My life in sport has without doubt been varied, and has taken me the length and breadth of the UK, and around the globe. I am proud to say that I have some incredible clients in my portfolio, past and present, Manchester United Football Club, England Cricket, The UK PGA, England Boxing, Premiership Club owners, celebrities, millionaires and billionaires. I’m a former Olympic and British No.1 tennis coach, travelled the WTA World Tennis Tour with my wife Elena Baltacha over a period of 8 years, supporting her playing on some of the biggest courts in the World, such The Rod Laver Arena in Melbourne, against some of the biggest names in tennis, such as Maria Sharapova who Elena competed against in Memphis USA.

Life is now pulling my career on a very different trajectory, and placing me at the centre of a concept that will change the way athletes across the UK will be supported and developed, and this is all happening from The Hub’s base here in Ipswich, with the support and collaboration from many entities across the UK, including Nationally ranked educational entities such as The University of Essex, and I am very proud to announce that The Hub has gone National!

We now have an incredible network of Hub consultants across the UK, from Glasgow all the way down to London, these consultants are being developed to offer my unique Hub concept to thousands of junior and senior athletes across the UK. Our first National promotional campaign, proved, what I believed to be the case, there are thousands of coaches out there, supporting some of the very best athletes, across many sports who are highly skilled at their craft of technical coaching, but when areas, such as strength work, nutrition and mental skills need to be implemented, the support at a high and detailed level, is very difficult to find.

The response from our National Hub launch was simply incredible, many coaches, parents and even grand parents have been in contact with our Head Office based at IWIC, seeking support for their athlete. Athletes such as female players from Premiership Football Clubs like Manchester City, Professional Speedway riders, Nationally ranked trampolinists, we have even had inquiries from professional stunt men! Working with universities across the UK will be key to the support we can offer our National portfolio of athletes, the University of Essex has already stepped forward as a university that has seen the unique potential of The Hub, and the calibre of athletes we are attracting. They have opened their Laboratory doors to the Elite athletes who sit within our portfolio of clients, these incredibly talented athletes have already started to visit the University of Essex, Human Performance Unit for World Class Sports Science support.

Life has a way of bringing people together, separating them, and then bringing their life paths together again, this is exactly what has happened to Chris McManus, Director of the Human Performance Unit at The University of Essex and myself. The phenomenal growth of the Hub, means we have very specific needs, this is what drove me to contact my old friend Chris McManus, Chris actually travelled with Elena and I, and coincidentally lived with us, as we competed at the Grand Slam that is currently running in Paris, at Roland Garros. Chris stayed with us in our apartment to support Elena’s sport science needs, in particular her sports nutritional requirements.

I asked Chris for a meeting around a month ago, during this meeting I asked him if we could access him, his talented team and the incredible facilities at The HPU in Essex, he agreed instantly, and last week a group of Hub specialists including myself, Helen Davies, GB Marathon runner and her coach Clive Sparkes carried out a first of many visits to The HPU, this visit will be followed by Amy Wilson-Hardy, England International Rugby Union player, who is also an Olympian, and Ramla Ali, fully Nike sponsored female International boxer. The Human Performance Unit is part of the School of Sport, Rehabilitation and Exercise Science at the University of Essex. It delivers a variety of sports science services including physiological testing, coaching, body composition assessments, as well as sports nutrition and sports psychology consultations. They Work with athletes of all abilities and sporting disciplines, the HPU sports scientists use information collected during fitness tests and consultations to help athletes like Helen Davies achieve their sporting goals.

Kelly Murray (HPU Manager) said “Chris McManus (HPU Director and Lecturer in Sports Nutrition) and I are excited to work with Helen towards her marathon ambitions. It is always great working with new athletes, and it is particularly exciting to work with an athlete of Helen’s calibre. Helen and Clive are an excellent partnership and we are looking forward to playing our part within Helen’s support team that includes Nino and his team from The Hub”.

I am now arranging a National tour of some of the top Universities across the UK, to hopefully develop a similar relationship between them and the Hub of consultants we now have across the UK, many of our consultants graduated from the highest performing universities in the UK, such as Loughborough and Edinburgh, renowned for their sporting excellence. The Hub is based in Ipswich, and from Ipswich we intend to shout loud and proud of what we are achieving Nationally, and hope we can play our part in the lives of some of the most promising athletes across the UK!

