British Triathlon has launched a new paratriathlon hub at Loughborough University thanks to UK Sport and National Lottery funding.
The hub will give paratriathletes access to full-time, world-class coaching and facilities for the first time as they set their sights on their sport's Paralympic debut at the Rio 2016 Paralympic Games.
The 28 athletes on the new Talent and Performance Programmes funded by UK Sport and Sport England were all invited to the launch of the facility, which will be led by Jonathon Riall, Performance Manager for the Paralympic programme at British Triathlon. Riall will be supported by the squad's new full-time coach, Steve Casson, who has worked part-time alongside Riall for the past two years, along with a strength and conditioning coach, physiotherapist and sports science support.
"We were fortunate enough that UK Sport increased our National Lottery funding, which has enabled us to open our first full-time centralised programme of world-class coaching and world-class facilities," said Riall.
"The main reason behind us doing it is to drive improvements in performance. We trialled it last year with a six-week summer programme where athletes based themselves here full-time and the difference in performance between when they came in and when they left six weeks later was quite drastic. So we are hoping that will be the case on a bigger scale."
Casson believes the launch of the facility is an important step on the road to Rio: "I've been fortunate to be involved in the evolution of the British Paratriathlon programme over the last few years," he said. "Now I have the privilege of providing full-time coaching support to the best squad of Paratriathletes in the world as we take it to the next level for Rio 2016."
Riall expects six athletes to move to Loughborough to use the facility full-time immediately, and for others to use it in addition to their existing arrangements.
"We will have athletes who move to Loughborough and use the performance hub daily as their main point of contact,” he said. “Then there are the athletes who are not based at Loughborough for whom the performance hub will be a service centre for any additional needs, for example someone based in Cambridge who comes to Loughborough for three or four days per month for assessments and coaching."
The number who attend the centre full-time may well rise, though, over the summer once the details of the paratriathlon event at Rio are known. "We find out the categories for Rio by July and when we know exactly which athletes are able to go to the Paralympic Games, I expect we'll have more who will be here," Riall added.
Once the programme for Rio 2016 is announced, thoughts will turn to qualification, and Riall sees the new format for this year's ITU World Paratriathlon Series as a dry run for next year's qualification process.
"The event programme has changed a lot this year and it works very similarly to the Paralympic programme," he said. "If we fast forward 12 months we'll be fast approaching the Paralympic qualification period, so this year is about learning how to work the points system in order to best prepare us when we are into the 12-month Paralympic qualification period."
"The profile of paratriathlon has risen recently and I can only imagine that will continue to progress as we build towards the 2016 Rio Paralympic Games."