Sporting Champions: Longridge

I am extremely proud to have been selected as a ‘Sporting Champion’ to deliver Sportivate, a programme that has helped create a lasting participation legacy from London 2012.

Sportivate is one of the most important parts of the government’s mass participation legacy plans and I hope, that I can play an important role in helping encourage many young people to get into sport.

About a month ago I helped deliver my first motivational session to a group of young aspiring fencers at Longridge in Marlow. The group were naturally a bit reserved to start with but we soon relaxed into a fantastic session.

The young people grew in confidence and developed a great deal technically as fencers over the course of the programme at Longridge, It was a pleasure to see. They were engaged from start to finish and it was fantastic to see the big smiles on their faces at the end of each session.

It felt very rewarding to see them so enthusiastic about fencing and see that spark of passion for the sport in them that I had all those years ago when I first started fencing.

We did lots of footwork drills, fencing master-classes, games and a final team competition to wrap things up. I’d like to thank Leon Paul for providing posters as prizes - the group absolutely loved them!

During my time at Longridge, I wanted to use my experience as a former elite athlete to provide inspiration to these young people and really encourage them to stick at fencing. Hopefully I did just that. The group even promised me to carry on training hard and to never do less than their best. I’ll be checking in to see if they do!

But seriously, it was about enjoying fencing, having fun and feeling good about themselves. I felt like my visits were worthwhile and made a difference to the group. If I inspired even just a handful of young people to continue fencing, then fantastic.

I’d like to thank Jackie Faulkner and the staff at Longridge for looking after me so well and I very much hope I can work with you again in the future!