Could you be a future star athlete?

Officially launched today at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, potential athletes can now join From Home 2 The Games by completing three simple challenges and submitting their results at www.FromHome2TheGames.com. The challenges are:

• For Olympic sport, potential athletes need to complete a 20m sprint, a broad jump and an open skill challenge.
• For Paralympic sport, potential athletes need to complete a 20m push or sprint, a pick-up and throw and an open skill challenge.

As part of the process, potential athletes will be encouraged to upload their scores and fill in a short form about themselves and their sporting background. Submissions will close at midnight of Monday 6 September and then be reviewed by a team of expert sport scientists and coaches.

A select number of potential athletes will be invited to progress to the next stage of the process in the autumn with sessions held to further explore their opportunity to be a future Olympian or Paralympian and the possibility that a number will be selected to join National Governing Body development programmes.

Dame Katherine Grainger, Chair of UK Sport, said: “Our hope is that every young person that gets involved with From Home 2 The Games will have a fantastic, positive experience of sport and, wherever it might lead, will be better for having engaged with it. We are committed to discovering the nation’s exceptional sporting talent of tomorrow and building a more inclusive and diverse Olympic and Paralympic family.

“From Home 2 The Games is a brilliant example of the Olympic and Paralympic high-performance community coming together to give young people a chance that they may never have had otherwise. We want to get to a place where the only barrier to sporting success is potential, and so I would encourage people from all backgrounds and all corners of the UK to give this a go and have fun with it.”

From Home 2 The Games is digitally driven and working with seven athlete ambassadors who will utilise their channels to tell their own personal stories of engaging with sport, where their journey has taken them and some of the challenges they have faced along the way.

The seven athlete ambassadors are Adam Peaty, Ali Jawad, Bianca Walkden, Laura Muir, Kadeena Cox, Kye Whyte and Tegan Vincent-Cooke. Cox herself first engaged with UK Sport and the EIS as a potential athlete during the 2014 campaign.

Irrespective of any progression and selection towards National Governing Body development programmes, all of the young people who engage with From Home 2 The Games will be signposted as to how they might get involved with Olympic and Paralympic sport in their local areas and communities.

Olympic, world, European and Commonwealth champion Adam Peaty said: “To any young adult out there – what have you got to lose? That is exactly what I said to myself. You will learn so many things through sport that you don't even know because you don't know yourself yet. If you've had that struggle of not having enough money, not being able to do it, I think it makes that journey a little bit better. I got addicted to swimming straightaway. It was a fishhook – it grabbed me and pulled me in. It wasn't until I started to race that the love really started to flourish.”

Since 2007 UK Sport has worked in partnership with the English Institute of Sport and over 22 sports within the Olympic and Paralympic high-performance community to run 16 national searches for the athletes of the future, engaging more than 11,000 young people. 

Among those athletes to have successfully made their way through a recruitment campaign and onto National Lottery-funded World Class Programmes are a number of Olympic and Paralympic champions and medallists including Lizzy Yarnold, Helen Glover, Lutalo Muhammad, Laura Deas, Jon-Allan Butterworth, Joanna Butterfield as well as Kadeena Cox.

The 19 National Governing Bodies involved in From Home 2 the Games are: 

• Archery GB
• Badminton England
• GB Boccia
• GB Snowsport
• British Athletics
• British Canoeing
• British Cycling
• British Disability Fencing
• British Diving
• British Gymnastics
• British Para Table Tennis
• British Rowing
• British Shooting
• British Skeleton
• British Swimming
• British Triathlon
• British Weightlifting
• Lawn Tennis Association
• Pentathlon GB