DALE GARLAND and Lee Merrien are both excited about the Power of 10 initiative that was launched by Sebastian Coe and UK Athletics last week. Run by UK Athletics, the scheme is designed to identify and nurture talent that may be able to win gold medals at the 2012 London Olympic Games.

The two men charged with coaching the juniors on the island are both supporters of it and several local youngsters appear on the initial website listings having met their regional targets.

‘It’s certainly a good initiative,’ said Merrien, Guernsey’s athletics development officer.

‘Athletes now know what they need to do to be able to make the Olympics.’

The way the scheme works is by setting targets each season in every discipline. These get harder as 2012 gets nearer.

‘It really only applies for our better athletes to see if they would be able to see if they can succeed at that level,’ said Merrien.

‘Over the next few months I’m going to look at bringing in a similar initiative over here next season.’

In Garland’s event, the 400m hurdles has in the Power of 10 a time of 51sec. as the 2006 national marker. The island’s athletics elite performance director hit this target last month when he ran 50.47.

On the back of that he is ranked seventh in the country although he will be laid up for a while with a hernia problem. He is a fan of the scheme to get better athletes for the 2012 Games but he has his eyes on the Beijing Games in 2008.

‘Beijing is what I’m looking at,’ said the 25-year-old.

’49.20 is the qualifying time and I did 49.80 last season. 0.60 sounds really easy but it’s not.

‘Before my hernia, I was getting quicker and going in the right direction. If I stay relatively injury-free then I should be there.’

Garland was full of praise for Kylie Robilliard for breaking the Power of 10 time for the 100m hurdles on Sunday.

‘She did well,’ he said.

‘I think it’s really good because basically she moved away to the UK last year to train and last season we didn’t see the benefits of that.

‘We are this season.’

The chief executive of UK Athletics, David Moorcroft and Lord Coe, the chairman of the London 2012 Organising Committee, are the men behind the new system that has been charged with turning around Britain’s fortunes on the international scene.

‘Our purpose is to drive up performance levels in every event, every region and every age group,’ said a UK Athletics representative.

‘Which is why, each year leading up to the 2012 Olympic Games, we will be setting ever increasing targets. We should have at least 10 athletes achieving times, distances, or heights better than those predefined annual targets.

‘It’s our belief that this target-based system will help strengthen the breadth and depth of British athletics talent and reduce our reliance on a handful of brilliant individuals. It’s a transparent process: if we’re not meeting our targets, we know there is more work to do.’

Respected athletics statistician Rob Whittingham designed it as a stepping stone concept. He worked out that Team GB would have finished ninth or 10th in the overall medals table if there had been an Olympics in 2005.

With that in mind he is now building the statistical stepping stones towards greater glory at London 2012.

‘Athletics is always considered a pyramid,’ he said.

‘Power of 10 is all about jacking up the pyramid on the basis that if you raise the whole thing, the top must go higher.’

Whittingham’s target this year is to have 35,000 athletes in the rankings.

That is a seven-fold increase on the number of athletes whose performances have been recorded by UK Athletics in the past. There are already 20,500 names in the database, including many islanders.