FOR YEARS, athletes inhabit a singular world of training, devoting themselves to one aim: competing in the Olympic Games. En route, many sacrifices are made, including possibly higher education, a social life and any thought of a career outside sport. Imagine the emptiness that confronts an athlete when his or her dreams are over. They have reached the top, represented their country at the Olympics. But then what? Life after sport is being addressed by an educational scheme run by the British Olympic Association and UK Sport with the recruitment agency, Blue Arrow. Set up after the Sydney Games in 2000, the Open (Olympic and Paralympic Employment Network) programme provides a link between elite sport and the corporate sector by providing athletes and coaches with vocational experience while they are still competing, or soon after they retire.
Those who take part are offered paid, part-time employment and training with work patterns to fit in with their training and competition.
So far, about 200 elite athletes a year have been placed in temporary or long-term jobs through Open. The aim is to have 1,200 companies involved by the end of next year,which will widen the career opportunities for the 2,000 Olympic and Paralympic-standard athletes in the UK.
Key to Open’s success is convincing employers that there is something in it for them. But Kevin Mann, Blue Arrow’s Open co-ordinator, stresses that companies that are prepared to offer flexible, short-term arrangements may be repaid with the loyalty of success-oriented individuals.
“Olympic athletes are focused people,” Mann says. “They have many skills that can be transferred to the workplace, such as good planning and time management as well as motivational techniques.”
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Christian Cormack, 27, cox of Britain’s men’s rowing eight in Athens, is one of many to have benefited from Open. Since December, Cormack has worked 10 to 15 hours a week as a new media specialist for the IT company Atos Origin in London. Realising that his sports career might not extend past 30 prompted Cormack to gain vocation skills. “When you train up to six hours a day, there are times when it is difficult to focus on anything but rowing,” he says. “But you also have to be aware that it won’t go on for ever.” Admitting he had “little IT experience”, Cormack says he has gained “invaluable on-the-job experience”.
It is a sentiment echoed by Tushar Patel, one of the UK’s leading wheelchair athletes, who is aiming to compete in the 2008 Beijing Paralympics. Until recently, having completed a degree in multimedia at Guildhall University, London, Patel was working five days a week in an admin job to make ends meet. Through Open, he is now employed as a website developer by Blue Arrow. A four-day week (three days at home and one in the company’s Luton office), allows him to balance his twice-daily training sessions. “It has enabled me to train harder at the same time as embarking on a second career path,” he says.
Soon it may not only be Olympic athletes who benefit from such schemes — Blue Arrow plans to extend the concept. A project called Next Step aims to bridge the gap between the Army’s Royal Logistic Corps and businesses, while Blue Arrow is among recruitment agencies, including Reed and Pertemps, involved in the Government’s New Deals for Communities (NDC) schemes offering transitional training and work experience for those who find it hard to get jobs.
Keith Bill, a spokesperson for Reed, says the company runs projects for the Government which, among other things, involve teaching English. “We offer people who have been long-term unemployed counselling, career advice, training and mock interviews as well as work experience,” Bill says. “A lot of people have no qualifications and lack confidence. Our goal is to help them to overcome that.”
Phil Pemble, a spokesman for the Pertemps agency, explains how the company has joined with Warwickshire County Cricket Club and other sports teams in Birmingham, including the city’s Premiership football sides. It has been a huge success. Pertemps plans to extend it nationwide.
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“Our objective is to give people the chance to gain qualifications in coaching, groundsmanship or administration as well as an education into how these businesses are run,” Pemble says. “They get so much more than a qualification.”
www.bluearrow.co.uk/open/