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The route to glory open to all - could you be a Winter Olympic athlete?

 

You'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?

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."

The 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!"

Published By: Ajayi Oluwaseun Michael.

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