Our time is coming...

I’ve been in the Olympic village for almost a week and I can now say it is the best that I have experienced across six previous Games. It is compact and yet not cramped and there is a really relaxed atmosphere. Walking from accommodation to all main facilities is quick and easy and every volunteer, policeman and security guard is friendly and welcoming. A real triumph. My one and only regret is that the balcony on my apartment overlooks a noisy Stratford station rather than the Olympic Park and stadium, and I have to say that as much as I appreciate the elegance of the cauldron, I like my flame up high so that it can be seen by the many other athletes not competing in Track and Field.

Mood in the Team GB camp matches that played out among spectators at each of the venues. More medals from more sports has been the mantra, but could anyone have expected so many of them to be gold? The magnificent rowers including Lane4’s own Greg Searle have led the way, but for me, to witness British cycling once more dominate the velodrome after a summer spent on the roads  of France winning ‘Le Tour’ has been a real highlight. The velodrome is such a natural theatre with the action so close it feels almost like intruding on someone’s own private battle.

I spent Monday on a recce of Greenwich Park which is the venue for the show jumping and combined run/shoot events of the Modern Pentathlon. In the capable hands of the Equestrian Performance Director Will Connell I took in every aspect of that remarkable venue. When I pointed out the overhead TV camera cable which stretches down from the Observatory to the bottom of the hill, Will joked “Oh, that’s the death slide for the Performance Director who doesn’t win a medal”!  Well, with 3 golds, a silver and a bronze medal from his team, I guess it won’t be him on that slide then, but his humour did betray the reality of the situation after so many years of Lottery funding for our Olympic sports. It is not blind hope and optimism that has led to 50 plus medals with three more days to go. British athletes know they are very well prepared, want for nothing and expect to go on stage and perform. This is so far from my own experience of the 1988  and 1992 Games when athletes lost their ‘Dole’ money for being away for two weeks and team kit was being hawked on the streets s so as to earn a little more pocket money. I met the Prime Minister at the time, John Major, in Barcelona who was clearly sports mad and was just getting the idea of the National Lottery together at the time. It has been good to see him in the crowds here almost every day cheering on the British athletes.

Our pentathletes came into the village on Tuesday and have done well to settle in and realise that the hype that goes around the Games can be boxed away once you’re inside the Olympic bubble. They have had a really good final preparation period and now is the time to deliver the goods. De Coubertin invented the Modern Pentathlon as the test of the all-round athlete and a highlight of the Games. Being the last medal to be awarded in London before the Closing ceremony on Sunday gives us the opportunity to be so. Stay tuned!

Extraordinary expertise

As team leader, my focus is now on minimising all unnecessary interference and maximising a sense of order and control.  To do this, I seek to handle proactively anything that is not happening on the field of play and have an answer to the myriad of questions that inevitably arise once a team member steps into the Olympic environment.  It is a privilege to be working with people I consider to be leading experts in their chosen field and in Performance Director Jan Bartu, women's head coach Istvan Nemeth and national fencing coach Frici Foldes that now extends to 12 years. Alongside them, we have with us specialists from the English Institute of Sport (EIS) in nutrition, rehabilitation, strength and conditioning, performance psychology and sports medicine with us in France, not to mention sparring partners from other nations - a truly holistic support structure.

So who are the main contenders for the Modern Pentathlon at London 2012? Well, beyond our own athletes it is difficult not to look towards the Russian men who have won every world championships title since 2008, and the reigning women's Olympic champion Lena Schoneborn of Germany. After winning the European title in 2011 and the first World Cup in 2012 she went quietly under the radar for the rest of this season. This may be a conscious strategy to prepare without too much hype and simply deliver when it counts.  We're busy doing exactly the same thing.

I hope you'll all enjoy the Opening Ceremony tonight - we'll be in France, preparing to perform.

Why the athletes' village is just like Euro Disney

A few weeks ago, I managed to have a day at Euro Disney with my 3 young children. The twelve rather tiring and over stimulating hours we spent in that extraordinary environment was a timely reminder of what awaits us in the athletes’ village in a few days’ time.

Instead of 'Thunder mountain' and 'Indiana Jones and the temple of Doom', we have the Olympic Village dining hall that seats 4,400 people and is open 24/7, and thousands of athletes of all shapes and sizes from 203 nations speaking every language imaginable!
Open the curtains in our apartment and we will look across the Olympic Park at the Stadium and the Olympic flame - how's that for a 'magic kingdom'?

Our challenge is to compete on the final two days of the Games when more than 90% of athletes have finished their events and the village becomes (in)famous for its party atmosphere.  Being inspired by the Olympic spirit but not distracted by it is the order of the day. We managed it in Sydney 2000 and it did us no harm with gold and bronze medals for Steph Cook and Kate Allenby respectively, and we have made careful plans with Team GB to give us the best possible environment to perform in this time too.

