Jimmy Beauttah

JIMMY "SIMBA" BEAUTTAH (KENYA)
KING OF ENDURANCE

Jimmy Beauttah is chief coach at the IAAF Kip Keino High Performance Training Centre in Eldoret, Kenya. Beauttah has been coaching in Kenya for over 30 years and in that time he has coached a number of athletes to world class level, including World Championships, World Cross-Country, World Half-Marathon, Commonwealth Games and Olympic Games.

A formidable distance coach, Beauttah has an endless list of athletes who he has helped coach to records and medals at the highest levels of competition – so many in fact he can’t possibly name them all for fear of missing someone out. However he does admit that his ‘baby’ is the 1500m Beijing Olympic Gold Medallist, Asbel Kiprop. Beauttah, known to many as Simba, has a long history of coaching successes. He has transformed the likes of Moses Kiptanui (3000m Steeplechase world number one 1991-1995) and Daniel Komen (5000m World Champion in Athens, 1997) into world-beaters and to more recently Asbel Kiprop as well as Daniel Kipchirchir Komen (1500m World Champion in 2007, Osaka).

Beauttah will be leading several seminars at the 2011 edition of the International Festival of Athletics Coaching (IFAC), which will naturally focus on endurance and developing the young endurance athlete, but he will also hold seminars on preparing for a major championships with his keynote speech being entitled “delivering on the day.”

Beauttah who has coached 8 World Championship medals, 3 Olympic medals and 2 Commonwealth Games medals, explains “When it comes to delivering on the day, its like the best dish on a menu: it’s a process. There are a number of ingredients that go into making the dish as well as a great deal of time and preparation. As coaches we need to invest the time into planning out this process and we need to think about factors like nutrition as well as the recovery, intensity and type of training sessions. It is important to prepare in good time, and to all the athlete time to psychological adapt for the championships.”

Being a keen sportsman himself, Beauttah developed an interest in coaching from his athlete days, “I would always try to out think my opponent, and this led me to thinking beyond just competition environment. I began to focus on the areas of preparation, and this finally led me into the coaching scene.“ Since turning his attention to coaching, Beauttah has racked up an impressive repertoire of athletes who have competed and medalled at major championships and he puts this success down to understanding an athlete’s needs and good preparation and planning. Beauttah particularly enjoys coaching young developing athletes and helping them make the step up to elite level, as he describes it “there is nothing like watching an up-and-coming athlete progress – it gives you, as a coach, a great deal of satisfaction to see them make it.” And the key to transforming a developing athlete to senior elite level, well “it’s all about keeping them motivated” says Beauttah.

Jimmy Beauttah at IFAC 2011
Jimmy "Simba" Beauttah will be presenting the following:

Sat 29 Oct 10h30-11h25	Endurance – “the complete endurance athlete”
Sat 29 Oct 11h30-12h25	Athlete preparations – “preparing for a major championships”
Sat 29 Oct 13h30-14h25	Endurance – “the complete endurance athlete”
Sat 29 Oct 14h30-15h25	Athlete preparations – “preparing for a major championships”
Sat 29 Oct 16h00-17h00	Keynote: “Delivering on the day”
Sun 30 Oct 10h15-11h00	Endurance – “Q&A: step from development to elite” with Dave Sunderland and facilitated by Mike Johnston, scottishathletics National Endurance Coach
Sun 30 Oct 13h00-15h45	Coaches Mall & Interactive Forum