WARATAH Commonwealth Games aspirant Mark Taylor will be hoping his coaching is not as good as his high jumping on Saturday evening.
Taylor will be part of a three-level tree of coaches and athletes contesting the men's high jump at the Hunter Track Classic at Glendale.
The 29-year-old's Sydney-based coach, Michael Hamblin-Harris, 34, will come out of retirement to compete and Taylor's own Hunter Academy of Sport proteges, Miles Cole-Clark, 16, and Liam Wanless, 19, will be aiming to turn their mentor's knowledge against him.
"This is the first serious type of competition that it's been head to head, so it is different," Taylor said of competing against Cole-Clark and Wanless.
"They're just young guys coming through and these are the sort of events we want them to get experience in."
Cole-Clark has been high jumping for only 12 months but won a bronze medal in December at the Australian All Schools championships in Hobart.
Even though they will be rivals on Saturday, Taylor said he would still be supporting the teenagers.
"I'm finishing up my high jumping this season, I just want to go to Delhi [Commonwealth Games] and I'll be finished, so I just want to pass on as much knowledge and advice as I can to these young guys," he said.
"It's just an added bonus to have these guys in the same event so they get the feel and go through the motions with someone they're comfortable with besides being thrown in the deep end."
Another Taylor protege, Wyong's Trudy Thompson, is the Australian under-20 champion and will compete in the women's high jump.
Taylor has a dual citizenship and represented Scotland at the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne after he failed to jump the Australian qualifying mark of 2.21 metres, but he reached the Scottish equivalent of 2.17m. He finished 17th at Melbourne in Scottish colours.
Representing Australia at Delhi remains the teaching student's primary goal and he is confident of cracking 2.21m before the cut-off on June 30.
"This is my second bite of the cherry to redeem myself," he said.
In 2008 Taylor reached his peak when he became the No.1 high jumper in Australia, but bone spurs in his ankle at the end of the season led to surgery and a break from competition in 2009.
"My PB is 2.23 in 2008 and that was when I was going over 2.20 quite regularly, so that's why it's frustrating to be sitting on the 2.10s," he said.
"It's just getting in the right competitions, in the right environments and getting the feel of that rhythm and technique again and having the self-belief."
Other Hunter-based Commonwealth Games hopefuls Laura Whaler, Pirrenee Steinert and Liam Gander will be absent from Glendale on Saturday after the Brisbane Track Classic, which is a Athletics Australia national series event, was scheduled for the same day.
Whaler will take plenty of momentum into the meeting after she won the women's 100 metres at the Australia Cup in Canberra on Saturday by 0.3 seconds in a time of 11.71 seconds.
Hunter Track Classic organiser Scott Westcott is hopeful of making his event part of the national series in 2011.
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