Olympic champion Mark Hunter MBE blogs on his new role as West Ham United Foundation Sports Ambassador
Hello everyone,
I was honoured this week to be made a Sports Ambassador for the West Ham United Foundation. I’ve been a fan since I was a kid and sport has given me so much, so to be able to come back and work with the Club and the Foundation to get more kids involved in all sports – not just football – is great.
The Foundation gives thousands of kids the chance to try new sports and they find they have got natural talent and it changes their outlook on what is possible. I am looking forward to working with them over the next few years.
I spent some time, like most sportspeople do when they stop competing, thinking about what I could do next and how I could give back.
I started working for a rowing charity called London Youth Rowing trying to get more kids into the sport – not perhaps to become Olympic champions but to give them an idea of what is possible. I line manage six head coaches and am trying to get more investors involved in the charity, so it’s been a lot of fun.
It’s been great to meet kids from different environments who would never have thought about the sport and give them a chance to row. Some of them are going out to American colleges now, which is huge, and that would never have been possible if they hadn’t had the opportunity to pick up the sport and realise their natural talent. It’s been a lot of fun.
On Friday, more than 2,700 youngsters took part in the National Junior Indoor Rowing Championships at Lea Valley Rowing Centre in north London, which was an amazing sight!
When you are under pressure, are tired and are on your knees, you have to make sure you maintain your A-Game and keep on top of things
Football-wise, I think West Ham’s recent run of results has been harsh, because the football this season has been really entertaining. All the fans wanted entertaining football and they’re getting that, but sometimes it doesn’t go your way.
There have been moments where lapses of concentration have cost us the points, but generally the games have been really enjoyable – the Manchester United game, especially, was great and it was just heart-breaking that we lost the lead.
It was just a momentary lapse of concentration, but when you are under pressure, are tired and are on your knees, you have to make sure you maintain your A-Game and keep on top of things.
The team can take a lot of confidence from their performances, but it was always going to be very hard to maintain the pace of the great start we made. We’ve had a bit of a lull, but hopefully we can pick things up over the final nine games.
As a sportsman myself, the hardest thing was producing my best performance but still ending up losing to someone – in those situations you just have to hold your hands up and say they were better on the day.
When you play well and are beaten or draw with an opponent who has not played to their best, then that’s when you have to go away and work out what you could have done better so those cracks don’t appear again.
I am sure the coaching staff and the players have been really pro-active about making adaptations ahead of our next game against Sunderland on Saturday.
When I rowed, I was in a crew of two, so if one of us was injured or had an off-day, that was us 50 per cent down.
At present, West Ham have a few injuries and we are seeing that losing key parts of the team can be detrimental to performance and results.
When you have those challenges, it is about the players who are fit and those who are injured, who will learn more about themselves and their bodies to ensure the same issues do not reoccur.
For the players who remain in the team, they need to become better leaders to inspire the new guys who have come in, so absences can be a positive if you use them in the right way. It’s when you see it as a negative that it brings morale down.
It is all about being able to turn it on when it matters. The way we always used to look at it was ‘Can we win on our worst day?’ because if you can keep the margins between the worst and top performances small, you have a greater chance of success, more often.
Let’s hope that is the case against Sunderland on Saturday.
Come on you Irons!
Mark Hunter MBE
There have been moments where lapses of concentration have cost us the points, but generally the games have been really enjoyable – the Manchester United game, especially, was great and it was just heart-breaking that we lost the lead.
It was just a momentary lapse of concentration, but when you are under pressure, are tired and are on your knees, you have to make sure you maintain your A-Game and keep on top of things.
The team can take a lot of confidence from their performances, but it was always going to be very hard to maintain the pace of the great start we made. We’ve had a bit of a lull, but hopefully we can pick things up over the final nine games.
As a sportsman myself, the hardest thing was producing my best performance but still ending up losing to someone – in those situations you just have to hold your hands up and say they were better on the day.
When you play well and are beaten or draw with an opponent who has not played to their best, then that’s when you have to go away and work out what you could have done better so those cracks don’t appear again.
I am sure the coaching staff and the players have been really pro-active about making adaptations ahead of our next game against Sunderland on Saturday.
When I rowed, I was in a crew of two, so if one of us was injured or had an off-day, that was us 50 per cent down.
At present, West Ham have a few injuries and we are seeing that losing key parts of the team can be detrimental to performance and results.
When you have those challenges, it is about the players who are fit and those who are injured, who will learn more about themselves and their bodies to ensure the same issues do not reoccur.
For the players who remain in the team, they need to become better leaders to inspire the new guys who have come in, so absences can be a positive if you use them in the right way. It’s when you see it as a negative that it brings morale down.
It is all about being able to turn it on when it matters. The way we always used to look at it was ‘Can we win on our worst day?’ because if you can keep the margins between the worst and top performances small, you have a greater chance of success, more often.
Let’s hope that is the case against Sunderland on Saturday.
Come on you Irons!
Mark Hunter MBE