've helped people, it's how far you’ve taken athletes. And is that enough for you? Or are you going to continue to coach for the rest of your life?

No. No, I have other interests. You know, you’ve talked about sports science and passion; I was the sports science coordinator for USA Track and Field at one point, and my life in coaching has been around sports science. My passion is waning. Now, is it waning? Or is it just in a decline because I don't have balance? I think it's more in a decline because I don't have balance. Probably if I had balance with somebody who supported this path that I'm on, maybe it would be that it would not be waning or diminishing over time. And when you don't have that, the athletes deserve it, you need to walk away. You do. You just need to do that.

[There are] a couple things that I'd like to do, but I'm gonna finish up with with these guys [in China] first. And I imagine that if I take Chunyu all the way to Paris, that'll be it for me – I'll be 70 years old. I'd like to have ten years of doing something for me, because I don't have anything… For me, it's athlete-centred. It always has been. And it's coach-driven and administration-supported. So, it's not coach-centred; it's not about us. And so for me, I think that I need to become selfish in a different way. I'm selfish with my time because I have to do this, but I don't want to be selfish that way. I want to be selfish, but like [with] health, for instance, maybe learn how to play a musical instrument, paint – I don't know, something artistic in nature, something creative. Because I see coaching as so creative anyways. Obviously, art based in science… I also have the sense that maybe my voice could be utilized in the political arena at some point, whether it's local or whatever. I mean, not many people do what we do. Not many people have lived… You go back to your hometown, how many people have actually been out of the country? There’s people still living there who have never left the state where I am, you know? And the more countries you go to, the smaller the world gets, and the easier it is to understand stuff. 

I had dinner with the Minister of Sport in China not long ago. And he said, ‘I want to recommend you for the (whatever their friendship medal is)’, which is the highest honour a foreign civilian can get. I don't think [it] will ever happen, just because I'm from the US – a little tense right now. But [there is] that kind of understanding that we've changed the culture… Maybe, maybe. …Because cultures don't change overnight, and they're very resistant to change. And it takes time, and in eight years, it’s still not enough time. But we've changed the perception of what the culture could be, maybe more than we've changed the actual culture. Because we've turned them from, ‘I can't compete with the world,’ to ‘I can beat the world or at least compete with them,’ which they've never, never had that concept before. They’ve never walked onto a track going, ‘I'm good enough.’

That right there is a legacy. That's incredible.

To watch from the outside, you see it, but the athletes, they still struggle with it. They see this six-foot three-inch brother who can run like the wind coming down the runway in a long jump, and it’s like, ‘I can't beat him!’ But then they go out and do, and I'm like, ‘You can beat them! I know what they do. I know how they train. Look, what we're doing is better than what they're doing.’ I take someone like Wang Jianan, the Chinese record holder in the long jump now: 8.47 m. I mean, he's got legs that are about 0.95 metres. Mike Powell’s were like 1.15 metres. It's like twenty centimetres difference at take-off. What we're doing to even get close to him is amazing.

So that’s the legacy.

Yes! And previously, I’ve had conversations with others about how the impact of, say in Australia, a young kid training in a local pool in the lane next to an Olympian, cannot be overlooked. Such an environment has enormous potential for motivating that kid and showing them that their Olympic dream is not that far out of reach – if she can do it, why can’t I? Similarly, you’ve said that Su Bingtian running fast and performing on the world stage opens the door for other Chinese track and field athletes to believe they can do that, too…

It didn't just open it up for Chinese athletes. What Su has done is so much bigger than China. It's Asia. I mean, 1.4 billion people watched that final. That wasn't in China. That was Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Japan, China, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Cambodia – it was Asia. So, what he did is he showed Asians that they can compete with the rest of the world! That's how big that was. 

