UK Sport

UK Sport launches Athlete Insights

Steve Williams: "Your feedback could help make the critical difference in your sport"
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Jessica Whitehorn 27 August 2009

UK Sport has today launched ‘Athlete Insights’, a project aimed at monitoring the experiences and feedback of athletes on the World Class Performance Programme closely in the period up to and immediately after London 2012.

Athlete Insights will be delivered annually for the next four years and the first stage of the project will begin with a survey being distributed to all Podium and Development-level athletes tomorrow.

This will be an opportunity for athletes to contribute to Mission 2012; the monitoring framework on which all funded summer Olympic and Paralympic national governing bodies (NGBs) are required to report back to UK Sport on three times per year, about the progress they are making towards achieving medal success at the London 2012 Games.

Athletes will be asked to comment on the same dimensions - ‘Athlete’, ‘System’ and ‘Climate’ – of their World Class Programme as NGBs are required to report on via Mission 2012. Having discussed the content of the survey with a number of interested parties, including governing bodies and athletes, the survey is being distributed to all athletes with the option of completing the questionnaire via post or online.

Double Olympic gold medallist Steve Williams, who is part of the strategic working group for the Athlete Insights project, wants to encourage athletes to make the most of this opportunity: “As athletes we are in the best position to know how well everything around us - the places we train, the kit we use and the people that coach and advise us - is working to support us to get results.

"UK Sport is offering us the chance to download our views - they want to know what works well and what could be done better. Collectively we have never been better supported and we've got a chance here to say how that support can be even more effective.

"Your feedback could help make the critical difference in your sport and others and with three years to go there's enough time to make an impact for London. This survey will take 20 minutes to fill out so please don't miss your chance to tell UK Sport what you think.”

UK Sport’s Director of Performance Peter Keen said: “Last time we conducted an athlete survey we managed to achieve a very encouraging 70% response rate. The feedback we receive from athletes themselves is crucial for us to get the whole picture of how the system supporting them is performing, and what more we can do to ensure success. Therefore, we are hoping for a significantly higher response rate going forward.”

The last time UK Sport carried out a comprehensive survey of World Class athletes was at the end of 2007.

2007 Athlete Survey - Full Report [PDF, 622k]

2007 Athlete Survey - Executive Summary [PDF, 1,718k]

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