Conference delegates embrace 'living with the media'
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Woodward: "The media can affect performance"
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Jessica Whitehorn 11 November 2009
Day two of UK Sport’s World Class Performance Conference at the Belfry, where over 300 high performance sporting professionals are working together to gain insight into the theme of ‘teamship’, concluded yesterday evening with a debate about ‘Living With The Media’.
The purpose of the debate was to encourage performance directors, coaches and support staff to consider the role that the media will play in the build up to a home Olympic and Paralympic Games in London and how the sports and the athletes can both prepare for and manage the inevitable heightened attention they will be subjected to, while using the opportunity to work with the media to showcase their sport.
The debate was facilitated by Conference host, BBC Sport’s Hazel Irvine, and included a panel made up of the British Olympic Association’s Director of Olympic Performance, Sir Clive Woodward, BBC Radio 5Live’s Sports News and Olympics Correspondent, Gordon Farquhar, Chief Sports Reporter for The Times, Owen Slot and Chief Executive of the British Athletes’ Commission, former Olympic rower Pete Gardner.
Woodward, the 2003 Rugby World Cup winning head coach, kicked off the debate by telling the coaches and performance directors present: “You should not underestimate the effect that the media can have on an athletes’ performance, for the good as well as the bad. As well as ensuring they are prepared for the competition in 2012, we must ensure that the athletes are well prepared for the media attention.”
Slot added that in the fast paced media world that journalists are now working in, written press particularly are looking to do more than just report the news - they are looking to interpret the story behind it. Slot offered advice to the delegates in explaining: “Athletes and coaches often have no concept of how much of what they know, that we don’t know, and so the smallest nugget of information can make our day!”
Meanwhile Farquhar explained that the expectation and pressure on the journalists will also be huge in 2012 and suggested to the sports how they can ‘target’ their stories for the different media platforms that will be covering their athletes in the build up to and during the Games – television, online and radio - and tailor the way they showcase their athletes accordingly to get the best coverage.
Gardner had been part of Team GB in Athens when much of the media’s attention had surrounded the British flagship boat, the men’s four, and encouraged the journalists present, which also included Sky News’ Olympic team, to “get to know all the athletes, the fantastic characters there are in each and every sport, ahead of 2012.”
In a Conference dedicated to ‘teamship’, the debate encouraged consideration of how the sports could embrace the media as a part of their wider team in preparation for 2012.
Today‘s final day of workshops and activities at the Conference will include presentations from the coaches and support teams of recently crowned world champions Thomas Daley and Jessica Ennis, the first graduation from the Women and Leadership Development Programme and a closing keynote speech from Elite Coach graduate, the RFU’s Elite Coaching Manager, Nigel Redman.
