durham
university
Durham
University
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Having been named Sports University of the Year by The Times and Sunday Times in recognition of their
progress, Durham University is now able to offer one of the most comprehensive University Sports programmes
in the country. Sport in Profile Magazine was keen to find out more about the superb set up that they have in
place and Dean of Experience Durham, Dr Peter Warburton OBE, took the time to speak with us recently.
He told us: “We’ve built our performance
sport programme over a long period of
time and in that period a lot of different
universities have come and gone. Our
plan has always been to develop to the
best level possible and then to sustain
that standard. That has always been the
challenge for us, how do we sustain that
level?
We’ve expanded the sports we offer
considerably which has been important
to our growth. That’s been a process
of building the support infrastructure
around five strength and conditioning
coaches, five interns that carry out analysis
and having physiotherapy on site to help
our athletes to reach their full potential.”
Individuals
“Without any question the key to what
we’ve achieved is the people that we
have here. We recruit domestically and
internationally to bring in top athletes
and that has helped our programme;
there is no shortcut, you still have to meet
20 Issue 07
the academic requirements to get into the
university.
They all have the same target here;
gaining a degree and the athletes bring
different cultural experiences and
international athletes can bring a slightly
different mentality to sport. They don’t
like to lose and the attitude of athletes
on our elite programmes often sets the
standards for training and competition
which is obviously very helpful.”
Developing Leadership
“We have a very strong leadership
programme now with thirty five of our top
sport, music and drama students being
mentored by alumni in London which is
part supported by Clifford Chance, the
Navy, the Army and BP. They get to know
their mentors who help them through the
year, providing advice and support. The
navy and the army also carry out training
courses to help them learn leadership
skills.
Some of the mentors include a vicepresidents of Barclays bank, a Lord
Chief justice and three barristers. The
relationship between student and mentor
often extends beyond the scheme and has
led to many of those involved landing
extremely good jobs.”
The Collegiate set up
“Our collegiate programme allows our
programme to be huge. Sixteen colleges
all have teams in twenty sports so it
would be difficult to argue that this isn’t
the biggest programme of its kind in the
country, certainly in terms of playing
competitive sport. With the wide variety
there’s the opportunity for students to
take part in the sports that they want to.
We also have a recreational arm to our
sports programme for people that just
want to play and aren’t so worried about
competing. This had been a weakness
for us but now we have around 2000
students taking part. We’ve built it quite
systematically over the last five years.”