I’m not sure if everyone managed to catch any of the Olympic 1 year out festivities yesterday. I saw this video of Tom Daley taking his first dive at the aquatics centre. The venue looks awesome and the camera positions look like they’ll bring some great footage to those who’ll be watching at home or on big screens around the country. I’m not sure how many they let in to watch the first dive, a couple of hundred maybe, but the noise and the atmosphere in the building sounded great. Seeing Tom Daley’s reaction to it was also intriguing.

There has, somewhat obviously, been a lot of work put in by the athletes in preparation for the Olympics and I know there is a psychology program in place around coping with the expectations of the home crowd during the games. There has been a lot of talk about those expectations which I find annoying. I think it’s a very negative way to portray it. It suggests that people are going to be let down by the athlete’s actions.

Every single British person watching, either in the crowd or on TV, will be supporting every British athlete, willing them on in their event (I will at least anyway), which is a huge positive. More focus should be placed on managing distractions, maintaining concentration and making use of the supporter’s atmosphere rather than coping with public expectations. Hopefully Tom Daley realised this yesterday and the talk of expectations hasn’t made him scared of his home town support.

I know that when funding and achieving value for money is discussed, then there is an expectation associated with that. It would be remiss of me not to acknowledge it. But it’s been done. The decisions have been made and everyone knows how much they have and what they want to achieve. We can worry about all that after the event now and I’m sure many column inches will be devoted to it then. For now let’s just get behind them.

So, 2 years to go. Everything, maybe a little worryingly, appears to be on track. The facilities look incredible and all the building works are ahead of schedule, that’s never been an issue though. The real work comes in convincing the British public that the games are a worthy expenditure and something they should get excited about. Not an issue for me, the press coverage for the 2 year countdown did the trick, I got my ass into gear and registered for tickets yesterday. I think I ticked every event on the list bar equestrian (not a horse person) and got excited just thinking about being there.

From what I hear regarding the amount of people who have registered for tickets and the volunteer spaces the rest of the British public seems to be catching the bug too. It’s an incredible opportunity for some of the smaller sports to get some real exposure and for the public to experience what elite sporting competition in those sports is like at first hand. As a result I hope that participation in all those sports explodes, hopefully Olympians will be the new celebrities and children will see them as role models rather than reality TV stars and footballers wives.

It’s a chance to get kids back into sport in a big way and I expect to see plenty of coverage in the media over the next 2 years of the British athletes and their background stories. They should show the commitment and dedication it takes to be an elite sportsperson and the support structures in place to help them get there. Get it right and the benefits from this could be huge; better public health being the most striking…and a further growth in S&C in the UK would be a nice little side effect too!

With it being election day I thought I’d write a suitably political blog. While the result of today’s election will obviously have far reaching implications on education, health, defence and potentially parliamentary reform, the primary battleground during the 6 week run in has been the economy. The current budget deficit and the recent rumblings in Greece coupled with predictions of very tough times ahead for the UK make me pretty nervous. A major concern for me as a strength and conditioning coach is therefore what will happen to the funding of British sport in the coming years.

The main sport I work with is skiing and, as anyone who read the headlines around the Olympics this winter knows, it’s not a particularly well funded sport. This is the case for a good number of sports and I think that with large cutbacks across the board expected, those sports could suffer. For the most part it will be the future talent who will ultimately be the ones who pay the price. Every sport is going to keep it’s elite athletes in competition and direct funding towards them especially with 2012 on the horizon. The first area where cuts, if necessary, will be directed is at the sub elite, pathway or junior level. Without proper funding, these athletes will miss out on the necessary coaching and support needed to nurture their talent towards elite competition and while recently British sport has enjoyed a pretty solid conveyor belt of success in recent years, there’s a chance that we will see a lost generation 6-10 years down the line.

Obviously I hope this won’t be the case and I’m not normally a pessimistic person at all, but I can’t see there being no effect on athlete funding in the coming years. Fingers crossed I’m wrong!