The pointy end of the Olympic campaign...

It may be a bit ironic to be in the French Pyrenees preparing for an Olympic Games that starts in London in only three days,  but Font Romeu has been the HQ for two previous Modern Pentathlon medal winning campaigns in 2004 and 2008, and it continues to be the right choice. Established by the France National Olympic Committee in 1968, the Élysées Baron de Coubertin is the national altitude training centre and a home from home for many top international athletes seeking an ideal climate and top class facilities.

The team has been here a week already and by the tired yet happy faces I saw at fencing free-play this evening, it's clear that a lot of hard work has gone down. The taper to competition begins shortly, but there are no corners to cut when competing at this level and this kind of work rate will count when it matters most.

There's no escaping the fact that we are well and truly at the pointy end of the Olympic campaign, yet if the 2012 season ended tomorrow we would already look back on it as the most successful for Great Britain since 2001. Mhairi Spence’s gold at the world championships in Rome in May along with Samantha Murray's bronze, secured both their places on Team GB, and with two in the top three, winning the team gold with Heather Fell became an inevitable consequence. It says something about the importance of the Olympic Games in an athlete's mind that despite being only the third British athlete ever to win the individual world title, Mhairi's first words after crossing the line were "I'm going to the Olympics". Sometime soon, and regardless of what she achieves in London, she will know she has already achieved a lasting legacy in our sport.

In terms of consistency of performance over the past 18 months our top man, Nick Woodbridge, has been impressive. He goes into his second Games world ranked number 5 having finished in the top 6 at world cups and world championships in 2012 as well as getting onto the podium at our Olympic test event in 2011. He is more than ably supported by Sam Weale who placed 10th four years ago in Beijing and has also been on the podium during this Olympic cycle when he won silver at the 2010 European championships.

Naturally enough, everyone I meet wants to know whether our athletes will win medals in London. Every team leader is asked the same question, and in our case it is particularly difficult to answer. 14 different women achieved podium performances at world cups and major championships in 2012 because of some unique variables that come with our particular multi-sport. Firstly, there's the horses. Picked by random, the athletes have just 20 minutes and five practice fences before jumping a competition round of 12 fences of a maximum 1.20m in height. Specialist riders have often said to me that they would not risk their reputation doing so! If either horse or rider has a bad day at the office, disaster can result and that is equally true of the other factor that comes into play; bringing your best game across all five diverse disciplines on the same day. Clearly, that is what all the training and preparation is for, but it is for this reason that the most commonly heard comment amongst athletes as they look at the competition results is, "if only"...

Allez London 2012!

45 days and counting...

45 days and counting, and time appears to be accelerating towards London 2012.  June saw the announcement of the Modern Pentathlon team in the historic surroundings of the Old Naval College at Greenwich – the venue for our riding and combined running and shooting events.  With controversy surrounding some other Olympic team selections, we were eager to cross every ‘t’ and dot every ‘i’ in following our process and picking the right athletes.  This is a moment of truth for management – do you have a policy that is fair and transparent, and at the same time provides scope for professional judgement?  With athletes gaining qualification results over a 12 month period this is not as easy as it sounds; turn the clock back 12 months, for instance, and Samantha Murray, so stunning this season, wasn’t in the top five on the British rankings. 

As it was, our two women selected themselves with their podium finishes at May’s World Championships and Nick Woodbridge’s consistently strong season made him the strongest of our three top class men.  Beijing Olympian Sam Weale took the second of the men’s selections ahead of Jamie Cooke who had done so well to reach the qualifying standard last season as well as win the world junior title in the autumn.  Tough on him as it was, I feel very confident that his time will come.

There is no question that the hype surrounding a home Games has the potential to distract us in the final lead into London.  To mitigate this, we will go abroad.  The first of two overseas preparation camps started this week, and after a 10 day interlude at Bath we will be back out to France for the final run in.  With two new Olympians in the team, I am conscious that they will not get to experience the magic of the Opening Ceremony, but we will do our best to mark it in style nonetheless.  Competing on the last two days of the Games means that the experience they will have of the Olympics will be condensed and tightly managed.  The skill is to tap into the inspiration of being part of a home Games whilst re-focusing on the job in hand.  So much was there to take in, that I remember my first visit to the Olympic village restaurant as an athlete in 1988 lasted 3 hours - and I only went in for a snack!

