Amy Foster hoping to pass major event experience onto next generation of Northern Irish athletes

Foster won nine Irish sprint titles, competed at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow and Gold Coast, went to four European Championships as well as the World Indoor Championships and two World University Championships.

Since retiring, Foster has taken up a role with Athletics NI and will be travelling to the Caribbean as one of two coaches for the track and field team along with Luke Dinsmore.

Northern Ireland athletics is on a high after Ciara Mageean and Kate O’Connor both won silver medals at the Birmingham Commonwealth Games last summer.

“I think the performances of Kate and Ciara last year are inspirational for the young athletes coming through and particularly the ones going to the Youth Commonwealth Games – it shows that Northern Ireland maybe small but can have success at a major games,” said Foster. “It certainly is inspirational and something for our young athletes to strive towards.

"The Youth Commonwealth Games is sort of their first international experience and hopefully they can progress on to the senior games in four or eight years time.

“I’ve been to a couple of Commonwealth Games and two World University Games, and it is definitely helpful having that multi-games experience as well as individual games and hopefully I have tried to pass on some knowledge.

“It’s the travel and the experience when you get there. It isn’t just necessarily the competition it is the other experiences around that and how to prepare and manage for that, so it is something I can pass on to the athletes and not sound like ‘in my day’ because it wasn’t that long ago but hopefully it can be helpful to them.

“Realistic experiences for me as an athlete were useful to hear and brought reality to it and hopefully I can do the same for our young athletes.”

Foster was delighted to stay in athletics after hanging up her spikes.

“It has been a nice transition for me and I’m grateful that a job opportunity came up because in sport there are very few jobs that can come up and whenever I had this opportunity, I grabbed it with both hands.” she added. “It was nice to be able to retire and fairly quickly move to a job within sport and it certainly made the retirement process a little bit easier for me.

“It is nice to almost go back to the beginning and work with the talented youth and junior athletes and hopefully being able to set them up at the start of their careers and hopefully some of them can have long and successful careers.

“It is certainly something that I am very grateful for and enjoy working with the young athletics a lot and their parents as well which is their biggest support.”

Success in the Caribbean won’t just be measured in medals.

“At U18 every athlete wants to go out and compete and do their best but very much for us it is a learning experience and it is a chance to go and experience the games and experience an international competition and understand somewhat is needed to get to a senior games,” said Foster. “We want them to go out there and perform to the best of their ability, we want them to be happy with their performances but to also use it as an experience that can put them on a trajectory to a senior games.

“Success we always talk about outperforming your ranking. If an athlete can go out there and equal or better where they have ranked that is a success.”