Talent Identification & Development
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Mission: To enhance Olympic and Paralympic performance pathways in the UK by delivering world-leading, evidence-based, technical solutions that have a direct impact on medal success in 2016, 2018 and beyond.
The UK Talent Team is a collaboration between UK Sport and the English Institute of Sport (EIS). It supports World Class Programmes to identify and develop talented athletes and the construction of the underpinning support systems. Funded as part of UK Sport’s eight year strategic investment into development, the UK Talent Team’s work focuses on the 714 development (Podium Potential) athletes, and their coaches and managers who have the capacity to impact on future Olympic and Paralympic games.
The work of the UK Talent Team focuses on supporting sports to improve their systems of performance development through the following four work areas:
- Providing thought provoking, educational opportunities to development coaches and managers through bespoke Masterclass workshops covering an array of topics unique to the ‘elite developing athlete’ i.e. talent profiling, tracking and benchmarking and junior to senior transitions
- Enabling sports to benchmark their performance development pathways against world best using specialist diagnostic tools
- Undertaking innovative research projects to gain a greater understanding of the route to excellence in elite sport
- Applying technical frontline solutions in partnership with sports to identify and develop talented athletes
As part of our frontline solutions work the UK Talent Team has run seven National athlete recruitment projects, which have assessed over 7,000 athletes all of whom were previously unknown to the UK World Class system and sports.
These projects have resulted in over 100 athletes selected by sports into the World Class system with 293 international appearances made and a total of 102 international medals won.
In as little as four years since initial identification, several of these athletes have been selected to represent Great Britain at the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, including Helen Glover and Victoria Thornley (GB Rowing) and Angela Hannah and Richard Jefferies (GB Canoeing) and Louise Jukes, Kathryn Fudge, Bobby White, Dan McMillan, John Pearce and Mark Hawkins (Men’s and Women’s Handball).