“What Su has done is so much bigger than China. It’s Asia. ...he showed Asians that they can compete with the rest of the world! That’s how big that was. ”

Do you think, then, maybe not in Paris, but maybe Los Angeles or Brisbane, that we might see a greater number of Asians in semis and finals in track and field events? Of course, they’ve got to have all of the high-performance structures and elite coaching and so on to go with that…

There's a limitation, and the limitation, unfortunately – that little hourglass situation in Middle School – has another one that comes after that, and that is having a relationship-communication pathway set with a coach who understands how to get you there. And most people don't get that. I mean, you could say that I failed with Su, and [you] very easily can [say that], because in the final… He didn't fail, obviously, he ran 9.98s still – that’s a damn good time, but he didn't come back and run 9.85s or 9.86s, which would have given him a medal. 

And you learn from that too, because I saw him when he came off, and Rana [Reider] and some other guys saw him and they said, ‘Oh, you got trouble in the final.’ I said, ‘Oh, we're screwed. He's done.’ Because his emotional outlet… I mean, one, you have just run the race and the emotions that come with that. But then, the whole central nervous system and the whole sympathetic-parasympathetic balance gets totally thrown out of whack when you have this huge emotional outlet, which he did for a while, as a matter of fact. And he came off the track and he says, ‘I can barely walk. I'm so tired.’ And I'm like, ‘Ahhh yeeeeah.’ So I didn't prepare him for success. I knew he was capable of running that fast, but I also… he is not normally that emotive, you know, he doesn't usually do that. And that was me just under-estimating what that number meant to him. And that was a mistake I made. Then he could have come back in the final, I think, he had one more start in him he could have run, but then they had a false start, and that was it. He was done. That was it. 

And then if you go to the other side of that, and you look at Chunyu, who in every race got better, until the final race where she just didn't understand ‘cause she hadn't raced enough with the big girls. She had to go, and she got left behind by a lot and still came back and got fifth. I mean, if she had been anywhere near them in the last 150 metres, she might have won that damn thing. Because her times and everything she's capable of doing, this girl’s a stud, she just doesn't know how to race yet.

You’ve mentioned previously (in the second Just Fly Performance podcast, #282) that you were working on, I think, Su’s starts, and he didn't believe that that's what you should be doing…

He didn't buy into that at all. Yeah, no buy-in at all.

So, do your athletes in China trust you more now, do you think? They must be starting to come around when they see… when they do(!) these incredible performances. Do they now believe in that process?

They still don't trust, no. No, they're very, very conservative and very resistant to change. But when Su runs 9.83, everybody's kind of standing up and going, ‘Well wait a minute, maybe he can coach.’ I mean, and that's the hard part, you spend most your life as a coach losing. You do! Only one person gets to win. And so that means, as a coach, 95% of the time you're losing. You better have a very strong constitution or it'll eat you alive. That's why, people don't understand how strong mentally you have to be in certain ways, where you can be weak in others. But when it comes to failure, and this is a big problem in China – in China, failure is losing face. Failure for us in the west is a stairway. If you fail, go up the next stair, go up the next stair. If you fail again, keep going up because you're learning from that. That failure, that stair is like a trampoline more than a stair. It's pushing you to success. Not for them: you fail, then you're bad. That’s the hardest thing to overcome; they do not have that concept, that mindset, if you wish to use that term, in their culture.

It was at this point that I experienced some technical difficulties. And then I had some more technical difficulties when I had Randy back online with me for the rest of the interview, which resulted in me losing the audio file for our subsequent discussion. …it turns out I’m not such a great lip-reader! So, we had a chance to chat again a week later and I asked him these same following questions for the second time. I didn’t like to prompt him too much about what I remembered him saying previously, but we did our best to then revisit the answers he provided the first time around…

We started out with these next couple of questions due to the news of the day, but then went back to discussing coaching in China and Korea.

At this stage, I've only read the headlines, but in the news right now we hear that the US is doing a diplomatic boycott of Beijing [2022 Winter Olympic Games]?

