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Olympian ideas

Calling innovators: help GB’s elite cyclists keep their technological lead

WITH THE GLOW of Team GB's success in Beijing still warm in British hearts, two of the UK's leading sporting organisations are hoping to encourage ideas that will bring further Olympic glory in 2012. UK Sport and Loughborough University Sports Technology Institute (LUSTI) have launched two competitions to challenge the nation’s entrepreneurs to find exciting ideas for sporting innovations.

Through its Ideas 4 Innovation programme, UK Sport's research and innovation team is seeking pioneering new ideas that could give British athletes the competitive advantage they need to win medals on the world stage. Novel training and recovery strategies or aids, equipment or apparel will be considered for the Garage Innovators Award, a single grant of up to £25,000 to be used to further the idea, exploring its potential to benefit the British Olympic and Paralympic teams. The award is aimed at individual inventors "with a passion to see the Great Britain team succeed", and is designed to support the development of the concept for exclusive use by UK Sport up to 2012. A separate scheme aimed at final-year students, the New Researchers' Award, will begin a new round in 2009.

The Gatsby Innovation Awards, run by LUSTI with support from the Gatsby Charitable Foundation, are focused on sports products with strong commercial potential. The competition is open to UK companies (SMEs), with awards of around £10,000 to develop novel concepts.

Competition winners in both awards schemes will benefit from funding to pursue their project, together with access to an outstanding network of world-leading expertise and specialist research facilities, dedicated to developing cutting edge technologies in both elite performance and the sport and leisure industry.

The Garage Innovators Award is the most recent outcome of LUSTI's collaboration with UK Sport. The Institute has Innovation Partner status, restricted to a select few UK research organisations, recognising LUSTI's role in developing innovative sports technologies. In the 2008 Paralympics, Team GB athletes benefited from collaborative research to improve the design of frames used in archery and throwing events. The project demonstrated an average weight reduction of up to 50 percent for the frames as well as improved ergonomic design.

If you've got wild ideas, creativity and a passion for sport we want to hear from you – this is a real opportunity for you to contribute to British sporting success.

Jason Queally

Speaking at the launch of the awards, Olympic Gold medal-winning cyclist and Ideas 4 Innovation judging panel member, Jason Queally, said: "I have been directly involved with the research and development work that has gone on behind the scenes between British Cycling and UK Sport over the last four years to ensure the team remain a step ahead of the rest of the world technologically.

"But the hard work on and off the track doesn’t stop there. We’ve got 2012 to look ahead to and we need some fresh ideas and approaches to make the team even better by then. This is where the British public can help by telling us their Ideas 4 Innovation. And not just for cycling – UK Sport work with all of our Olympic and Paralympic sports.

"Sometimes the best ideas come from outside the sporting world because, that way, moments of inspiration are not confined by knowledge of the 'norms' of what has gone before. If you've got wild ideas, creativity and a passion for sport we want to hear from you – this is a real opportunity for you to contribute to British sporting success."

The closing date for both competitions is 24 October 2008.

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Olympian ideas

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