After the excitement of Vancouver and the Nationals, it is back to business for everyone. The GB team is now in Norfolk for an intense 6 weeks training before the start of the games. This week has seen the visit of the UK Anti-Doping team who tested all of our athletes as part of the routine test programme but apart from that it has been training and more training! This weekend sees a brief respite as the team travel to London for the Team GB launch. This will involve the issue of the GB kit, the official photograph with fellow GB paralympians from all sports and a celebration dinner in Billingsgate, after this it will be back to Norfolk. This weekend is also an important one for the Development squad – hopefully some of whom will be the 2016 paralympians. They will occupy the Norfolk camp whilst the team are away and take part in a weekend training session with coaches Tez Shaw and Justin Frishberg who are helping develop the talent for the future. For me this last week has been about further refining the business plans I have already presented to UK Sport and sport England. They are continually being reviewed and we have to be able to respond to questions and develop further our ideas in some of the areas. I have also met this week with two Chief Executives of other large charities in the hope that we might be able to work together in the future. Finally, keep your eyes on C4 – the build up to London has really started now and there has been some great rugby action screened between C4 programmes.
David Pond
