USC to provide Olympic sports testing
Talented young athletes who believe they could have what it takes to represent Australia at the 2012 Olympics will be put through their paces at the University of the Sunshine Coast on Saturday 20 September.
USC has become a Talent Assessment Centre for the Australian Sports Commission’s National Talent Identification and Development (NTID) program which is designed to find and develop new athletes for Olympic and World Championship sports.
The NTID centre at USC is one of more than 20 established across Australia to conduct testing and help fast-track talented athletes.
Australian Sports Commission’s Director for Sport Performance and Development Greg Nance said the NTID centres would assist in validating athletes' physical performance results generated from a revolutionary web-based self-identification tool called eTID.
eTID is an online tool that allows athletes to enter their own results for a set of predetermined physical screening tests and then be provided with feedback on their results comparative to normative data for their age and gender.
All aspiring Olympians are encouraged to log onto eTID at <ausport.gov.au/etid> to find out if they have the potential to be Australia’s next sporting champion.
Athletes participating in the online screening are encouraged to attend follow-up screening at a testing centre, and anyone who demonstrates above-average potential might be invited to participate in the NTID program.
USC’s Laboratory Coordinator for Sport and Exercise Science Meegan Walker said only a handful of young athletes had nominated for the first talent identification screening at USC this Saturday, but she expected the program to grow in the future.
Ms Walker said USC would initially stage four talent identification screening days a year.
“A lot of Australia’s sporting talent lives in regional areas,” she said. “This centre at USC allows those athletes who clearly excel to get noticed on a national level.”
— Terry Walsh