Female Athlete Performance: Takeaways from the Annual Women and Girls in Elite Sport event
The UKSI’s Female Health and Performance Lead Richard Burden recently attended and spoke at the 3rd Annual Women and Girls in Elite Sport celebration and network event in Germany.
Rich shared his insights on the event, his talk and the importance of collaboration in this blog.
Collaboration is key. I say that a lot. It has been central to the progress we are making in female athlete performance support. At its core, competitive advantage is created not by technology or infrastructure, but by people — their expertise, insight and ability to learn, adapt and innovate together.
Recently, I was invited to the German Institut für Angewandte Trainingswissenschaft (Institute for Applied Training Science) in Leipzig to speak at their celebration of women’s sport performance and research. The event brought together German national and state sporting organisations, researchers and innovation partners across German Paralympic and Olympic sport. I shared the work of the UK Sports Institute (UKSI) Female Athlete Performance Programme, with a particular focus on the Global Alliance for Female Athletes (GAFA) — the collaboration we co-launched earlier this year with the Australian Institute Of Sport , the United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee, and High Performance Sport New Zealand.
GAFA exists because a global, not isolated, approach to knowledge sharing is required to meet the rapidly growing demand for expert-led, trustworthy, female athlete resources. Yet, the first question I was asked in Germany was:
“Why collaborate with your closest rivals? Doesn’t that risk losing competitive advantage?”
It’s a fair question — and an important one. In high-performance environments, competitive advantage is often associated with innovation, with minds being immediately drawn to new equipment, technology or analytical tools. But, in my opinion, these things only create value when they are interpreted and applied effectively. In reality, equipment, technology or even AI don’t deliver competitive advantage. People do. The judgment, creativity and context-specific decision making of practitioners and coaches are what turn tools into performance impact. People develop faster, think more broadly, and innovate more when they are exposed to others. That is ultimately where collaboration becomes a source of competitive advantage rather than a threat to it.
Within the UKSI Female Athlete Performance Programme, we have intentionally built a broad ecosystem of expertise. Our multidisciplinary approach spans across UKSI functions; Human Performance, Athlete Health, Performance Data, Performance Innovation, Communications and Operations. Crucially, we work in partnership with the sports we support to integrate knowledge, share insight and strengthen impact. This approach enables us to widen perspective, accelerate learning and improve decision-making. Each collaboration — whether with researchers, practitioners, sports or international partners — contributes to a system designed to support female athletes more effectively. The purpose is to multiply capability.
This logic extends to GAFA. The collaboration between leading high-performance systems isn’t about giving away our edge; it’s about collectively raising the baseline of understanding in an area where the science has historically lagged behind the needs of athletes. When the global standard improves, everyone benefits — and the organisations that collaborate most effectively are the ones best placed to translate that shared knowledge into performance impact. Our competitive advantage will be shaped by our ability to learn quickly, adapt intelligently, and translate knowledge into meaningful practice. Collaboration strengthens all three.
Working with rival nations in this key area does not compromise that. It grows the capability of our people, strengthens our practice and improves the support we provide to the athletes, coaches and sports we work with. Ultimately, this mindset will help us create environments where female athletes can perform, thrive and sustain long, healthy careers. That is the advantage worth building — and one that endures.