Yeah, it's dumb. It'll do nothing. It means nothing. The original 1980 boycott – I was there, I was at the Olympic trials, and a number of my athletes later on were there, made the team, but it did nothing. And it'll do nothing. I just think that the Olympics need to be off. Whatever the disagreements are in the world, the Olympics are supposed to surpass that. And you need to stop with the nonsense of politics when it comes to the Olympics because it's that one time where everybody comes together in friendship or whatever, you know? So, that's my feeling. And it’s not because I'm involved in sport. It would be that feeling anyways. We have to have something that gets people to stop for a moment and think, ‘Well, the world could be okay if we just can be friendly and communicate with each other.’

What, then, is your position on the Olympic Games providing athletes an opportunity to draw attention to bad things that might be happening to them or their people, as opposed to the politicians doing it?

Yeah, I mean, one of my best friends is Tommie Smith. And John Carlos, and so they were 1968, with Peter [Norman].* And I think that if there's a situation that warrants that… In the case of the black man in the world at that point in time, it warranted it.

*Referring to the Black Power, or human rights, salute Smith and Carlos made on the 200m medal ceremony dais during the playing of the US National Anthem at the Mexico City Olympics.

I've heard you speak about it before, and we touched on it earlier when you referred to likening coaching through a language translator with Ginger Rogers dancing with Fred Astaire and having to do all of the steps backwards and in high heels; I wondered if you would describe this interesting feature of your work a bit further. And do you ever speculate on how much better your athletes could be if you were able to communicate with them in the same language?

Well, to answer that right away, yes. So, I think that in the long run, it would be better if I could speak Mandarin, only because the nuance gets lost. As an example, we just had a big seminar this week, with Ralph Mann and a few other people, and they had a real time translator who knew nothing about sport. And the coaches were just confused, because you cannot literally translate words and get meaning out of them. So, it takes a translator time to understand… Six months to a year to really get comfortable being able to communicate, not just what to do, but what the meaning behind the ‘what to do’ is. 

Aki, who's now my manager as well [as my translator], she studied all the books, she studied physiology, she took the NSCA test. She did these things which you don't have to do [just to be a translator] – she's got a degree in communications, but her goal is she wants to be able to communicate and in order to communicate appropriately, she has to understand my language. Not my English, my language of coaching and cueing and all the other languages you speak as you coach: your psych language, your mean language, your good language, and understand when it's meaningful, and when it's crap, and when you're trying to spur somebody on and you're just mad at him. There's subtle differences that if you don't know, you're gonna think [the athlete is] bad all the time, ‘Whoa god, that guy's always mad!’ 

Do you talk to her, or do you talk to them? Do you direct your speaking to Aki, or do you direct it to your athletes and she’s off to the side waiting to translate?

It depends on the situation. Most of the time, it's to the athlete, and then she picks it up. Or I'll say, ‘Aki, come on over.’ Because we've gotten to the point where hand signals, video and things work pretty well and they understand what I mean. Because she's actually taken them through the courses: ‘How do you sprint?’ ‘What is sprinting?’ ‘What are the starts?’ ‘What is max velocity?’ And so she's taught that course to them four or five times, so we have the same language now. Now we're speaking the same language, even though neither one of us speak each other's language. We have an intermediate step that would be kind of like sign language for someone who's deaf.

It’s interesting that you said that, because you did say to me the other day that eventually no, it doesn’t matter that you don’t speak Mandarin, but it just takes more time.

Yeah, eventually they get it, but it takes a lot more time. Like, what I could do in four or five months would take me two years. And I'm pretty good at it. And that's why when coaches from outside go, ‘Oh, it'd be easy to coach those guys, they’re talented.’ I’m like, ‘No, no, you don't get it. You do not understand at all.’ And once coaches come over from the States or Canada or Australia, and they're all here and then they realize just how difficult it is, then it's like, ‘How did you ever accomplish anything?’ You know, they can't accomplish anything. They're in a different role than I am. I'm in a lucky role, not because of the role I'm in, but because of what I've accomplished. So having coached world record holders, Olympic medallists, that gets me into another stratum. And then being older and male, puts me into another stratum. So even the most senior of officials is still younger. And so, as I said earlier, they still treat me with that age respect, which I really appreciate.