The Championship Play-off Final between Aston Villa and Derby County at Wembley Stadium on Monday was the end of an incredible first season of management for Rams' boss Frank Lampard and a cause for celebration for Villa players and their fans across the globe.

This match was also a significant event for ex-Ipswich Town star Martyn Waghorn who fulfilled a life-long dream of scoring in the most famous stadium in the world.

Two big areas of my life involve Martyn - The Hub, where he plays an incredibly important role as one of our ambassadors, and the Elena Baltacha Foundation, where he holds a place on the list of our official foundation friends.

Martyn and his wife Leoni sent me a message a week before the final, to invite me to join them for this incredible match, but unfortunately I had to travel to Italy and was unable to join them - a massive disappointment for me.

I really wanted to be part of the family group who would travel to London to support Martyn, during a match that arguably was the biggest of his footballing career.

For me, this was more than just a football final, this was a match that involved a family who I have had the privilege of getting to know very closely, who have opened their arms to me, and welcomed me into their incredibly tight circle.

This family is not simply about a footballing star, it is also about two people who have shown how resilience, strength, commitment, grit, and of course love and loyalty, in the end win through and create life opportunities.

I am currently reading a book called "Grit", written by Angela Duckworth, it's about how life's achievements are not simply about talent alone, but how you deal with the many challenges along the way, how you can endure, how you can remain in the race when others, sometimes more talented, fall away.

I have had the privilege of growing very close to the Waghorns and what is very apparent to me is that the most important element of their story is not about football at all, it's two people who have an incredible love for each other, who are completely different in character, but fit so perfectly as a couple.

So I am going to practice what I preach, and do my little bit to salute the incredible young gymnasts who go about their relentless training regimes here in Ipswich, and then compete their hearts out on a British level.

During my coaching role, locally and nationally, I present on the subject of athlete development and I talk about how athletes, junior and senior, must fight with their bodies and their heads.

I cover areas such as discipline, commitment, focus, concentration, determination, relentlessness, toughness. I call these "athlete virtues", and if you have ever had the privilege of watching the young gymnasts at Pipers Vale Gymnastics Club train, you will know that all these virtues are on display at the club.

I was talking to an elite coach yesterday, during a coach development session I was leading, and he was telling me about a book he was reading, it was all about the coaches who work in the shadows and give much of their lives to support athletes on their quest to become sporting champions.

At Pipers Vale, this is exactly what is happening, with coaches such as Rebecca Hambling - in my opinion one of the brightest and most talented young gymnastics coaches in Great Britain - who quietly goes about her work of creating champions, not looking for glory, but simply getting the relentless job done, day in, day out, week in, week out, year after year.

Champions are built through building strong personalities and characters, this is achieved by successful coaches who create incredible cultures and environments, coaches who quietly present strong messaging and teachings to their young athletes.

And of course, they need incredibly high technical and tactical skills which are relevant to their particular sport.

This is what Rebecca does, with other team members at Pipers Vale, senior members such as Josie Hayes, together with the broader coaching team, they do not simply build skilful athletes, they develop young people, who have incredible personalities and characters, and high levels of mental toughness.

I talk from experience, as I have attended the club on many occasions, watching the young gymnasts train, hour, after hour. It is jaw-dropping, the levels of drive that these young athletes possess, and this, for me, is developed through the incredible culture that is cultivated by Rebecca and Josie.

All the hard work, must lead somewhere of course, and ultimately, this is competition, this is when the pressure is really on and the young athletes must deliver, when it counts.

I am very pleased to say, that the girls at Pipers Vale Gymnastics Club, definitely know how to do this - and proved it at The British Compulsory Championships, which took place in Stoke on Trent.

The youngest gymnast able to compete are just nine-years-old and Pipers Vale's rising star, Millie Howell, took part in this event. The competition was extremely tough but Millie's final scores saw her achieve an amazing fourth place in Great Britain overall.

In the 10-year-old category, Pipers Vale was represented by Aaliyah Manning and Aniya Barrado. Both remained poised and relaxed throughout the event and showed true class to place 6th and 13th overall.

In level 2, Pipers Vale were represented by Grace Wardley and Ellie Cornforth. The girls dominated the event in 2018 so the pressure was on these young gymnasts to maintain their positions and they were determined not to disappoint.

Once the final scores had been calculated, Grace finished second in Great Britain taking the silver medal and Ellie was crowned Compulsory Level 2 British Champion!

This was an amazing achievement for the girls and Pipers Vale - they have not won this level of competition for 10 years and never in the club's history has it had first and second at this event.

