Rebecca joins mission to give kids chance to enjoy more active lives

REBECCA Adlington has joined forces with fellow Olympian Beth Tweddle to help children become more active.

Working alongside former GB swimmers Steve Parry and Adrian Turner, the four athletes run their own sporting academies but unite under the umbrella of Sporting House – an Olympic-led group of companies whose mission is to break down barriers to children achieving their true potential.

Swim star Adlington and former gymnast Tweddle scooped five Olympic medals between them but admit finding the next stars of the pool or floor is not their main priority.

They want grassroots physical activity to be as accessible as possible and believe there’s so much more to sport than simply success on the highest stage.

In Adlington’s company – Becky Adlington’s Swim Stars – there is an emphasis on fun, while children receive value awards for attributes such as determination and not giving up.

And the two-time Olympic freestyle gold medallist added: “Even though we’re both part of individual sports essentially, there’s a big team behind you.

“Both sports are very sociable, they’re very team-orientated, and we work together with the coach and team-mates.

“We also have values awards such as not giving up, because some of the skills are really difficult.

“We can relate – just because we’ve got Olympic medals, it doesn’t mean that we didn’t struggle.

“We want to give these kids a little bit of independence. It’s making sure that they have that independence away from mum and dad, and that they have the opportunity to build their own confidence.”

Thanks to the programmes run by the Olympians, just under 20,000 children have had access to physical activity every week.

Like everyone, the business had to learn to develop and diversify when sporting venues were shut for much of the year. Sessions were developed to deliver to the children to ensure that they were staying physically active, while both Tweddle and Adlington have started baby classes in their respective sports too.

And Adlington, who claimed two bronze medals at London 2012, explained: “You’ve got to be adaptable and flexible as a business, whether that’s with Covid, the facilities you are in, or the sport changing in terms of rules and regulations.

“The best thing is the support that we’ve had from the parents and swimmers, which has been absolutely unbelievable this year.

“They feed back to the teachers, who feed back to us and it all feeds in.”

Tweddle, who scooped a bronze medal in the Uneven Bars at her home Games, added: “We did customer focus groups in lockdown so that we could understand what worked and how we could improve it in the future if it happened again.

“From lockdown one, we improved going into lockdown two – whether it was through communication or the product we were delivering to them during lockdown.”

Despite the challenges ahead, the Olympic-led group of companies at Sporting House have continued to engage with customers and develop new products to keep members active.

And in 2021, they’re hoping to continue engaging children in activity and removing any further barriers they face.

“If everything goes to plan, we hope to get a more consistent programme run added.

“We hope we can get the kids progressing, because normally in a year they’ll have gone up two or three stages but they’ve not had that this year.

“We only launched our baby programme back in October, so we’ve still been in the pilot phase and that’s our big focus this year – rolling that out.

“It helps that my baby is due in February, so I can join in too.” this year,”

Adlington