EIS round up of 2018: Part I
It has been another jammed packed and exciting year at the English Institute of Sport, with many exciting projects, workshops, and achievements made with important initiatives being driven forwards by many teams and disciplines, as we edge ever closer to Tokyo 2020.
In the first of two articles for our end of year review, the EIS looks back at just some of the main stories that have happened over the first six months of the year.
In January the EIS Performance Pathway team, along with UK Sport, launched talent identification programme #DiscoverYourGold, aimed at identifying talented young athletes who have the potential to become future champions. Previous campaigns had produced remarkable results with Sochi 2014 and PyeongChang 2018 skeleton gold medallist Lizzy Yarnold coming through the GirlsforGold scheme in 2008.
Since the launch at the beginning of the year, numerous testing days and trials have taken place across the UK with selected athletes currently being finalised within different sports.
At the end of January, the EIS ran another hugely successful Skills4Performance (S4P) programme designed to provide an insight into the elite sport environment and seek out talented individuals looking to develop their careers in high performance sport.
Watch the video below as EIS practitioners and S4P participants explain why S4P is so important in developing careers and what the participants took away from the workshop.
The Winter Olympics in PyeongChang ran from 9th-25th February with a highlight being the EIS-supported British Skeleton programme returning with three medals. We spoke to EIS physiotherapist Louise Turner who worked with the team throughout the Games to get her thoughts on working with the athletes, including double Olympic Champion Yarnold.
EIS chairman John Steele also gave his reflections on the competition and described it as “two weeks of remarkable, intense and unpredictable sporting drama.” 
PYEONGCHANG-GUN, SOUTH KOREA – FEBRUARY 17: (L-R) Gold medal winner Lizzy Yarnold of Great Britain and bronze medalist Laura Deas of Great Britain celebrate following the Women’s Skeleton on day eight of the PyeongChang 2018 Winter Olympic Games at Olympic Sliding Centre on February 17, 2018 in Pyeongchang-gun, South Korea. (Photo by Clive Mason/Getty Images)At the beginning of March, for the fourth year running the English Institute of Sport was recognised as one of The Sunday Times 100 Best Not-For-Profit organisations to work for, coming in 56th position. This ranking was based on eight factors including workplace engagement, leadership, the company itself and personal growth.
On Thursday 8th March, the EIS celebrated International Women’s Day 2018, recognising the day by celebrating women employees and highlighting the organisation’s gender diversity and the flexible and part-time working options on offer to staff.
Watch our video with Co-Heads of Physiology, Emma Ross and Esme Matthew who talk about their job share and how it has allowed them to effectively balance their time between family life and leadership roles in sport 👊
WATCH: 📽 https://t.co/erQRHDTE2z pic.twitter.com/U97Vs4g9nm
— English Institute of Sport (@eis2win) March 9, 2018
We focussed on two women in leadership roles who job share the Head of Physiology post; Emma Ross and Esme Matthew, and how the EIS has worked with them creatively to enable them to keep working in the Institute in senior roles, whilst having young families.
Continuing the theme of celebration, in April on National Biomechanics Day, we spoke to EIS Biomechanics Project Lead Cat Shin about the work of the discipline inside the EIS, and the way biomechanics interacts with other disciplines to produce performance improvements.
A busy first half of the year drew to a close with ABSORB, an online platform enabling 24/7 multi-modal knowledge access and acquisition for EIS physiotherapists and doctors, reached its one-year anniversary recording over 2,000 logins.