Athlete Welfare & Long-Term Awareness Awards Topped By Marshall & Rădulescu
Team Mel Marshall, for her work with Adam Peaty and family, and Team Adrian Rădulescu, for his work with David Popovici and family, are chosen in our SOS Awards 2024 made because each of their stories is one handling the challenges that flow in a long-term commitment to care, process and outcome
Athlete Welfare, Awareness, Long-Term. Big words often spoken but but harder to put into practice in a truly meaningful way.
The best examples of it all working out well, including her folk recognised as we roll out our coaching awards for 2024, are to be found far and wide in numbers too many to count and places too scattered and off the Olympic radar to be aware of: in some sense, this type of award, one we're adding to our list this year, is due to many unsung heroes among parents, siblings, families, coaches and others who work with athletes at all levels of sport who look back on their time in sport with pride, happy in the knowledge that the culture and environment they grew up in, complete with lessons in dedication, discipline and determination, has stood them in good stead for the rest of life.
At SOS, we focus chiefly on the performance-excellence end of the pool, be that the athlete, athleticism, coaching, parenting, psychology, science, sponsors, support mechanisms (from the good to the bad and the ugly) and much in between.
In that elite realm, the best examples of welfare, long-term and careful handling and care of challenging times, some of them crisis points that require exceptional person skills and an ability to seek the best of help from the best of experts in their respective fields, are most keenly observed in situations where a coach and athlete have worked together from 'possible potential' to hunter, breakthrough and then the 'maintaining status' as the hunter turned hunted, by self as well as rivals.
The best of the best examples often hold hands with home life, parenting, parents who may well be on a learning curve but however they get there, they get it when it comes to providing a home environment helpful to the development of athletes from potential to podiums under pressure, super trouper and a weight of complex expectation, welcome or not.
With that and long-term efforts of coaches and parents in mind, our 2024 Athlete Welfare and Awareness Awards go to:
- Women: Mel Marshall, for her work with Adam Peaty and family
- Men: Adrian Rădulescu, for his work with David Popovici and family
In full...
