Monkton Sports Excellence with Jason Gardener MBE

Students who are part of our Sports Excellence programme made their way up to Bath University to take part in specialist activities relating to their sport. Upon arrival to the Bath University lecture halls pupils we were lucky enough to receive a talk from Olympic gold medal and four time Indoor European Champion sprinter Jason Gardener.

Find out more as pupil Hope J gives her account of the day:

"Gardener’s talk was very inspirational for us all as young athletes, since he discussed where his passion for track sprinting came from at age 8, where he thrived in his school’s sports day 100m sprint.

However, once reaching the age of 15, Gardener began competing nationally where he soon discovered that there were others his age just as quick as him, if not quicker. This took a toll on Gardener’s confidence and made him question whether sprinting was for him, however he reminded us that when we are faced with failure we can either give up in the face of defeat or use our losses as motivation to train harder and become successful.

This is exactly what Gardener did as he went on to win gold with his team in the 4x100m relay at the World Junior Championships at the age of 19. Although similar to many athletes, Jason Gardener suffered with a severe hamstring injury leading him not to qualify for the 2000 Olympics. Despite this setback, it was in Athens 2004 where he and his team triumphed in a tight race against the U.S.A and took gold in the 4x100m relay.

This talk was truly inspirational as we learnt that despite major setbacks, this Olympic athlete went on to win gold not only through his skill and speed, but from the positive mental attitude he maintained throughout his career. 

After the talk we split off into groups and took part in various maximal strength tests and noted down our scores so that we can eventually reassess after a period of time to see if progress has been made. After this, we had lunch which was an opportunity to refuel before having the privilege of participating in a sprint workshop with Jason Gardener himself.

He began by taking us through a series of different sprinting warm up exercises that he would do himself before a race. Gardener also took us through line drills which helped us focus on our technique for sprinting more closely in order to gain the quickest outcome when running. Once we had progressively built up to sprinting properly, we initially began running 2 sets of 10m sprints which were timed in order to assess progress and obviously we were all very competitive with one another! We finished with a longer distance of 30m which was also timed. Although personally I am not a track runner, I found this sprint workshop most enjoyable as I learnt how to improve my running technique which I can apply to my own sport.

We finished the day off with a Q&A from two Bath University students who were juggling the balance between playing high level sport, meeting their academic requirements and socialising. This was interesting as we were able to hear from students of different sports, one of which was in their first year of uni. He gave useful tips for those of us on of the excellence programme who will be leaving school soon."

What an incredible opportunity to learn true wisdom from such a successful sportsman. Thankyou to all those who were involved in this day and to Jason for sharing this message with our Sport Excellence students:

I absolutely loved working with such an engaging & talented group of scholars from many sports. Thank you for delivering your maximum and I hope you found the day inspiring and can take away tips from my sport experience to support you on your journey in sport and life. Good luck!