Then I guess, in light of this higher respect that you garner, you may not have had to adjust the way that you speak or the way that you behave, your natural demeanour, like other outsiders may have had to do, because of the cultural differences, for example, the face-saving in China and Korea where you don't speak out against someone in a higher position than you, someone with more authority?

Yeah, I haven't had to change much. I'm just honest, which they're not used to. They’re not used somebody telling them honestly, what's going on. In terms of changing my coaching style, it is a little bit like coaching at middle school, from a language standpoint and from a…

We had a brief interlude at this point while Randy coached his athletes. It was quite the masterclass for me and one of those pinch-yourself, amazing-what-technology-can-do-for-us-nowadays experiences: Randy, from his study at his home in the US, early evening-time, coaching his athletes who were on the track in Shenzen, China, on a clear, cool morning, less than 50km from where I sat in a Country Park in Hong Kong conducting our interview. Remarkable!

Where were we up to…? I was asking you about coaching in China and Korea, the saving-face culture, not speaking out against a higher pay-grade or authority... And I also wondered – you we're talking about being honest and people not being used to that – do you have trouble with your athletes being honest with you, or rather, giving you honest feedback with how they're feeling or what training they've done, for example?

Oh, there's no there's no feedback, there's no honesty. The only thing you'll get is, ‘I'm tired.’ That's pretty much it. They're taught not to; they're taught to ignore pain. It's just part of their culture: you never complain, you don't talk about it. It's one of the reasons why I went to an objective measurement with the Omegawave, so that whatever they're telling me or not telling me, I gotta have a backup to say, ‘You're full of crap.’ Or, ‘Okay, you're right.’

And the Omegawave is…

It's a number of different things, but it's basically a battery of tests that they take every morning – it's pretty quick – and it gives me an idea how well they've adapted to the stress of the previous day.

And what about when the athletes don’t perform; I’ve heard stories of athletes getting very public dressing downs, severely reprimanded, on the track from their coaches – do the athletes expect differently from you, or are they surprised when you don’t act similarly?

No, I mean, I don't look at losing in a major competition as failing, if they perform well. If they perform well. If they don't perform well, then that's different, then you messed up. I've only had one really big example of that, everyone else has done the best that I thought they could do, given the situation. But I've had one where they just messed up, they just did not do what they were supposed to do, and it basically cost them a medal in the Olympics because of that.

The worst thing I ever say is, ‘Boy, you really screwed that up.’ And that's about as far as it goes. Or I'll phrase it differently and say, ‘You could have done better than that. You're capable of it. You didn’t today. That's too bad. You left a medal on the table today.’ And they already know it. They know they did, they know they screwed up, and I don't think there's any reason to beat them up any more than that.

You’ve already commented on some of the differences between athletes from North America, or even the rest of the world, and athletes from China or Asia. What about similarities? Are they the same types of people? Do they want the same things? Do they do it for the same reasons?

Definitely not the same reasons. No. A lot of the American kids/Western kids, they're doing it and they don't make a dime. I mean, I'll give you an example with Korea: we had the Korean team in Salzburg, Austria, for a training camp, and they were just being little whiners. And finally – I had one American training with us there, a triple jumper – and I brought them all in the room. I was angry. And I named them off, I said, ‘You make…’ like the highest paid person in the room was US$225,000 a year. ‘And you make…, and you make…, and you make… and she ran 11.50 [seconds for the 100m].’ And I said, ‘And she came over here. She would be number one in Korea. And she makes nothing. Nothing. You guys do not understand that you wouldn't get none of this in any other country. You'd get none of it. You're the best people there are in a really, really small pond.’ 

