The route to glory open to all – could you be a Winter Olympic athlete?Media caption, Have you got what it takes to be a Winter Olympian?ByMatt GravelingBBC Sport reporterPublished40 minutes agoYou’re at home. Lying on the couch. Packet of crisps almost finished. Mild lower back pain niggling away. Dishes in the sink still to do.And yet, as you watch athletes hurl themselves down a snow-covered mountain in the pursuit of glory at the Winter Olympics, you’re thinking: “pfft, I could do that”.Well, why not see if you really could?For almost two decades UK Sport has held in-person talent ID sessions for aspiring athletes, designed to test their physical performance and match them up with the sport that would suit them best. It is exactly how skeleton gold medallists Matt Weston and Tabitha Stoecker discovered they were well suited to sliding head first down an ice slope at 80mph.But here’s the thing – anybody can apply online to attend a session.So how does it work, and could you really be Great Britain’s next Olympic or Paralympic star?How are athletes matched with new sports?UK Sport’s Talent ID days are designed to take those with natural athleticism and sporting talent, figure out where their major strengths are, and match them up with a sport they may never have tried or even heard of before.The analysis at a Talent ID day includes a series of tests measuring power, stamina, speed, and agility.Anybody aged 17 or over can apply online, and athletes who drop out of one sport in the early stages of their career are often invited along to see if something else may work for them.Examiners also assess each athlete’s character, scoring their ability to regulate emotions, control their performance and under pressure, and understand and respond to feedback. Though applications are open to anybody, eventual selection for a sport still requires a high level of natural ability.”Talent ID is an opportunity for us to find athletes a little bit later in the journey than you might normally join a programme,” says Dr Kate Baker, director of performance and people at UK Sport.”If you’re not super fast, or able to build fast twitch muscle quickly, you’re probably not going to make it in skeleton.”Then we’ve got sports like cross-country skiing, which require extraordinary aerobic capability. So if you are someone who loves a long run and can go forever, then it’s those kind of sports that you’re probably going to want to look towards.”Image source, Getty ImagesImage caption, Two-time Olympic gold medallist Lizzie Yarnold was a county-level heptathlete before attending a Talent ID day and being matched with skeletonThe approach has yielded plenty of medal success for Great Britain since its launch, and has been especially beneficial for winter sports, which athletes may never have had an opportunity to try out before attending Talent ID.Weston switched to skeleton nine years ago, having previously competed in elite junior categories in taekwondo, while Stoecker has trained as a circus performer.In the 48 hours after Weston and Stoecker won gold, the British Bobsleigh and Skeleton Association had 4,000 applicants to their Talent ID campaign.”I did flying trapeze, acrobatics, and I absolutely loved the performance element of it all,” Stoecker says.”Then I saw an advert on Instagram for the Talent ID process and was selected for skeleton – I guess the rest is history!”What about athletes with disabilities?Talent ID is also used to recruit athletes with disabilities aiming to compete at the Paralympics.Paralympians who came through the pathway include Emma Wiggs, who was working as a teacher when she was matched with sitting volleyball at a Talent ID day in 2010, before leading the women’s team to an eighth-place finish at the 2012 Games in London.Wiggs eventually switched to para-canoeing after trying out more sports, winning gold in the KL2 at the 2016 and 2020 Games.”When people apply to our main database, we gather information about their disability and invite them to events they are eligible for,” says Ben Quilter, who competed in judo for ParalympicsGB and is now part of UK Sport’s recruitment team.”We group together sports with similar physiology, skill aspects or age requirements, and then put events on where people can come along and try a few different sports at the same time.”We look at the impairment type, because the difference with Paralympic sport is you can acquire an impairment at various stages of life.”‘Go for it – you don’t know what’s going to happen’But Talent ID sessions do not necessarily work for all sports, some of which require a natural technical aptitude learned at a young age.”We’re not sure yet whether it will work for curling [for example],” says Baker.”When you look at skill-based sports – technical or tactical sports – generally people have been doing those for a bit longer.”Most of those men and women that you’re seeing out on the rinks have been doing it since they were tiny, and it’s really in their bones.”But that does not mean that people cannot succeed in something they had never considered before.Before 2008, rower Helen Glover had no experience in a boat, but had competed in hockey, tennis and swimming.Glover went on to become on to become a two-time Olympic, three-time world, and five-time European champion.”I hope my story can be an inspiration for kids in PE or at home thinking about taking up a new sport,” Glover previously told the BBC. “Just go on, go for it – you don’t know what’s going to happen.”Related topicsDisability Sport
