Another sport-filled day!

This time it was the Sainsbury's School Games, Nottinghamshire edition held across Nottingham yesterday. It was another fantastic day of sport, started in great style by GB & England hurdler Julz Adeniran as master of ceremonies during the opening ceremony. I was fortunate enough to be given the opportunity to work with him, and had a chance to interview former Olympic champion Jason Gardener and Paralympic silver medalist from last year, Nottinghamshire-born swimmer Charlotte Henshaw as part of the opening.

The interview itself was fairly basic, as I was time-restrained and was therefore not able to ask them too many questions. But it was what I saw from them both after the interview and throughout the day that really made an impression on me.

Immediately after the end of the opening ceremony, the official photographer for the day asked both athletes to come for a photo - asked being the key word. Both of them were far too busy having their photos taken with many of the competing children to be whisked away for an official photo! The fact that they seemed so reluctant to have the official photo taken and seemed to want to allow as many young athletes as possible to have one taken with them showed that they really were there for the young people and not to raise their own profile. They were eventually forced into the official photo, but even that had to have some young people in!

Later in the day, was when the most impressive thing, in my opinion, happened. Halfway through the Sports Hall Athletics session, Jason Gardener went in to show his face and see his own sport in action on the day. It is good enough that both Jason and Charlotte stayed to watch some of the sport and talk to young people, given that I know there are some athletes who would have cleared off after the opening ceremony. But it gets better. Jason not only went to watch the sport, but even offered to go the extra mile and gave one lucky student from each of the competing schools the opportunity to race against him. It was something that didn't take much on his part, but it was something that he didn't have to do and was a nice touch from someone who could easily not have bothered. I'm also sure Charlotte would have done the same, had swimming been one of the sports present!

It's not the first time I've been impressed by the way that Jason Gardener has conducted himself at a School Games event. Last May at the national event at Olympic Park, I was one of two Young Ambassadors that were assigned VIP tours around all the School Games venues and Jason was one of those VIPs. Throughout the day, whilst we were showing him the different venues, it became increasingly difficult to drag him away from each of them. Whilst this was frustrating for us, as we had a fairly tight schedule that we were supposed to stick to, it was great to see an athlete so genuinely enthused by sports that were not his own and that he was so interested in talking to the young athletes and finding out more about their sports, as he was yesterday.

Overall, it was a great day and from my personal perspective it was not only great to get the chance to speak to both Jason and Charlotte, but also to be close to the running of the event to see just how much has to go in to making events such as this happen.