I salute all at Pipers Vale Gymnastics Club, athletes and coaches alike - these talented individuals will continue to give their all in the shadows, but as seen, hard work really does pay off, and these young champions have earned their time in the glorious sunshine of success!

I will soon be able to announce an event that I will be involved in which celebrates women in sport and business, led by one of the world's most well-known women, who has had a significant impact on sport.

It will be an event of national importance, and will be held at a major venue in our region, and I very much look forward to covering this in one of my future columns.

But this week I want to talk about one female athlete in particular, who is proof that even if you are of a more 'mature' age, there is no reason why the glory of sport, and all it can bring, should not be a focus and aspiration.

This woman is Helen Davies and it has been an incredible privilege for The Hub to be part of her support team.

In 2010, Helen's dream became reality, after committing to a life of training and competing, everything fell into place and she produced a marathon performance that earned her selection for two major events - representing Team GB at the European Championships in Barcelona, and England in the Commonwealth Games in New Delhi.

Helen gave up her job as a catering manager, and started her new career as a full-time athlete.

She told me: "The next two years was spent living the dream, multiple altitude training camps in Font Romeu and Iten in Kenya, training alongside the best athletes, not only in the UK, but in the world.

"After the Olympic Trials at the Virgin London Marathon and a PB performance of 2.34.11 I fell pregnant with my first baby and took a five-year break from marathon running to start my family."

So, how is it, that now, seven years later, as nearly a 40-year-old mum of two boys aged four and six she is running personal bests over 10k and half marathons and has just run her fastest marathon time since 2012 to place her at the top of the UK rankings?

I spend a lot of time with Helen and her coach Clive Sparkes, through my role as Director of The Hub, and I asked her during one session, how on earth are you achieving this incredible level of performance, when others are retiring?

She replied: "When I made the decision to return to marathon running in 2017, the response from others close to me was mixed, and the majority did try to almost get me to lower my expectations, with throw away comments along the lines of 'how are you going to manage to train for a marathon around being a mummy?'

"That comment got that fire in my belly burning. It made me ask myself, why can't I be both things? Who says becoming a mummy means I have to lose the identity I had before I was a mummy, I can do both things well."

She added: "I'm not going to lie, training for that Brighton Marathon in 2017 was hell, it was laced with so many emotions and struggles, physically and mentally.

"Physically the load was very exhausting on limited sleep and trying to keep all the balls in the air. Mentally I felt guilty and constantly questioned myself and what I was doing, and whether I was being selfish."

Remarkably, Helen won that race in 2.42 and knew that things could only get better.

She had to change and adapt the training to get the best from her body, but also fit more sessions in and around a busy family life.

This new phase would be a stark contrast to the glory days of 2010-2012. There would be no altitude camps, no midday naps, no funding, no physiologist and very little in the way of massage and physio, she knew she would need to be smart, and focus only on what was essential.

Meeting Luke Read, the founder of Airborne Fit, was the fist major change, it was a turning point, and transformed her body in terms of athletic strength and conditioning.

The dreams then started to become reality again - her 2.38 performance at Brighton last April earned her England selection to run for the team at the Toronto Waterfront Marathon in Canada.

At the end of 2018 her performance at Toronto placed her top of the V35 age group rankings, at 39-years-old, with her second fastest time ever of 2.35.11!

Incredibly though, she was overlooked for funding by the athletics governing body - in favour of ladies who had recorded slower times!

Coach Clive duly penned a letter to one of the main decision makers on the panel and I'm very pleased to write that Helen received a phone call and apology from the governing body, who did then add her to the funding list.

And this is where our life paths crossed. I contacted Helen, and offered the support from all the specialists in my team at The Hub.

I later read an interview, where Helen said "meeting with Nino lifted my spirits - his enthusiasm, excitement, passion and belief was so infectious, and added another layer to what myself and Clive were already doing."

I can't express how important it is to me to be part of Helen and Clive's incredible lives, and I know there is still much more to come!

My past sporting life has been full of incredible memories, working in some of the greatest arenas on the planet, from Centre Court at Wimbledon to the Rod Laver Arena in Melbourne.

And this weekend gone I had the opportunity to add another arena experience to my list – the most famous football stadium in the world, Wembley – and the story that took me there has many twists and turns!

