If one thing was reaffirmed at British Curling’s recent Neurodiversity in Sport Workshop it was that no one thing will work in seeking to prepare every athlete for elite competition.
Former Olympic rower Caragh McMurtry and her husband Michael Mottram, also a former GB rower and now an elite gravel cyclist founded the not for profit organisation in 2022 and have since been sharing the lessons they learned from their lived experience of neurodivergence in the high performance world with practitioners throughout sport.
McMurtry has autism, which was mistakenly initially diagnosed as Bipolar Disorder during her rowing career, while Mottram has dyslexia, dispraxia and ADHD, dealing with all of which served to inform their acute understanding of the impact of neurodiversity on performance.
However, the key learning has been that everyone working within our neurodiverse spectrum needs to have the flexibility to recognise and support specific requirements to provide the best environment for individuals and teams to excel.
"Neurodivergent people are attracted to elite sport because it often aligns with their unique strengths. It's well known that many of the world's greatest athletes are neurodivergent,” said McMurtry.
“However, sporting environments that lack understanding of neurodiversity or the flexibility to treat people as individuals can lead to those very athletes losing their outlet, their mode of self-regulation, and ultimately their lifeline.
“At the same time, sports teams and organisations also miss out on utilising untapped talent. Understanding and implementing neuroinclusive practice as the norm is a win for all."
The insightful and fascinating workshop for staff and support staff at British Curling explored how best to support neurodiverse athletes currently within our programme or future athletes joining our Olympic and Paralympic programmes.
Understanding of the need for increased screening is still evolving and provided a great opportunity for the team to collectively learn more about ongoing neurodiversity education to facilitate best practice and dovetailing that within the demands of the competitive world in high performance sport.
With a long term vision of making neuroinclusive practice the norm in all sports and wider society, the workshop covered defining neurodiversity; how best to understand it; and how to support and most importantly communicate with personalities across the neurodiverse spectrum in an inclusive, supporting, safe and engaging environment for athletes and staff, while also sharing learnings from effective examples.
“As part of our Milan-Cortina Athlete Wellbeing & Health Strategy, we engage regularly with the UKSI Mental Health Team and with their facilitation, I was delighted to welcome Neurodiverse Sport to speak with all of our staff and coaches,” said Nikki Gibson, British Curling’s Head of Performance Services.
“We recognise that supporting our curlers both on and off the ice, both as athletes and people, is fundamental to performance. We want to make sure that we have the understanding, knowledge, skills and flexibility to support and enable all British Curling athletes to perform on the world stage.
“Caragh and Michael gave us a brilliant insight based on their own experiences and how they now work with organisations on the practicalities of neuroinclusion in sport. We recognise this is the starting point for how we think about athlete support across a broad range of athlete needs, so this is a very positive step forward.”
