Leeds Beckett University - City Campus,
Woodhouse Lane,
LS1 3HE
Head of Leeds Talent Hub: Dr Andi Drake offers insight into training ethos, athlete development and exciting things to come
Andi Drake is Manager of the Leeds Talent Hub (LTH) in Sport & Active Lifestyles, a centre supporting the performance pathway programmes in athletics. With an already impressive roster of athletes competing at international level, the hub’s sights are set about increasing those on the World Class Programme and challenging for Olympic Games medals.
Where it all began...
The role of Leeds Talent Hub Manager involves programming age and stage appropriate activity for the respective pathway programmes, supporting athletes dedicated to finding out how good they can be. It is a role Andi Drake has found extremely rewarding during his tenure so far, contributing to an already extensive career of sporting highlights.
Andi comes from a background of coaching and competing himself, progressing to a Level 4 Performance Coach over the course of his undergraduate and Master’s degree. After competing in the 20km Race Walk at the 1998 Commonwealth Games, Andi pursued his PhD at Coventry University while working as a Senior Lecturer in Coaching and Sport Science.
Gold, Silver and Bronze
In Leeds alone, Andi has worked through three Olympic Cycles. Athletes he has coached achieved a full set of Gold, Silver and Bronze medals at the 2010 and 2018 Commonwealth Games, as well as Gold at the 2016 World Under 20 Athletics Championships, Bronze at the 2019 European Under 23 Championships and Team Silver at the 2019 European Race-Walking Team Championships.
We focus on supporting athletes to fulfil their potential as opposed to winning at all costs.
Outside of the medals, he has coached athletes to eight top-eight finishes in various Olympic Games, World Athletics Championships and European Athletics Championships. Athletes have also achieved three World Best Performances and he has coached nine different athletes to Olympic Games or World Championship Teams. In that time, he spent 60 weeks at altitude training camps and 25 weeks at Championships.
New Beginnings at Beckett
He arrived at Leeds Beckett in 2009 as Director of Race Walking, a four-year project as part of the university’s athletic provisions, before staying on campus to deliver a range of athlete and coach development for England Athletics. Andi joined the UK Athletics World Class Programme as an Endurance Coach from 2016 until the 2021 Olympic games, which overlapped with the founding of Leeds Talent Hub between Leeds Beckett and stakeholders England Athletics, London Marathon and the Talented Athlete Scholarship Scheme (TASS).
“We work on delivering in a culture that provides a professional coaching environment, placing athlete health at the heart of what we do as a coaching and practitioner team,” Andi explains. “Planning and delivering the work that goes into a competition and seeing it come to fruition on race day is my favourite thing about coaching and development. This is a shared journey of athlete and coach working together with our wider support team, and is typically a process that evolves over several years. There are no short cuts in high performance sport.”
“It is important to have a clear philosophy underpinning the tough aims and objectives set for our programme. We focus on supporting athletes to fulfil their potential as opposed to winning at all costs,” Andi says. “We describe ourselves as an inclusive high-performance programme, so, we embed athletes together in training groups rather than separate them because they are on a particular named pathway programme. This further strengthens our culture.”
Leeds Talent Hub: a powerful ethos in practice
The Leeds Talent Hub works closely with the Carnegie School of Sport to deliver the bulk of their sport science support. Since 2021, postgraduate students have been embedded in sport science support roles, specifically appointments in Psychology of Sport and Exercise and Sport and Exercise Nutrition MSc courses.
Roles are being developed for research opportunities with Biomechanics and Exercise Physiology projects relating to various aspect of endurance performance, as well as within the undergraduate degree course Applied Sports Studies in Athletics this year. “We are looking forward to delivering the Level 4 and 5 modules in employability, providing a broad experience of roles in athletics,” Andi says.
An exciting future ahead
The future knows no bounds for Leeds Talent Hub, with upcoming programme changes and exciting international opportunities imminently on the horizon. “Our programmes are ever evolving, and we’ll be implementing modified programmes from September,” Andi says. “We are cementing ourselves as the go to centre for the Marathon, with four camps planned to support current and emerging long endurance athletes.”
“I’m about to head out to the Preparation Camp for World Athletics Championships to support endurance athletes before they head into Budapest. We have two athletes in the Great Britain and Northern Ireland Team, Keely Hodgkinson and Max Burgin, both racing 800m,” Andi continues. “Next year is the Olympic Games and Alex Bell (800m) and Emile Cairess (Marathon) have Olympic qualifying times along with Keeley and Max. It will be exciting to see how many more athletes can qualify and ultimately make the Olympic Team!”
An exciting future ahead
Find out more about the Leeds Talent Hub.
Visit Sport and Active Lifestyles for more information.
