UK Sport is highlighting its talent transfer scheme in an effort to boost the country’s medal chances in the 2012 London Olympics. Some people have dismissed this as a tactical move, not dealing with the core long-term issues of lack of British success, particularly in athletics. But it has a lot of merit. As UK Sport says:-

“to date many transfers have succeeded due to a stroke of luck and personal intrigue rather than judgement. The Talent Transfer Programme aims to change that, introducing a more proactive, systematic approach to searching out those athletes already ‘primed’ for podium success.”

UK Sport highlights the example of Shelley Rudman, a former 400m hurdler who switched to skeleton bob and won silver at the Turin 2006 Winter Olympics. Shelley trains at Bath University.

In marathon running, one of the more famous examples of transfer was that of Jack Foster, a Liverpool-born New Zealander who switched from competitive cycling where he’d failed to excel by his early 30s. Foster won the 1974 Commonwealth silver medal for New Zealand aged a few months short of his 42nd birthday. He set a Masters (over 40) world record of 2:11:18s – a time that would have earned 12th place in last year’s London marathon, and would have won the first race in 1981.

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