And I didn't want to be a jerk, but I was just tired of them being little prima donnas when they were high school athletes. Basically. Not even as good as our American high schoolers. It was like, ‘Come on, you’ve got to get better than this.’ So that was the one time where I lost it with them. Because, I mean, there are so many people who would love to get paid that kind of money and they’d do track for as long as they could. And they didn't appreciate it. They didn't appreciate it. So that's kind of a common thread. Now, whether it's because they can't, they don't, they won't, they just don't know how… But appreciation is a learned thing in Asian cultures. The women seem to do it better than the men do. The men don't do it hardly at all because it's a sign of weakness, to appreciate… In this case, they just don't know how to show appreciation, so if they do something, and this is a similarity: if they succeed, it's because they succeeded. If they fail, it's because you failed them. Not with everybody... And I usually take credit for failure. Like, that's on me. We did something wrong, let's figure it out. Or I'm probably almost already aware of what the problem is, but there's certain things you can't change in a small amount of time. But that is a similarity you see quite often in athletes in general, regardless of culture.

Do you find that it occurs more these days?

Without a doubt. Yeah, without a doubt. But not so much in the Chinese, I see it more in the Western athletes. The Chinese culture seems to have stayed kind of the same since I've been here, from that perspective, but boy do I see outside, it is, ‘You owe me.’ I mean, ‘I'm supposed to have… Give me…’ Like, wow! And it's funny because I see that in young coaches, too, like, ‘I deserve this. I should have that.’ And I saw it a lot in women in the 90s where, ‘Well, I deserve that position because women have been held back for so long.’ I'm like, ‘No argument on that one. But you haven't done a damn thing to get this one. Okay. And you need to go do that.’ And if you want the respect from other people, one, but more importantly, a lot more important, it’s just a disservice to the athlete if you don't know what the hell you're doing. And if you think you know what you're doing, talk to me in ten years.

And it will be that old adage, ‘Oh I realise now that I didn't know anything then…’

Oh, yeah. I've had that conversation with people. I remember sitting a coach down in the car in the US and I said, ‘Look, you’ve got a lot to learn. So…’ And they go, ‘Well, I really think I know what I'm doing now.’ And I’m like, ‘No, I'm not saying you don't know what you're doing. I'm just saying you know what you're doing now, but you won't know what you're not doing, in 10 years you'll look back at this and go, “I didn't know a thing.” And take it from somebody who's been where you're going to be…’ Of course, they didn’t take that very well… Yeah, nobody takes that well…

And the other day you spoke of much smaller generational spans, for example, where in the West we might see major changes every ten to 20 years, in your experience in China, the generational change seems to occur much more rapidly…?

So we would do 20 years [in the West], it's like [every] four to six years [in China], basically. And that's a problem from a coaching standpoint, [or something] you have to be aware of, because the younger ones are going to be much different. Like Su [32 years old] is very different culturally than let's say, Wu, who's 26-27. Then you come to the next group, it's 21 or 20 [years old], and they're different, too. In this case, it's how they've been exposed to the West and technology and things so that it's just a little bit different.

And that makes your interaction with them slightly different, I guess.

It can, yes, it can. That's for sure.

Finally, what do you love about being in and/or coaching in China?

Geographically, it can be stunning. Different than the US, but stunning nevertheless, I mean, there's places that’ll take your breath away. Like Lijiang is one of those places. I've [only] had a chance to go to places, but I haven’t had a chance to experience them as you would [as a tourist, rather than] being confined by work...

I think part of it is to know that you're helping people who would not normally get help. You know, we talked about the dream weaver, being able to help them achieve their dreams, which would be true no matter where you were. But it helps here because there wasn't a shot in hell that they were going to make their way out of this unless they got some pretty good coaches helping them. They've had some excellent coaches here. And the ones that have been really good have succeeded. So, yeah, I think being in a different culture, trying to understand people, that most Americans consider their enemies at this point, which is just not true. Governments are governments, people are people – it's different. And most people that I've met expressed a fondness for the US more so than the US people expressing a fondness for Chinese. And, in general, I think knowing that I've been able to help some of these athletes have a life different than they were destined to have.

Randy, it has been an enormous honour to interview you for The High Performance Sport Guild, to hear your insights and to learn from you. Thank you so much for being so generous with your time and your wisdom.