Since the launch of The Hub and the development of the incredible team I have built at The IWIC Centre at the University of Suffolk, we have been attracting a lot of attention, not only locally, but also on a global level, with SportScientia, a sports technology company, being one of them.

The great work of the team, includes top professionals such as Dr Stuart McErlain-Naylor, who heads up our bio-mechanics department.

Stuart has an incredible skill for understanding movement, and has become one of our most valued team members, while we also have Wez Pooley from the world of football, who works at the highest level in strength and conditioning, and sports psychologist Dr Alex Latinjak, who presents internationally and is a lead researcher on cognitive self-regulation skills in sport.

There are many positives to The Hub, not only for the hundreds of athletes it supports, but the way it collaborates with others from the sporting fraternity.

It's one of these special relationships that helped us prepare for this Wembley Stadium event. As part of the presentation, we needed to shoot a portfolio of movement drills and, thanks to Bryan Klug and Lee O'Neil, we had the first class Ipswich Town dome at Playford Road Training Ground at our disposal.

SportScientia are a Milan-based company who have developed a “Super Smart Sporting Insole” which is capable of collecting incredible data and information at foot level, from an insole placed in boots – heart rate, body temperature, and the forces that a player produces through the ground can all be tracked.

This has the potential of changing the way footballers train, develop and avoid injuries, plus help them spend less time in rehabilitation programmes.

Dr Stuart, Dr Alex, Wez and myself have invested months in building the reputation of The Hub, and its recognition through SportScientia, placed us on the world stage of football medicine this weekend at Wembley.

As part of the international SportScientia development team, we presented at The Isokinetic's Medical Group Conference, in association with FIFA, which was attended by representatives from most of the major football clubs around the world.

We prepared so well I can't say any of us were nervous, but to be told that representatives of some of the biggest clubs in the world were sitting in the audience, I must admit, did add a bit of an edge!

Scanning across the audience, knowing who was sitting in front of us, with the hallowed Wembley pitch also in full view, was for all of us an incredible experience, but we needed to stay fully-focused.

We were there to present on performance movement in football, and how, in combination with the technology of the Smart Sole, a significant difference could be made to the footballing world.

Whenever I have delivered a presentation, I suppose the biggest fear is that you lose your audience, that they are not interested in what you are presenting or showing them, and our presentation was an hour-and-a-half – a very long time if you lose the attention of the attendees!

We covered every unique element of the training programme and the Smart Insole and its technology, I am very pleased to say that at the end, the audience actually clapped with appreciation.

Knowing the calibre of the individuals that were present, that made us all feel very proud.

At the end of the presentation, the audience were offered the opportunity to ask questions – this is the phase of the presentation I really enjoy, and I was not disappointed as the professionals really knew their speciality areas and there were some incredible questions, which we all enjoyed answering.

It was very satisfying knowing that representatives from some of the most famous clubs in the world were giving us a massive level of respect – and after everyone left, I looked at The Hub members and said, “Hey, not bad for a bunch of boys from Ipswich!”

Ipswich now has its very own equivalent of an EIS (English Institute of Sport) World Class Centre – it might not be as big as the mega venue in Sheffield, but we are slowly making a serious noise in the world of elite programme support through The Hub, Centre of Excellence.

As Director of The Hub, I am super excited to announce that we now have three national and British teams basing their sports science support with us.

One of the teams we are now very proud to support is England Deaf Rugby, who are committed to ensuring that all, including young children who suffer from deafness or hearing impairment, have the opportunity to be included in this wonderful sport.

One of our network of talented professionals at the hub, Wez Pooley, was instrumental in setting up our link – he plays for the Welsh Deaf Rugby team, and has done so since 2004, winning the World Cup 7’s in Australia in 2018.

Wez was key in actually setting up the international deaf rugby sides and it was through him that we arranged for the England teams to visit us in Suffolk.

This was a chance for me as hub director to have an effect on a large group of elite athletes who do not benefit from the vast pool of resources that professional rugby players would have access to.

This event also tested the other exciting and valuable force that is being created in Ipswich – the fact that sports with incredible resources and those with very little can come together to create something special.

When I refer to this, I am talking about Ipswich Town Football Club – I approached them for support, namely Lee O’Neil who managers the academy set up.

I explained to him the we had a national team visiting Ipswich, and The Hub wanted to ensure that they had a great welcome to our town – without hesitation he agreed to support us.

The university also played its part, ensuring that the team had the use of our amazing lecture theatres and of course the state of the art Hub.

