By Gavin Bannister, brand architect,
online running shoes, running clothing and outdoor gear retailer SportsShoes.com
Making the step up from emerging talent to the open age arena of elite competition is one of the toughest transitions in sport for young athletes.
It’s the moment when everything an athlete has worked towards is on the line, yet it is often also the moment when certain types of support around them can be lacking.
Consider what is being asked of them – they are stepping into a period of significant mental and physical challenge, all at a time when training loads are increasing sharply and their bodies are still developing.
Expectations rise, comparisons with open-age rivals begin and every result is suddenly scrutinised in a way that leaves very little margin for error.
All this pressure can take its toll. It can take only one badly managed season, one injury or one loss of form at the wrong time to unravel years of hard work and determination.
Then there is the financial pressure of progression. The costs of competing start to ramp up quickly, with kit, coaching, physiotherapy, race entries, travel and accommodation all having to be paid for.
In the early years, much of this is absorbed by families, schools and clubs. But as athletes eye loftier goals, the bills get bigger – just as those support structures begin to creak under the strain.
This is precisely the point at which commercial backing matters most, but it is also when it becomes difficult to find.
For any prospective sponsor, an athlete without open-age results is, ultimately, a risk. There is no medal count to point to, no profile to leverage, no guarantee of a return.
That means the investment often ends up going to established names instead, leaving many of the athletes who are most in need of the support in challenging circumstances.
The consequences are predictable. Athletes can lose confidence and momentum and, in too many cases, leave their chosen sport entirely – not because they lack talent, but because they cannot afford it anymore.
Every one of those departures is a loss – a loss for sport and a loss for an industry that wants the next generation of stars to inspire future generations.
If the pipeline narrows because promising athletes cannot afford to continue, everyone feels the effects eventually, from federations to brands to retailers.
This is why, at SportsShoes.com, we created our Athletes In Residence (AIR) programme in partnership with Nike, to identify and support young athletes and help them bridge that gap.
We set AIR up eight years ago and, since then, we have provided financial support, kit and event opportunities to more than 80 athletes who sit between emerging talent and elite level.
The principle is simple – we keep them in the sport long enough for their ability to shine through. And while the money and the kit of course matter, AIR was never designed to be a cheque-writing exercise.
Through our programme, we nurture talent in a much broader sense. We expose athletes to our brand partners, feature them in campaigns and give them opportunities to attend global events.
Along the way, they build the profile and industry understanding they will need to attract professional contracts. For a young athlete, learning how to work with a brand or build a social media presence can be almost as valuable as the funding itself.
Our AIR success stories include reigning T100 Triathlon World champion and Olympic silver medallist Hayden Wilde and Olympic 800m finalist Alexandra Bell.
These are athletes who came through the programme when their potential was clear but their futures were not.
AIR continues to grow. Our newest athlete, Seyfu Jamaal, a member of the World Athletics Refugee Team, joined this summer after running 2:15:30 at the London Marathon. His story is a reminder that talent is everywhere, but opportunity is not.
Our commitment does not stop there. In January, we launched the SportsShoes Pro Alpine Trail Team (P.A.T.T.) – what we believe to be the world’s first digital retailer-backed all-women’s European trail and mountain running team.
Alongside supporting elite racing ambitions, P.A.T.T. was created to promote longevity and sustainable high performance in women’s endurance sport, with experienced athletes supporting and guiding younger teammates.
We also support M11, the professional track and field club whose team includes 800m Olympic gold medallist Keely Hodgkinson and 1500m Olympic bronze medallist Georgia Bell.
This is because enabling a promising 19-year-old to train alongside Olympic medallists makes the gap between where they are and where they want to be start to feel bridgeable.
We regard this as an investment, and it has repaid SportsShoes.com many times over.
The athletes we support become authentic ambassadors for our business, brand partners value the connection to genuine emerging talent and our customers know they are spending their money somewhere that puts something back into the sport it serves.
Many organisations within the sports industry are well placed to do this work, sitting at the meeting point between brands, athletes and consumers.
The relationships, the platforms and the commercial reach are there to support athletes in ways that go beyond funding. AIR itself is proof of what becomes possible when that happens, run in partnership with Nike, whose backing has allowed us to reach more athletes than we could alone.
What we are doing is not complicated and, crucially, is well within the means of others in the sports industry. We have seen first-hand what happens when an athlete is given the room and resources to keep going, so it has convinced us the investment is well worth making.
The opportunity is wide-open for others to do the same. There are still too many talented athletes falling out of the sport at exactly the point where a relatively modest investment could keep them in it.
Somewhere out there right now is a young athlete with the talent to stand on an Olympic podium, quietly wondering whether they can afford another season.
The more of us who help answer that question, the more of them will get the chance to find out.
