This is very much a personal reflection on a journey in professional and performance sport that started in 2012 to today and is still to be completed.
In 2012 I became the CEO of the British Athletes Commission (now the British Elite Athletes Association – the union for 1,500 Olympic and Paralympic athletes over 40 sports). Do you remember the feel good mood across the UK in the summer of that year because of the London Games? That was the members of the BAC right there in the thick of it. The System said “Hey, look at us we’re brilliant, we’ve just won loads of medals!” But the problem with The System at that time was there was no ‘athlete voice’ contributing to the narrative as the BAC wasn’t in good shape.
By 2014 I knew this was a problem, because of the number of athletes who came forward needing support as they felt they were either being treated as ‘commodities’ and/or had poor mental health. I knew then that I had to find a way to get people round a table to talk about athlete welfare in general and for specific cases.
I was therefore grateful to my board at the time who agreed to send me on a mediation course run by Edinburgh based Core Solutions led by a great man, John Sturrock KC. On the night before my final tests in April 2014 I took a phone call from John asking what I was doing that evening. My reply? “I’m going to a well-known international burger franchise for a takeaway and then I’ll be revising. John had other ideas – “Come along to a private dinner I’ve organised, you’ll enjoy it.” I went. It was a symposium of the type I love.
“a drinking party or convivial discussion, especially as held in ancient Greece after a banquet (and notable as the title of a work by Plato.)”
This private dinner was in fact a discussion about the pending vote on independence later in the year – and it was brilliant. I took away a memento from that evening thanks to a local artist and puppeteer Elspeth Murray.
This has hung from the rearview mirror of any car I’ve owned since, as it mattered to me then and still does now. It led me to working with many sports and Commonwealth Games England to make selection policies and processes more transparent for athletes, leading up to the Sochi Winter Games (2014), the Rio Games (2016) and the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games (2018.)
When I left the BAC, I had a key reflection that when the athletes were “in dispute” they had the BAC to turn to. In some cases the athletes were in dispute with a coach and the coaches felt that they had no one independent to turn to. So in the years since setting up DOCIAsport I have played a small part bringing UK Coaching more visible to more people who coach on (and off) the Talent Pathway.
I’ve done this because If you are a member based representative body it is important to be available for the member – athlete or coach – at a time of dispute. But it also important to be on the front foot and be the voice of the collective, improving the working environment and in the worst case mitigating the risk of dispute.
When I was at the BAC, I became a more active member of Sport Resolutions eventually sitting on the Management Board and Chairing the Panel Appointments Review Committee -all with the thought of the ‘go to’ in my car in my mind. Sport Resolutions is also a member led organisation of Sports Councils, National Governing Bodies, and athlete associations. There was never a chair round the table for UK Coaching. Until last week.
UK Coaching are becoming more and more visible walking the walk of their strapline “Here for the Coach” So, whilst the charity isn’t yet “Here, there and everywhere for the coach” this is an important and visible step towards working in collaboration with other leaders in order to make the sector, that I and many others care about, a safe place sustainably whatever the role played.
We get closer to changing The System into a Society but there is still much work to do. We march on!
Ian Braid
October 23