Sport Wales is launching a bespoke mentoring programme for its performance directors (PDs), to enable maximum success at the 2018 Commonwealth Games in Australia.

The mentor will be charged with helping the PDs through challenging situations, making sure they have the necessary skills and support to be able to function and perform in pressurised environments. PDs often operate in isolation with limited support.

The mentor will be working with four Welsh PDs for up to nine days each, over the period from September 2016, through to April 2018.

Their role will be to support each PD to recognise their strengths, areas for development, and create a personal development plan; identify any critical events and situations that may arise in the build up to and during Gold Coast 2018; support each PD to develop skills and strategies to manage these situations, and to ensure they are supporting their staff and athletes in the best way possible.

The mentoring contract has gone out for tender, with a planned start date set for the end of September. Sport Wales has provided mentoring schemes for its PDs before but not a bespoke one.

The Sport Wales website states: “The supplier must possess and be able to demonstrate vast experience of working within the sports high performance environment, specifically working with performance directors and coaches of Olympic and Commonwealth level athletes.”

Owen Lewis, Sport Wales head of elite sport partnerships and systems, told Health Club Management: “The scheme offers the capacity to keep on planning and developing. PDs have to deal with logistics, such as travel being cancelled, baggage going missing; things always come up. But they also have to deal with disappointment or underperformance. You need to ask questions around that. Top level sport is well publicised. It’s about dealing with those situations. Also, there are sensitive issues that may crop up.

“These four [PDs] are not involved in a personal development programme. We are looking for top quality leadership from the top of sport, so we can have more medal opportunities and deliver on that. Research has been done around the quality of the leader and it is important to have quality leadership.”