Thame athletes to benefit from sports foundation cash

NEARLY 120 talented young athletes based in South Oxfordshire or Vale of White Horse, including several from Thame and Chinnor, will benefit from a fund worth over £60,000 – thanks to charitable social enterprise GLL.

The athletes will be supported through the ground breaking GLL Sport Foundation (GSF), the largest independent athlete support programme in the UK.

Rebecca Hussey – Image courtesy of UK Athletics

The athlete awards cover Olympic, Paralympic, Deaflympic, Special Olympic and Commonwealth sporting disciplines. With a staggering 89% of award recipients receiving no other sport funding and 73% of recipients being aged under 21, the Sport Foundation has highlighted a vital funding gap for young talented athletes currently competing and National and international levels.

The local young athletes set to benefit from the awards are:

Thame
· Liam Hester (13) – Kickboxing
· Elspeth Jackson (17) – Gymnastics : Acrobatics
· Linsey Smith (21) – Cricket
· Rebecca Hussey (24) – Athletics : Sprints
· David Gain (26) – Athletics : Sprints
· Joshua Williams (14) – Swimming
· Joel Bullivant (18) – Rowing
· Marcus Birmingham (16) – Swimming
· Henry Seed (12) – Fencing: Foil
· Ian Carter (54) – Kickboxing
· Jane Bell (58) – Triathlon
Chinnor

· Alex Robert-Cook (17) – Badminton

Graeme Thomas Foundation-supported Team GB rower and Tokyo 2020 hopeful, said, “This will be my third successive year being supported by the GLL Sport Foundation and I cannot thank them enough for their continued support. In the past two years I have had both hips operated on and this has meant regular pool time to maintain my aerobic fitness. With the GLL award I was able to regularly and easily use my local pool. The GLL award also helped me to update my equipment, most recently with new ‘skinny’ oars, and this year I will be upgrading my stroke meter to the new GPS type, which I hope will positively impact my training. I am no stranger to making comebacks from setbacks and hopefully in a year’s time I will confirm that year one of my four-year plan was a success with the help of GLL Sport Foundation.”