Sport
Is your school athlete friendly? GB Olympians know what it takes to push themselves to their limits and to be the best that they can be. They have had to make many tough decisions starting when they were at school. Olympians understand the demands and challenges of training and studying which continue to face today’s high performing student-athletes. Recently, several GB Olympians took part in the World Academy of Sport (WAoS) training course to become Athlete Friendly Education Centre (AFEC) assessors. Anne Louise Williams, Marketing and Licensing Manager at WAoS, was on hand to ask them about their own experiences in balancing sport and education needs. These Olympians were Shirley Addison (SA), (Athletics, Athens 2004); Natalie Barton (Munt) (NB), (Badminton, Athens 2004); Francesca Clayton (FC), (Water Polo, London 2012); Alex Coomber (AC), (Skeleton Bronze Medallist, Salt Lake City, 2002); and Jamie Fearn (JF), (Short track Speed Skating, Albertville 1992 and Lillehammer 1994).
When you were at school, how did you balance your school and training requirements?
FC: “It took a lot of planning, doing homework on the bus, and eating in the car. I trained at lunch time while at school,
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swimming on average 3,000m in that hour. I then trained from the end of school until about 8.30pm – 9.00pm each evening of the week.” JF: “It was very difficult. There was some understanding by subject teachers who provided extensions to work deadlines. But working into the night to get things done was common.” AC: “I was training in athletics while at school. My club was very near my school which was convenient. This did mean that I had to be organised and plan my day, as I often did not go home until after training at about 9.30pm.”
Did you have to make any difficult choices?
SA: “I turned down a place to study Mathematics at Oxford University because there was not a diving facility nearby and because I was involved with swimming and diving at that point. Instead I studied in Edinburgh where the university halls of residence were next door to the swimming and diving pools.” NB: “There were things such as Duke of Edinburgh that I would have loved to have been involved in, but realistically knew I did not have time for. I made the difficult choice of going to university to study something I had no interest in, just so I could go to Loughborough. Fortunately, after a year, I changed from
