Woodford Young Athletes at the Olympics
Ten of our young athletes will be appearing at the Olympics in August later this year as they have been selected as one of the 40 teams that will be undertaking kit-carrying duties for athletes competing in the Olympic Stadium. The team will be managed by two of our coaches and they received confirmation of their appointment last week after a lengthy selection process that started in October last year.
The team comprises athletes drawn from a mix of field, sprint and middle distance training groups and they had to be aged between 16 on 1st July and 18 on 1st January this year to be eligible. They are Jasmine Brown-Rasé, Tyler Bown, Holly Bedeau, Joseph Dewer, Lucy Hayes, Pamela Milla, Isobel Moss, Nya Petinaud, Stephanie Smith and Rhiann Van-Horne and they will be accompanied by coaches Alistair Holford and Colin Wint.
After applying to participate in the Young Games Maker scheme last October, the team underwent a full morning’s selection event at LoCoG headquarters at Canary Wharf in late December. The group were set challenges to test their ability to work as a team. These included planning and building a structure out of 2 copies of the Metro with just a roll of tape to help (Blanca Vlasic would have had trouble clearing the height they reached) and scripting and performing a 3½ minute advert for the Olympic sport of their choice. During the advert challenge, Colin and Alistair were also interviewed to test their leadership and management skills.
Having been successful at the selection event, there was still a mass of form filling and data collection to be done by 14th January before the final confirmation of the teams’ appointment was received last week.
Our team will be on duty at the Olympic stadium for four days during the Games and also at the BUCS Championships test event over the May Day Bank Holiday weekend
Team Leader Alistair Holford jumped at the chance to apply on behalf of the club saying that the ‘...Young Games Maker scheme offers our young athletes a tremendous opportunity be directly involved on the centre stage of the Olympic Games. We had a great response when we invited athletes to apply and it’s a shame that only 10 could be selected as we had enough interest to make up a second team if required’.