Both us and Town needed to put on special provisions to make the event happen, which included opening up the training ground at Playford Road and the Hub on the Waterfront on a day that would normally have seen both venues closed and unmanned.

I and all of Team Hub – an 8-man back room staff – all waited in the foyer at the university for the men’s and women’s deaf rugby team to arrive, and when they did, what an arrival it was.

45 rugby players came through the doors on the waterfront, and to be honest, I have never witnessed such a mass of athletic talent, there were some seriously big units amongst this elite group of athletes!

The teams enjoyed two presentations in our university lecture theatres, one on Programme Management and the other on Performance Nutrition, a full testing programme in The Hub, and then it was on to Playford Road Training Ground, the home of the Town Academy for an incredible extension of the testing programme and an opportunity to train under cover in the Ipswich Town Dome.

Its been an absolute pleasure to write my first column of 2019, and I’m very proud of the many individuals at the University of Suffolk and Ipswich Town who went above and beyond to ensure the England Deaf Rugby players enjoyed such exceptional support from our region’s sporting community.

- You can follow England Deaf Rugby on social media - Twitter: @deafrugby, Facebook: England Deaf Rugby Union, Instagram: @englanddeafrugby

As Director of The Hub, I am meeting some incredible and inspirational individuals who are searching for world class programme support.

The latest sporting hero that has crossed my life path is a very determined woman called Ramla Ali.

She lives in London and recently heard from one of my associates in London all about The Hub and what we are building in terms of specialist support.

She obtained my contact details and reached out, which led to a very long telephone call one Sunday night, and eventually onto agreeing a date for her to travel into Ipswich to visit The Hub.

I had heard about Ramla, and the extraordinary life she has led, but it is always special to hear from the athletes themselves.

Ramla Ali won the British and English boxing titles in 2016, but the incredible back story behind this achievement is simply amazing.

She had endure the stresses and strains of preparing and entering the ring without any of her family members present to provide her with the support that many fighters benefit from.

This was not because they could not attend, or could not quite bring themselves to watch her fight, knowing that they would have to watch her take the punishment that all fighters ultimately will need to absorb. They did not attend because they simply did not know she was fighting.

Ramla is the first Muslim female boxer to win an English boxing title, and this was the basis of why none of her family attended her title winning bout, her family are devout and strict Muslims, which meant that Ramla believed that they would not back her and let her lead this path in sport she was so desperate to take.

I literally could not believe this.

I asked her, how did you manage to attend all the bouts that would lead you to a title a fight if your mum did not know? She told me that she had to be very creative, and one of the ways she would ensure she made the fights in and around London, was to tell her mum, she was going for a run, but of course she was not, she was actually travelling to a venue to fight for her dream.

Ramla arrived in Ipswich with her support team, Richard Moore, her boxing coach, Liam Mistry, her strength and conditioning coach and another support team member.

I noticed one thing immediately, as this was the life I once led, a life where you are part of a very committed and devoted team of professionals who support a talented athlete and their dreams of greatness.

Even though they moved as one extremely tight team, they were very open and very nice individuals. This first encounter with Ramla was an all-day affair, so we had plenty of time to all get to know each other, and as we started to feel comfortable with each other, we discussed many aspects of the incredible life this woman has already led.

As the day carried on, there were lots of opportunities to carry on building a relationship with the whole of Team Ramla, and the more we spoke, the more I was respecting this woman, who has a very gentle nature and personality, but, who clearly had a heart of a Lioness and an unlimited amount of mental strength and bravery.

This strength and bravery were not only cultivated through her tough experiences during training and in the boxing ring, but also through a life that had already dealt her some very challenging blows.

When Ramla was a young child, her and her family fled from Somali, the capital of Mogadishu, this was during the early 1990s, a tragedy had cruelly forced her family to make this decision after her older brother, aged 12 was killed by a mortar, like so many other children, while he was playing in the street.

It is simply heart-breaking to know that children, who should be having the most innocent and happy years of their lives, instead have their lives taken away from them under such terrible circumstances.

Ramla and her whole family experienced a terrible ordeal escaping from Somalia, she is in fact very lucky to even be alive, and she knows this, maybe its this, that creates the basis of her incredible strength, a very strong realisation, she has been given a second chance, it could even be described as a miracle, Ramla decided that she would take this life opportunity and make sure she made something very special out of her life.

