Our Aim

To retain key staff

Both the Head Coach and the Team Manager were out of contract as of March 31^st 2006. Contract extension for these 2 key staff was a priority need for the sport in the interim period for a number of reasons:

• To complete reviews for UK Sport (WCPP) and for BPA (Paralympics Games)

• To drive the Paralympics programme planning processes for the new funding period

• To run the interim technical programme

• To provide essential technical expertise for programme development and identification of new initiatives and projects, to enable  us to take the sport to the next stage of its development

Develop essential technical resources

The stage of development of the sport is such that very little exists in terms of written or visual technical data. Lack of technical reference material will negatively impact upon performance development of athletes, coaches, practitioners and mangers in the short and longer term and thus is a crucial part of the identified priority need (which also links to optimization of the knowledge gained and held by current programme staff) for the sport.

Resource development will commence during the interim programme period and will include:

• 4 year WCPP development (in conjunction with the whole sport plan being written by the BC planning group)

• Technical manual …assessment of sport discrete skills and technical components (to facilitate talent identification and athlete tracking / monitoring / optimization of technical programmes for the sport and for individual athletes)

• Sport and athlete profiling projects

• Athlete training log development
• Design and development of technical resources
• Design and implementation of Talent ID and Selection Days

Crucially the next world championships is now only 8 months away (February 2007) and this is the first PG qualifying event for Vancouver 2010. From a Paralympics point of view, the thrust for WC programme development at GB and HN level must:

• Be driven by the GB agenda (including programme direction – leadership – support)

• Support HN technical programme development (athlete, staff and programme development)

• Give due consideration to both the coordination and to the dovetailing of GB programmes to facilitate elite performance at World Championship level, including shared operations of key staff – a process which needs to be agreed by all Home Nations to facilitate harmonious relations at GB level.