The iconic Olympiastadion in Munich was the setting in 1972 when Shaftesbury Barnet Harriers ended an 82-year wait for its first Olympian. The north London club, founded in 1890 as Shaftesbury Harriers before merging with Barnet Ladies in 1986, saw Dave Bedford line up in the 5,000m and 10,000m events, a year before he’d go on to set a new world record.
Avoiding the well-worn maxim about the capital’s red double-deckers, the club didn’t have to wait long for their second Olympian, as 1,500m runner Joyce Smith followed Dave just days later. It was the beginning of a remarkable record that is on proud display on the Shaftesbury Barnet Harriers website, which lists all of the 47 Olympians who’ve represented the club.
The list was updated last summer when the club’s cohort for the 2024 Games in Paris returned with five medals. The brilliant Daryll Neita got over the disappointment of finishing fourth in the 100m – the best result by a British woman in 64 years – by claiming silver in the 100m relay. Britain’s fastest man, Zharnell Hughes, took bronze as part of the men’s 100m relay team, while Lina Nielsen formed part of the British relay squad that came third in the women’s 400m. Completing the set was triathlete Beth Potter, who won two bronze medals in the individual and mixed relay triathlons.
For the coaches at Shaftesbury Barnet Harriers, these results are a natural byproduct of the club’s long established culture. “We try to instil an ethos of being a competitive athletics club,” explained coach Helen Bettridge. “It’s not necessarily just for participation or doing it just for a bit of exercise. We want children to compete. That is an important part of what we coach.”
“It’s not necessarily just for participation… We want children to compete. That is an important part of what we coach.”
HELEN BETTRIDGE
A personal trainer and age-group triathlete, Helen’s relationship with Shaftesbury began several years ago when she sought out her nearest track for triathlon training. The StoneX Stadium in Barnet is a well-maintained and publicly-owned facility shared with Saracens Rugby Club. Impressed with what she saw, Helen brought her kids along to see if they’d be just as excited.
“My children are now eight and ten and are involved in the full 12-month season for Shaftesbury. Cross country in the winter and track season in the summer.” Their enthusiasm prompted Helen to cement her involvement in the club. After beginning as a parent volunteer, she recently became a qualified coach. It all means that as athlete, coach and parent she offers a unique threefold perspective on the club’s achievements.
“I’m part of the coaching team for our youth development academy called Fast Forward and the main premise is to help children reach their full potential, whatever that might be,” she explained. “We host a regular kids event called Quadkids, which is a mini in-house competition for kids from the age of six. It’s not necessarily about beating your friends but trying to improve yourself and to be better than you were last month,” added Helen. “Throwing a vortex a little bit further than you threw it the last time is a way of measuring improvement and demonstrating that you’re trying hard and the learning is soaking in.”
Helen believes the club’s biggest advantage is their receptiveness to early engagement. “As a parent, the brilliant thing about Shaftesbury is we offer athletics from the age of five. It means that children aren’t waiting until they’re 10 or 11 years old, which is typically the minimum age at a lot of athletics clubs,” she said, noting that school sports day is often one of the few chances younger kids get to compete with their peers.
“As a parent, the brilliant thing about Shaftesbury is we offer athletics from the age of five”
HELEN BETTRIDGE
The benefits of having 11-year-olds with six years of athletics experience against age-matched rookies need no explanation. But Helen pointed out that it’s also the best route to combating what she sees as the biggest challenge the club faces: the attention economy.
“It’s essential that children can dabble in athletics early on, because by the time a child is in year six at school, they’ve already joined other clubs. Football, rugby, hockey, drama, music, skateboarding, you name it. In London especially, there’s every possible club going. For a lot of athletics clubs, they don’t catch the children early enough,” said Helen, adding that it can result in kids spreading themselves too thin across too many activities.
In this regard, athletics’ inbuilt variety gives it an edge. “One of the wonderful things about athletics is it can be variable. You can do throwing, you can do jumping, you can do sprinting, you can do distance running, you can do cross country. That’s all within one club environment,” said Helen. One glance at Shaftesbury Barnet’s hall of fame backs up the claim. Alongside the sprinters and hurdlers, there are decathletes, triple jumpers, discus and javelin throwers. Three of its 47 Olympians are even Winter Olympic bobsledders.
Courtesy of its distinguished roster, the club enjoys a steady stream of talent. “This year we’ve gone from an academy that had three sessions a week, to seven available sessions across the squads. We’re really growing the scale and that has been an excellent achievement this year.” And in a rare example of a post-Covid positive, Helen attributes some of the uptick to a surge in family jogging during lockdowns. “There were a lot of people who started running during Covid that ordinarily wouldn’t have done and a lot of people took their kids with them. That was when my children joined Shaftesbury.”
Of course, for a grassroots club to succeed in developing the country’s best, it needs to do more than get kids through the door. Helen acknowledged that having top facilities on tap is a privilege not every club enjoys. “We’re very lucky with this wonderful stadium which is largely maintained by Saracens Rugby Club, meaning we don’t have the responsibility of track maintenance or worrying about security.”
And then there’s the coaching. Helen is thrilled to be working alongside Ty Holden, the club’s track academy head coach. “Ty is a long-standing coach here who’s had massive success, especially with sprinters who’ve gone on to national and international level,” she said, adding that some of the senior athletes at the club travel long distances to train under him.
“The seniors within the club inspire the juniors here, too,” said Helen, proud that the junior squad was comfortably leading the Middlesex Young Athletes League. At the most recent English Schools Championships, Shaftesbury Barnet even had a club record 15 athletes on the bill. “That is a massive achievement and ultimately testament to our youth development programme.” It’s surely only a matter of time before more names are added to that Olympic list.
Start’em Young
Like Shaftesbury Barnet Harriers, several UK clubs nurture talent by engaging children from an early age. Shropshire’s ParkWrekin Gymnastics welcomes toddlers from age two, their pre-school classes helping to develop foundational skills that have produced multiple Olympians and international stars, including Tokyo 2020 bronze medallist Alice Kinsella. Dream Fencing Club in London offers beginner programmes from as young as four years old, nurturing both physical and cognitive development in a welcoming environment. Ironsides Rugby offers one of the UK’s largest mini rugby sections for boys and girls, with over 800 members playing tag rugby from four years old and tackle rugby from age nine.