Ramla is now fully sponsored by the massive sport brand Nike, she spends much of her time inspiring and motivating other Muslim girls to take up sport, but on a wider basis introducing boxing to girls all over Great Britain.

I can say, that this boxer who once fought under the England flag, but who now fights for her homeland of Somalia is without doubt an inspiration to me, and all the Team Hub members who had the privilege of spending so much time with her.

I am looking forward to being a very small part of Ramla’s support team, and watching to see what else this incredible refuge from Somalia can achieve through her sporting life!

My role as the Director of The Hub, Centre of excellence in Ipswich, has become a very important part of my life, for so many different reasons. The Hub support Team, are based at the Ipswich Waterfront Innovation Centre (IWIC), its facilities in terms of meeting rooms, boardroom and presentation areas gives us outstanding facilities to create innovative and exciting programmes, and offer the support that the sporting community is so willing to embrace.

Fifteen years ago, I launched Sports Performance Academy, which was the basis of the concept we are creating at The Hub, it was clear to me then, that this type of support is needed amongst our sporting fraternity, athletes, coaches and parents. Fifteen years on, our data base of athletes accessing The Hub’s support is in excess of 200 athletes, from Olympians to regional standard.

I’m so pleased we have incredible partnerships with three jewels of the Ipswich Sporting Crown, Pipers Vale Gymnastics Club, Ipswich School and Teamipswich Swimming, lead by Olympic Coach Dave Champion. Between them, they have a portfolio of simply incredible athletes that are ranked on a National and International level, as Director of The Hub, I’m very proud that we can offer our support, and be embraced as a small part of their support team.

The Hub is offering all the young aspirational athletes some very valuable support, which includes nutritional advice and mental skills training, we are also launching our Hub Athlete, Parent Support programme next week. This is proving to be very popular amongst the sporting community, with 70 places already being taken.

Athletes from Ipswich School, swimming and the gymnastics have attended the state-of-the-art sports science Laboratory at The University of Suffolk, as part of their support programme. Supporting aspirational athletes is a 7 day a week business, last week proved no different, with a visit from the top gymnasts from Pipers Vale Gymnastics Club. It was jaw dropping to actually see what these young athletes are capable of, physically and mentally.

Part of the programme involved checking hydration levels, using our Osmometer Unit, this required all the young gymnasts to bring urine samples into the Laboratory to be tested by Team Hub members. They are all involved in a maturation programme, this keeps a very close eye on the rate of growth of the athlete’s body, this is a very important aspect of a young developing athletes programme, it’s important for the technical coaches to know when their gymnasts are going through a growth spurt. They were all tested on the Force Plate as well, this gives very detailed data regarding the force that these young athletes can produce through their lower bodies, an aspect that is absolutely critical in the world of gymnastics. Ongoing monitoring enables us to inform the coaching team of progression, or indeed regression.

Working with this calibre of athletes is hugely exciting for Team Hub, 2018 was a great year for Pipers vale Gymnastics with champions at club, county and regional levels as well as national champions, Great Britain squad members and international call ups.

2019 has also started on a high; in January, Pipers Vale Gymnastics Club welcomed the news that 3 of their development gymnasts; Grace Wardley, Ellie Cornforth and Aaliyah Manning had been selected for the Great Britain Home nations squad as well as a further gymnast; Aniya Barrado  being selected for Great Britain Performance Pathway. Their boys squad has gone from strength to strength; this year they now have 4 members in the England squad; Rishad Al-amin, Luca Hammond, Charlie Harvey-Lloyd and Daniel Leighton-Scott. Cameron Lister maintained his place in the Scottish Junior squad, Adam Steele continues his journey with Ireland; maintaining his place in the Irish Senior squad and Dominic Bigbsy has been selected for the senior New Zealand squad for the first time this year.

Cameron Lister was crowned all round Scottish junior champion in February this year and will continue to compete for Scotland at the Home Nations Tournament in April. Adam will also compete internationally at the World Cup representing Ireland and he is a hopeful for the 2019 world Championships and the 2020 Olympics. Dominic Bigsby has been selected to compete for New Zealand at the 2019 World Cup events in Baku and Doha. Charlie Harvey-Lloyd will also compete in his first international for England at the Home Nationals Tournament in April

The 2019 English Championships took place between 1^st-3^rd March. Pipers Vale had 12 gymnasts competing from both the girls’ and boys’ squad. All of the gymnasts performed well and enjoyed the experience. Highlights included Brodie Davis coming away with a bronze medal on high bar and Dominic Bigsby being awarded the bronze medal on vault.

