Olympian helping identify and develop future sports talent

2 November, 2012

Olympian helping identify and develop future sports talent

Olympian and New Zealand 5000m record holder Adrian Blincoe is helping identify and develop New Zealand’s future sporting champions, in a new job at High Performance Sport New Zealand (HPSNZ).

In his role as High Performance Athlete Development Advisor, Blincoe will work together with Athlete Development Consultant Vanessa Paun across targeted national sport organisations to put systems in place to both identify and develop athletes so they can succeed at international level.

HPSNZ Chief Executive Alex Baumann says the overarching goal is to get more talented athletes into our high performance system so New Zealand can continue to succeed internationally, and help those athletes fulfill their dreams.

“New Zealand has to compete on the world stage with much larger countries, whose sheer size means they will always have access to a number of top athletes. As a smaller country we need to take a more systematic approach to finding and developing our athletes, and Adrian’s role will be crucial to that.”

Blincoe has spent the past 12 years living in Philadelphia, in the United States, where he spent nine years running professionally for Team New Balance and seven years coaching at Villanova University.

He was Assistant Coach of Track and Field and Cross Country at Villanova University and in that role focused on identifying and developing young talent. He coordinated recruiting efforts to identify and matriculate talented young athletes who had the ability to succeed at college and international level. He then put the training, environmental and support systems in place to help the athletes reach their potential.

Blincoe will be putting this experience to good use in New Zealand and also brings to the role many years of competing at international level himself.

As well as being a professional runner on the international circuit, Blincoe has competed for New Zealand at Olympic Games, Commonwealth Games and World Championships.

He holds the New Zealand record in the 5000m in a time of 13:10.19, a record he set in July 2008. He was a finalist at the 2006 and 2010 Commonwealth Games, and competed in the 5000m at the Beijing Olympics. An ankle injury meant he could not compete at the London Olympic Games.

Blincoe is based at HPSNZ’s offices on Auckland’s North Shore, near where he grew up in Milford.

``I’m very passionate about helping athletes develop their potential, and I am excited about the opportunity to do this here in New Zealand,’’ Blincoe says.

``I’ll be working with targeted sports on both specific initiatives and their overall athlete development systems so we can find individuals who may one day stand on the podium for New Zealand,’’ Blincoe says.

Work with sports to develop high performance athlete development structures has been underway over a number of years. This work has included the development of pathways to ensure sports have the right detection, development and tracking mechanisms in place to give athletes the best possible chance of winning Olympic medals. Sports are also supported to employ dedicated athlete development personnel, who are key to HPSNZ achieving its targets at future Olympic and Paralympic Games and world championships.

Alex Baumann says Blincoe’s return to New Zealand is another case where the opportunity to work for HPSNZ and have an impact on the New Zealand high performance system provided the pulling power to bring home a Kiwi working in sport overseas.

Blincoe started in his role at HPSNZ on 15 October.

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