The From Home 2 The Games programme checked in at Oriam on Sunday 3 October in a bid to find Scotland’s next Olympic and Paralympic hopefuls.
From Home 2 The Games has been specifically designed to engage young people from all communities in the UK to explore their possibilities in Olympic and Paralympic sports that they may never have thought about getting involved with before and discover untapped talent.
The search is the 17th to be run nationally since 2007 by UK Sport, in partnership with the home nations and the UK’s Olympic and Paralympic high-performance community. The sportscotland institute of sport supported the search and athlete testing in Scotland and Young People’s Sport Panel members George and Jess were on hand at Oriam to help with athlete data collection.
Success stories
Among those athletes to have successfully made their way through a recruitment campaign and onto a performance programme are a number of Olympic and Paralympic champions and medallists including Lizzy Yarnold, Helen Glover, Lutalo Muhammad, Laura Deas, Jon-Allan Butterworth, Joanna Butterfield, Kadeena Cox and Micky Yule.
Potential athletes completed a short form about themselves as well as three challenges and submitted their results. For Olympic sport the challenges were a 20m sprint, a broad jump and an open skill challenge. For Paralympic sport a 20m push or sprint, a pick-up and throw and an open skill challenge.
A selected number were invited to progress to the next stage of the process, a series of testing days throughout the UK. The testing event at Oriam was the first of these and the only one taking place in Scotland.
There were around 25 people trying out on the day. The sports they are looking for are weightlifting, bob skeleton and track cycling.
Lizzie Wraith, the lead on the testing day and a Performance Pathway Scientist with the EIS, said:
“The athletes were run through a number of physical tests to help us better understand their potential to develop in those three sports.
“We had a vertical jump test, a 30m sprint test, a number of tests on the watt bike and we also had a skills session. The goal is to find some Olympic and Paralympic champions of the future, or certainly athletes who have some potential that can transfer into a development programme for one of those sports.
“Some of the athletes from the Oriam testing will be invited back for some sport specific testing.”
One of the athletes on the day, Euan from Glasgow, said: “I usually do athletics, 200m and 400m. I seen the advert online and I thought it would be good to come down and see what else I’m good at.
"I did track cycling at secondary school, I was quite good at it then and when I seen that was one of the sports they were looking for on the testing day I thought I’d give it a go.
“I thought it went well. There was some things I was a bit disappointed with that I could maybe have done better but it was a good experience to go through the testing. I learnt a fair bit, the weightlifting course was good, that’s skills that can be used in most sports.”
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About From Home 2 The Games.