Next weekend (14^th-17^th) welcomes the British Gymnastics Championships, the most prestigious event in the competition calendar, Pipers Vale have 11 gymnasts competing. Its hard for me to express the pride I feel as I am writing about the club, the gymnasts and the technical coaches, Pipers Vale Gymnastics Club have chosen The Hub, to support their club, this is without doubt, an honour and a privilege for me personally, and all at Team Hub, and an incredible opportunity for The Hub to play its small part of a potential Ipswich based Olympic Champion!

As I find myself committing to more projects utilising sport as a positive influencer in children’s lives, I am becoming more and more interested in athletes who are using their position and achievements to inspire and motivate young aspirational athletes who are working their way through the ranks. British sprinter Dina Asher-Smith, currently one of our athletics stars and a triple European gold medallist, is doing just this. It’s important that as a woman in sport, she is focusing on trying to convince the media to give more column inches and air time to the voice of sportswoman who are positioned to influence young girls who are finding a life in sport. She argues that the media tends to focus more on the achievements of males in sport, under representing women and their successes.

Dina holds a number of British records, including 100- and 200-meters sprint disciplines, she also won European gold in these distances. She said “I was very fortunate to be able to go into track and field because I could see that as a woman, I could make it to the top, I could be in the Olympics”. She found a sporting stage and opportunity for her life’s internal inspiration and motivation, and she wants to use her experience to affect the lives of other young women, and hopes others in her position in sport will do the same.

As a sporting professional, I am well aware of the challenges of retaining young girls in sport for a longer period of time, for me, this is very important as it is becoming very evident, that they have much to gain from a sporting life. During the last three months I have been heavily involved in creating development programmes within sport for young people, and what is becoming very apparent to me, is that the skills young female athletes are developing through their sport, will become very valuable at critical points later in their lives.

This week I had the privilege of meeting Tim Lawler, the CEO from the National SportsAid charity, the discussions we had only reinforced my thinking in this area. The more we discussed how young people can benefit from being involved in sport, the more his words validated the fact that skills learnt within sporting environments and culture can be a very positive experience and can add to the richness of personal development. The more I researched this area, the more it has validated what I have always believed, sport for young growing girls, can be a very powerful environment in terms of self-development.

Study’s that have been conducted around the world seem to support this thinking, I came across one that indicated that 96% of female executives, women who have achieved positions as CEO’s, CFO’s and COO’s, were heavily involved in sport as young girls and women. They listed some very powerful examples, for Christine Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, it was synchronised swimming, for the first female editor-in-chief of ESPN The Magazine, it was gymnastics, swimming, and football, and for the former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, it was Soccer, tennis, basketball, and softball.

Figures provided by Gatorade through a “Girls In Sport” study shows that by the age of 17 a staggering 50% of girls will stop playing sport completely. These statistics are very depressing, and why Dina, has a very powerful message, lets ensure our British women stars in sport have a loud and proud voice, in terms of their sporting achievements and messaging, and give them the opportunity to reduce the fall out rate by inspiring and motivating girls to stay in sport and gain the advantages of doing so.

Dina believes that many of the young girls in sport do not get the chance to see these outstanding achievements, she believes that women in sport deserve an equal opportunity to tell their story through the media, I for one think she has a very valid point. There is much for us all to be proud of in British women’s sport, rugby, netball, football, tennis and cricket to name but a few, all achieving on the world stage, but as Dina Asher-Smith quite righty states, the influence that these achievements have, can only be delivered if young girls are actually being exposed to the stories through a heightened media focus.

I’m extremely fortunate that The EATD provides me with a platform to write about the positivity of sport, health and fitness, and I have often used this opportunity to highlight the sporting achievements of the women athletes who form part of my local life, women such as Jasmin Taylor World performing Telemark Skier, Helen Davies Great Britain ranked Marathon Runner, Ramla Ali Nike sponsored boxer, Justice Hall, young aspiring tennis player, Amy Wilson-Hardy, England International Rugby star and Georgie Lawson, British International Karate fighter. All these female athletes and many more have been featured in my EADT column, because of Dina, I am focused now, more than ever to ensure I do my bit to highlight the power and influence the achievements of women in sport can have on those taking their early steps in the world of female sport!

