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My name's Leon Taylor, I'm an olympic silver medalist in diving, from Athens
in 2004
I retired from competing in 2008 and since then I've been
providing the BBC commentry
uh... in the diving and that's a job I'll be taking in uh... in 2012
and also I mentor a lot of the younger athletes coming through in the sport of diving and across
many other sports as well. I did two stints as Sheffield Hallam University
actually in 1998 I started off in
Recreation Management and then I did another stint in 2006
in Business and Finance
But I've lectured, a one-off guest lecture at Nottingham Trent University
and received an honorary master's degree from Chichester Univeristy which is
interesting the
guys from the innovations team, research team were doing some work with
Peter Waterfield and I
in the synchronised diving they were doing some very high end work in biomechanics.
They put the lottery funding in place and in 1998 it changed the
landscape of olympic and paralympic sport drastically.
One of the things that happened we were suddenly able to access
physiotherapists,
psychologists, nutritionists, physiologists, biomechanics all the people, the
new sports science access
that the Australians, the American's had been enjoying for years we suddenly were able to
access that
and there is no better place than Sheffield Hallam University in the centre of sports
and exercise science. So I started working with a strength conditioning coach for the
first time, I met a nutritionist and the sports psychologist I started working
with back then in 1998 Professor Ian Maynard
is still the head of CSES now and he was my sports
psychologist for the duration of my career
so without that access and, you know, without the university's provision of those
practitioners, this is way before the English Institute for Sport
this is the crucial time in a in an olympic cycle and certainly impacted in the way
that it did and
allowed me to stand on the podium.
As an elite athlete you have to put the hours in in the training room
so whether that's the weights room, the swimming pool the track
and univeristy tended to be very structured like this is when you need to
be at classes and lectures and then that's it but what I've seen over the past
fifteen years is that universities are starting to become very much more
flexible and understanding the needs of athletes and how
you can potentially
lengthen the uh... you know
the duration of the degree. And a lot of the athletes that I mentor and am working
with
are having to look at their education in that way. So many innovations in the sporting world
probably the one most recently on my radar
is again Sheffield Hallam University
are working closely with the elite diving team, which is my club up in
Sheffield. Actually my diving coach is now doing a PHD
in in in cahoots with them basically they're combining all their knowledge
and what's been really interesting is that
the ten meter board in Sheffield has been slightly widened and
they've also placed force plates in the ten meter, one on the right hand
side one on the left hand side for the synchronized diving
and so they're capturing data that they've never been able to capture before. Real
world data, 'cause you can test it in a gym on a force plate
but it's never like standing backwards on your tip toes on the edge of a ten meter
board and what actually really happens. Also alongside that on the springboard
they've got excellerometers attached to the end of the spring so the
data they're capturing at the moment
is just you know a lot of it would be superfluous to an actual diver because it's way
over our head but the research guys uh... uh... really stuck in and it's gonna pave
the way forward for
design changes in potentially the diving boards that we use
the material and ultimately the biomechanics that we use as athletes in
order to generate the force we need to jump up spin around really quickly and enter the water
with no splash which of course is what we need to be doing. So the oportunity the students
are gonna have for the London Prepares event to compete in the olympic
stadium I mean it's one which doesn't come along, normally only the
olympic athletes get to do that and it's a test event which is normally a
a world level and so
the only people that get to go in there let alone compete in there
are the high so what an absolute privilege and honour
to set foot on that olympic track or the turf or in the cage or wherever you're
gonna be
One which I'm very jealous of actually I've not being in the stadium yet I mean I
will get the opportunity and I'm hoping to be down there at Universities Week anyway
to watch it all unfold
but what an amazing opportunity and so yeah if you can't go to the olympic games what an amazing
uh...
chance to get in
So I'm proud to be part of Universities Week because I think that
sometimes that the universities don't get the credit that they deserve and
that they are a fundamental part of
of of everything in nurturing talent and you know as a mentor now that
something that I'm really passionate about nurturing future talent
and without the universities there would be no structure to nurturing that
future talent