Lecturer shares tips for 2012 Olympics

Ian Hughes is a Senior Lecturer at the and has been sharing techniques with performance analysts at the English Institute of Sport (EIS).

The analysts provide support to a range of sports stars, including members of the athletics, mountain biking, sailing and weightlifting teams. They analyse performance in competitions and training, and then feed their findings back to coaches or the athletes themselves.

Ian, who lectures in project and information management, shared his knowledge of the best ways of illustrating their findings in the right format to be used effectively. This includes facts and figures about athletes’ own performance and that of potential opponents, their style, physiology and nutrition.

He said: "It was a wonderful opportunity to put my 30 years experience of management skills to use with something as important as improving the chances for our athletes in the next Olympics. My presentation focused on how to get the information across in a format that would be really useful for the person receiving it, whether they are a coach or an athlete.

“The information needs to be understood and absorbed quickly and easily, to allow sensible, informed decisions to be made. The idea behind Information Management is to make sure the problem is recognised and, in the case of the Olympic support teams, that they understand and take responsibility for this activity.”

Ian, who previously worked as a logistics officer in the Royal Air Force, was asked to give a presentation to the EIS Performance Analysts Forum as he is providing advice and mentoring to an analyst for the English boxing team.

Further information

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