HOTSEAT NIGEL WALKER
Karen Maxwell talks to the national director of the English Institute of Sport (EIS) about the performance impact that EIS practitioners are offering elite athletes in the run-up to London 2012
Can you tell me about your career background? A former Olympic high-hurdler and rugby union player, I was a development officer for the Sports Council for Wales and assistant team manager with the Welsh Rugby Union, before becoming the head of sport at BBC Wales in 2001. I then be- came head of change and internal communications in 2006 before being given the added responsibility of programme director for BBC Wales’ drama village in 2009 while retaining board responsibility for sport. I joined the UK Sport board in 2006 and was appointed chair
of the Major Events Panel in the summer of 2009. I left the BBC to take the role of national director of the English Institute of Sport (EIS) in September 2010.
Why did you join the EIS? With the London Games on the horizon it appeared to me to be a fantastic opportunity. At the EIS we like to think of ourselves as the ‘team behind
the team’. We have more than 250 practitioners that deliver 4,000 hours of sport science and sport medicine each week to more than 40 Olympic and Paralympic sports – along with a se- lect number of non-Olympic sports, including Premier League football, Premiership rugby union, rugby league and cricket. We also work with 16 of the 17 Paralympic sports represented by ParalympicsGB.
What is the EIS modeled on? Publically funded by UK Sport and the national governing bodies (NGBs) that use our services, the EIS is only 10 years old so it’s a relatively young organisation. World champion net- ball player and coach Wilma Shakespeare was the first national director. She came over from Australia to establish the EIS, so you could say it was modeled on the Australian Institute of Sport – although we’ve adapted, changed and manipulated it to our benefit.
Our vision is to be the world’s leading sports medicine/science
organisation within elite sport so we observe what’s going on at sports institutes in Switzerland, in Germany and in Australia to name a few. We all have a regular, mutually beneficial dia- logue and of course they are keen to learn from us, as Britain is regarded as a nation that’s able to punch above its weight in sport performance.
How does the EIS strive to extend the elite performance of UK athletes? Some way down the line we’ll reach the stage where a human being will not be able to run any faster. We may be able to scrape a couple of 100ths here or there but we’re pretty much at our physical limit and that’s why research and innovation in all its forms is so important. Sport in the UK has been incredibly well funded, particularly
over the past six or seven years, and the structures that we’ve been able to put into place have helped us to achieve amazing results in world sport. We finished fourth in the medal table at Beijing 2008 – although we’re not the fourth largest nation in the world by any imagination. Our target is to continue this momentum and achieve fourth again at London this summer.
What does your day-to-day role entail? I’m an MBA graduate, so organisation and managing change is at the heart of everything I do. I’ve been a team member during my sporting days so I feel I
know what it takes to put a good team together and unite as one for a single goal. The EIS is split into three directorates: the north, central and
the south. My job is to ensure that we offer a consistent and flexible service delivery across all these areas by putting the per- formance impact of the athlete and the impact of that sport First and formost, it’s all about getting the greatest bang
for the government’s buck with EIS multi-disciplinary teams – including physiotherapists, psychologists, nutritionists and performance lifestyle practitioners – working together so that the performance impact is greater. Our ‘one EIS one vision’ gives practitioners regular contact
with senior people on a regular basis. This allows us to talk about the organisation’s objectives and listen to any comments that they may have. I make regular visits to the EIS sites and I’ve made it absolutely clear that I’m there for them to talk to me because I want to understand the issues that they face from a sport or personal perspective. I’m definitely not an autocrat, I’m a democrat through and
The EIS likes to think of themselves as the ‘team behind the team’ 48 Read Sports Management online
sportsmanagement.co.uk/digital
through, but the important thing is that people feel that they can discuss issues with me and I’ll raise them further down the line in a sensitive matter so we can work out a solution.
Issue 2 2012 © cybertrek 2012
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