Its been a fantastic week for global tennis with the Miami Open in full swing, but also an incredible week for Ipswich tennis, seeing us celebrating a great performance this Sunday just gone, by one of our Elena Baltacha Foundation supported players, Saul Hindmarch, coached by Richard Daynes (Framlingham Tennis), and Mike Lunt, (EB Foundation Head of Player Support) who were both at the LTA National Training Centre, near Wimbledon to see him make the Final of the U12’s Winter National Finals. Saul met a player from Dukes Meadows Tennis, Kai-Luca Ampaw, which was, by all accounts an incredible match, he played extremely well, representing Ipswich Sports Club Tennis Academy, unfortunately eventually losing 4-6, 4-6.

Kai, the player who trains at Dukes Meadows Tennis, which is owned by one of the giants of the fashion industry, a man, I know extremely well, who is called Stephen Marks, the company he owns is called French Connection. Its quite strange how two areas of my life have crossed this week, Elena Baltacha Foundation supported player and Stephen Marks’s player who both encountered each other at a major Junior tennis tournament.

My travels through sport and with sport has taken me to all four corners of the world and has without doubt been a very colourful tapestry of positive experiences. Everyone has life changing moments, one of my biggest was when a representative of Stephen Marks, approached me in Spain while I was presenting. At the time, Elena was training there as British No.1 tennis player, also there was her coach Jo Durie, Ex British No.1 and 5th best player in the world during her time on the WTA World Tennis tour.

My presentation was a practical, on a tennis court, it lasted for around 90 minutes, and as soon as I finished a member of the French connection Tennis academy came straight over and asked if I would deliver a training session for all their players who were at the World Famous La Manga complex at the time. I delivered the day after, the players reacted very well, all expressing that they felt the session had real benefit. After the session was over, I was asked to go and meet the senior coaching staff, I was quite shocked to see Jo Durie standing there, an ex-player I watched as a young man on BBC Television as she represented Great Britain in the biggest tennis tournament in the World, Wimbledon.

I had a very long chat with her and the rest of the French connection Tennis coaching staff, at the end of our discussion, I was invited to their training base in London to deliver a trial session for all the players at the academy. Again, it was received very well, a few weeks later, a senior member of staff called me and offered me a permanent position on the coaching team, this offer would totally change everything, and send my life path on a mind-blowing trajectory that would end with me becoming Olympic and British No.1 Tennis Coach. It was at my first official training session I met the Gaffa, Stephen Marks, this was the start of an incredible relationship with a simply incredible man.

Stephen, as a young tennis player actually played junior Wimbledon, so he new the tennis business, his love of the sport led him on to sponsor and support Jo Durie, Elena, and many other players, such as Laura Robson and Donna Vekic, the Croatian player who reached a highest World ranking of 25. As the years went on, I was very lucky enough to get to know Stephen very well, so much so that he actually asked me to personally coach his son. I used to travel to London, where he lived, and remember quite vividly sitting with him in the kitchen having a chat and a cup of coffee. The more I got to know about Stephen, the more I realised what an incredible individual he actually is. Not only has he invested in British tennis, he has also invested in Israel tennis as well. At one time he had substantial shares in Hard Rock Café, and also is a prolific investor in films as well, and the list is quite impressive! Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Snatch, Layer Cake and Kick-Ass, to name but a few.

After I lost Elena to cancer in 2014, Stephen offered me a position at Dukes Meadows, his incredible tennis and golf complex in Chiswick, this very supportive act helped me during a very tough period of my life. I very recently visited Dukes to meet with him and some of the other staff members, during this visit there would be a treat in store. Tim Henman ex British No.1, who reached a world highest ATP ranking of 4, is a very close friend of Stephen’s, he was there, leading a session for all the young Dukes Meadows tennis players. It was great to be in attendance, and watch Tim at work, this was the first time I had ever seen him coach, he was outstanding, and it was incredible to see the affect he had on these young players.

During the same visit I met with Ollie Fawkes who joined the Dukes Meadows High Performance Tennis Centre as Head of Strength and Conditioning in May 2018, following a 2-year full time role with WTA professional tennis player, Elina Svitolina, who during his time with her reached a career highest ranking of 3^rd in the world. I had a very long conversation with Ollie, as we had an awful lot in common, I, spending 8 years on the WTA World Tour, he, 2 years, it's fair to say we shared a few very interesting stories.

I’ve been very luck in my life, meeting Stephen Marks, without doubt was an incredible blessing, I will now wait, and look forward to the next time our lives cross, no doubt, it will be a very interesting and positive experience!