Sporting Giants - A Very Public Appeal

In February, 2007, UK Sport, in conjunction with the English Institute of Sport set out to awaken some potential giants of British sport.

In the first appeal of it’s kind, UK Sport asked potential athletes to make themselves known – providing they fulfilled the basic criteria of being tall (a minimum of 6’3” or 190cm for men and 5’11” or 180cm for women), young (between 16 and 25), with some sort of athletic background.

The incentive was the potential for the most talented to become part of the performance programme in the Olympic sports of handball, rowing or volleyball and who better to throw down the gauntlet than Britain’s greatest ever Olympian, Sir Steve Redgrave?

The response was staggering and when the registration period closed the project leaders had around 4,800 applications to sift through – with just under 4,000 applications meeting all the basic criteria. It took around two months to assess all the applications before plans for testing could be developed in detail. By May 2007, Handball assessments were ready to get underway, with Rowing joining the fray in July and Volleyball in September.

Details of how those programmes progressed can be found by accessing the links below. The chances of Sporting Giants applicants becoming Olympians ready to represent their nation in London in 2012 are slight, but there are currently over fifty 'Sporting Giants' applicants that have successfully joined Olympic development programmes, so watch this space!