After the team announcement the next big moment for the athletes will be the Team GB kitting out at Loughborough University, site of the official final preparation camp.  There are more than 80 items to be collected and I have warned the team to have no more than two people per car – otherwise something will have to be left behind.  Being inducted into the team is always a special moment, and I am glad it is happening at one the UK’s finest sporting institutions with a rich heritage of producing Olympians.

The month of May

The month of May has been all about making a claim for selection to Team GB, and Britain’s Modern Pentathletes have made their moves.  Unofficially, it seems we have 5 women and 3 men who have achieved the Olympic Qualifying Standard (OQS) laid down by the international federation which means we have 8 athletes who have achieved the benchmark of top 36 in the world in 2012.  This is a fantastic testament to Pentathlon GB’s World Class Performance programme and the crucial work of UK Sport and the National Lottery in funding our programme.

To paraphrase Peter Keen, the Director of Performance at UK Sport, pressure, anxiety and fear of failure have been the constant companions of our athletes, but crucially, as he goes on to say, this does not prevent them from performing.

Learning to handle oneself in these situations is one of the great life skills developed by the high performance athlete.  It was thus that Mhairi Spence and Samantha Murray stepped up at the World Championships in mid-May and won gold and bronze medals to secure their qualification, and Nick Woodbridge and Sam Weale continued their consistent run of form with top 7 places at other qualifying events.

A few years ago I wrote my Masters dissertation on the subject of ‘Healthy Competition’ and whether such a state could exist when success was finite – e.g. selection being limited to just a few.  I concluded that it is indeed possible to create a competitive environment that is productive and personally enriching, and I was reminded of this when reading the comments of Samantha Murray about her rival and team mate, Mhairi Spence.  “If there’s one person you can look at every day of the week, look up to and think, if I want to get anywhere in life that’s how I’ve got to work, it’s Mhairi Spence” she said after the world championships.  For me, this indicates how one athlete’s success drives on another, and so long as the terms of reference are about world standards and not just ‘Beating the Brits’, then a positive competitive climate is possible.

This month also saw our final recce to the Olympic Village and first sight of the Team GB House HQ on the edge of Olympic Park that will be the operational nerve centre for the team during the Games.  It is quite clear that new standards have been set by the BOA in supporting the team inside and outside the Village and we really could not ask for more from our management team at this stage.

The difficult task of selection awaits me at the end of this week, when 8 qualified athletes become 4 selected athletes and the final preparation for London 2012 gets underway.

'Will doing this help the athletes go faster'?

Sometimes when I stand in a cold, windy field watching our athletes perform I wonder why after all these years I still do it.  Then I witness a performance such as Samantha Murray’s in Budapest two weeks ago and I know exactly why.  She ran and shot brilliantly to move from 20^th place in the world cup event to 4^th, within a whisker of the podium and promptly followed it up a week later by winning bronze at world cup 4 in Rostov, southern Russia.  Samantha has been the story of Olympic qualification so far, having fought her way back into contention with three top six performances at top level competitions in 2012.  Alongside her, Mhairi Spence has also excelled and Olympic silver medallist in Beijing, Heather Fell, has been consistently in the top 8.  It has been really rewarding to see three British men compete consistently at world class level this season.  Picking two from Nick Woodbridge, Sam Weale and Jamie Cooke means the selectors have genuine contenders to choose from.  We meet this week to pick the team for next month’s world championships in Rome which is the next opportunity to qualify a named place for London 2012. 

Around the all-important performances by the athletes, preparation for the Games continue at pace.  I see my role as removing as many distractions as possible from all those responsible for performance on the field of play.  As the Games get bigger cycle by Olympic cycle so do the distractions, and hence my job.  The contracts, sponsor involvement, media interest, friends and family all are important parts of the whole and yet have the potential to impact performance.  Constantly, we ask ourselves ‘will doing this help the athletes go faster’?  If the answer is an emphatic ‘no’ then we don’t do it.  However, if the answer is a qualified ‘no’ such as fulfilling important media interest, then we manage it proactively on terms that have the least impact.  The athletes feel this too.  My advice is always to think of the short term impact of doing something away from training versus the benefits accruing to when they actually perform on the greatest stage of all.  Give your sponsors all the time they want once you have the medal hanging around your neck. That’s when they will most value you!

One of the great variables of the Modern Pentathlon is that our athletes choose their horse by lot and have just 20 minutes to warm up before riding a show-jumping course at a height of 1.20m.  In contrast to more mechanical and repetitive sports, we value adaptability, flexibility and equanimity in our athletes!  Along with pentathletes from Ireland we have assisted LOCOG with the training and selection of horses for London and have been reassured that they are looking at the right type of horse – neither a ‘push button’ operator nor a highly strung prima donna!  With Britain being such a passionate equestrian nation we all want to make sure that the riding event in London is a fair and worthy competition for all.