INTERVIEW
In 1996 in Atlanta, Great Britain only won one gold medal. A lot has happened since. The biggest change has been the National Lottery. We’re very well funded now.
we offer today, and that we also have an eye on the future four or eight years ahead. We haven’t got Rio out of the way yet, but already we’re beginning to plan for the PyeongChang Winter Olympics in 2018 and Tokyo 2020. We look at trends and establish what changes might take place in sport. The world of sport is very different today from the 2004 Athens or 2008 Beijing Games. We’ve made changes and are moving towards a more technical interface with sports, working together to identify what it takes to win and ensuring the right expertise is applied to deliver results. If I take you back to 1996 in Atlanta,
Team GB only won one gold. A lot has happened since then. The most significant change has been the introduction of National Lottery funding in 1997; we’re very well funded now. Back in 1986, if you’d said that in 2008 Team GB would win 47 medals, of which 19 would be gold, people would have laughed at you. If you’d said that four years later
Team GB would win 65 medals or ParalympicsGB would win 120 medals, no one would have believed you. It’s been a huge change.
How important is partnership working to the EIS? It’s very important to us. Our best known partnerships are with UK Sport, the national governing bodies of the various sports, the British Olympic Association and the British Paralympic Association. We also have established partnerships with those involved in the facilities we operate out of, such as Sport England and the landlords of the partner sites we operate out of, including Bath University, Loughborough University and Bisham Abbey National Sports Centre. Then of course we’ve got commercial partnerships for everything from nutrition products to engineering and software. These partnerships are vital to us, because they have the products and/or expertise we need. If you think of McLaren F1 and the speed those cars
34 EIS SITES
Through its network of nine high performance centres across England, the EIS is able to provide athletes and coaches with access to high quality facilities which are spe- cifically designed for elite athletes. English Institute of Sport’s high
performance sites: ■ Sportcity Manchester ■ EIS Sheffield ■ Loughborough University ■ Bisham Abbey ■ University of Bath ■ Alexander Stadium, Birmingham ■ Lee Valley Athletics Centre ■ Lilleshall National Sports Centre ■ National Badminton Centre, Milton Keynes
The EIS also has a further nine partner sites
The EIS will then go out and establish the best partnership to strike up to solve the issue within the sport. Our research and innovations team has a series of partnerships with external providers who help develop solutions, test equipment and give us in-kind expertise or technology that will provide expertise or solutions that we simply couldn’t provide in-house.
How has 2014 been for you? It’s been good. Sochi was the best Winter Olympics and Paralympics in living memory for Great Britain. Knowing that employees of the EIS have contributed to the success of those athletes is enormously gratifying. We’ve also just come off the back of
go, you can imagine the engineering and technological advances which McLaren have at their disposal which we couldn’t otherwise afford. Our partners open up their facilities to allow us to test and stay one step ahead of the opposition. We also have academic partnerships with universities which allow us to further our understanding of performance questions in an applied environment. We talked about Lizzie Yarnold and the
aerodynamics of her suit and helmet. All of that work was done in partnership with other organisations.
Who takes the lead on your partnerships with McLaren and BAE Systems? We’ve got a performance solutions team which is responsible for putting a team in place to work alongside sports to provide bespoke performance-impacting solutions. Each performance lead within the team has three or four sports they work with. It’s their job to identify with the sport what the performance solution will be to particular performance issues.
the Commonwealth Games where not just Team England, but also Team Wales, Team Scotland and Team Northern Ireland did particularly well. Glasgow was fantastic. It’s not just about the sport – of course that’s very important – but also about the atmosphere and the camaraderie between athletes. People were beginning to question whether the Commonwealth Games had a future; I believe the Games in Glasgow have very firmly answered that.
You started your career as a hurdler. What were the highlights? I represented Great Britain on more than 30 occasions. I first competed in the Olympic Games at Los Angeles in 1984 and was a semi finalist that year. I won bronze medals at the World Indoor Championships and the European Indoor Championships in 1987. My personal highlight was probably winning bronze at the World Indoor Championships in 1987. I felt absolutely amazing on the day. At the time, way before Lottery funding, I was working full time in the civil service. I was training eight or 10 sessions a week around my job. To be rewarded with a medal made me feel that all the sacrifices were worth it. There were also plenty of low points.
sportsmanagement.co.uk issue 4 2014 © Cybertrek 2014
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