UKC

For an assignment I need to research how successful BMC is in talent development programme. Is there evidence to prove that these programmes result in world champion athletes for the uk ?

I didn't know they had such a programme. How does it work, do they select individuals from comes or something else?

I would contact the BMC, surely they have all this info. I would imagine that there is more to making a "world champion athlete" than what the BMC can provide with the resources they have available.

Rowing successfully identified future Olympians through their sporting giants programme with Helen Glover winning gold in 2012, only four years after taking up the sport.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-19081992

They identified key metrics, such as VO2 max and length of levers, and used those as an initial screen for future medal winners. Their whole process from newbie to Olympic gold was of course more complicated than that!

The BMC has been delivering a talent development programme since 2009, first with the national and regional academies and now with the development squad. We don't have a talent identification system akin to what rowing has done. Our sport is not alone in that either.

We do profile development squad members for technical, tactical and physical traits, to help them identify where their strengths and weaknesses are. Profiling is not used for selection.

Get in touch directly if you want to know more about what the BMC has done, and is doing.

Jon Garside
jon@thebmc.co.uk
0161 438 3329

They used to have coaching programmes for younger kids but scrapped that a couple of years ago for the new team GB structure. 

Apparently the "10 years / 10k hours rule of thumb" and the fact that "climbers peak at 26" means that early talent spotting and specialisation isn't important - (not really convinced about that) - but there's pretty much no coordinated development early on and then and it is followed by an extremely tight funnel driven by comp performance and slightly ill defined selection process.

No doubt this will be vigorously argued with by team GB and the BMC but the reality is there isn't really much talent identification and development just a creaming off a very small top based on fairly arbitrary snapshots.