Summit in Doha, Qatar focus on talent ID in sport

Nine time Olympic Champion Carl Lewis and Sports Challenge Chief Executive Officer Garry Tester renewed old acquaintances at the Aspire 4 Sport Conference in Doha, Qatar in November.
As a guest of the Aspire Academy, Garry Tester spoke about his world first data base of fitness and skill testing for identifying elite performers at Primary school age of 9 years to 12 years.
The data base developed since 1982 is the largest in the world with over 32,000 students tested throughout Australia and Singapore.

The 7 item fitness test and 10 item skill test cover all fundamental skills required for most sporting endeavours. To easily understand the data the scores for fitness and skill are converted to a Fitness and Skill Quotient equivalent to the old IQ Scale. A mean of 100 points and standard deviations of 15 points. Therefore the pool of elite performers for fitness and skill would have scores of 130+ or two standard deviations above the mean. Scores of the very best have been recorded at 190+ points (see Sports Challenge website www.sportschallenge.com.au).
 With Delegates from all over the world attending the conference, Garry Tester highlighted how the data can not only be used for Talent ID, but for the development of physical educators and sport in schools. Further parents can receive an individual report showing how their child performed compared to the school and National means. This allows genuine ownership of fit and healthy children from community, to schools, to parents.
As Carl Lewis explained “If we can get our kids actively involved in sport at an early age, the more opportunities there are for potential Olympians to emerge and we need reliable data to measure these children”.