INTERVIEW
Draycott has seen her life turned around since joining the Sported- supported Aspire
HELPING A
HAND
national boxing titles to her name. But life for Draycott was very different be- fore she found boxing. “I joined Aspire in February 2010 af-
P
ter seeing Sharon Holford, who’s now one of my coaches, in a local paper,” she says. “She’d been winning loads of titles so I decided to get in touch with the gym. I’d been to a couple of
erry Draycott is 24, she’s been a member of the Aspire Box- ing Academy in Sheffield since 2010 and now has two
boxing gyms before then but seeing Sharon’s story really inspired me. “So much of what I did before
I found boxing you just couldn’t write about. I’d left school, never re- ally worked and I was doing stuff I shouldn’t have been because I didn’t have any direction. From about the age of 14 to 21 I was just getting into trouble, spending my weekends drink- ing and taking stuff I shouldn’t have been. I was locked up several times. “All my friends are still doing the
same things. I don’t know where I would be if I hadn’t discovered boxing – probably locked up or worse.” Draycott has now joined the army
as a way of introducing discipline into her life, has been put forward for Team GB assessment and is hoping to get a place at the 2016 Rio Olympics. “If I don’t make it there will be
other events to look forward to and I’ll just keep working hard,” she says.
www.sported.org.uk. To donate, text KEEP12 plus your donation to 70070
country,” he says. “That’s something I’ve taken onto Sported. Each individual club is doing a great job, but together they can be hugely powerful.” His experience with London 2012 was
one he’ll never forget, says Mills. “It was a 10 year experience, from
starting the bid with a blank piece of paper, through to the closing ceremony of the Paralympic Games,” he says. “The thing that gave me the most
pleasure was seeing the country come together in a way we could only ever have dreamed of. In the very early days there was a huge amount of cynicism – people thought that we couldn’t win it, and once we had, they thought we would screw it up. “The thing that really got the tear
ducts going was the arrival of the torch. When it arrived in the UK, it was the
first moment the public was actually exposed to the Olympics. I sat on the media truck as the torch travelled up through Cornwall. The crowds were get- ting bigger and bigger, and we could see the impact it was having on people – we could see the tears, the emotions, the kids on grandparents’ shoulders. When we arrived in Plymouth, 55,000 people were waiting to see it arrive. It was phenomenal. That’s when I thought, ‘it’s going to be all right’.” That’s not to say there weren’t mo-
ments of worry in the lead up to the Olympics, however. “There was a lot of nervous anxiety just before the Games,” Mills admits. “When you work on some- thing like that, you have thousands of moving pieces, and as they come to- gether you realise that some of them don’t quite fit as well as they should.
38 Read Sports Management online
sportsmanagement.co.uk/digital
As soon as we got through the opening ceremony and into the Games, though, it was a real pleasure to be a part of.” The big thing for Sported over the
next few months is the Keep the Prom- ise fundraising campaign, which was launched in July to coincide with the first anniversary of the Games. Both men say they are driven by
a need to see Sported succeed. “I’m driven by challenges, whether they are personal, about the Olympics or sailing or business or making sure that Sport- ed is the most successful foundation in the sector,” says Mills. “I like a quote of Einstein’s, which basically says that life has no meaning, except in the service of others,” says Parr. “As I get older, I think that’s very true, and I think that Sported is an opportunity to turn that into reality.” ●
Issue 3 2013 © cybertrek 2013
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