Where talent pathways really begin

Most of us can remember someone who saw something in us before we could fully understand it ourselves. 

A parent, a teacher, a coach or simply someone who took an interest at the right moment and made us believe we were capable of more than we imagined.

When I think about this year’s Black History Month theme, Honouring Our Communities, I keep returning to this thought. 

Because we are very good at celebrating talent once it becomes impossible to ignore, but the harder task is recognising its possibility when there may be little yet to mark.

When discussing sporting infrastructure, we naturally think about facilities, funding or coaching, but there are other forms that are harder to measure: people who notice people. Growing up in Hackney, I saw the importance of this first-hand. 

A football pitch, a basketball court, a boxing gym, an athletics club or community centre could be much more than somewhere to be active. 

These were places where confidence developed, relationships formed or where a young person might encounter someone who recognised something in them that they had not yet learned to recognise themselves.

Communities – the starting point for inclusion

My own journey also taught me that those who see that possibility don’t have to come from your same community as us. 

Some opportunities that changed the direction of my life came because people with backgrounds and experiences different from mine were prepared to see potential, invest their time and open a door. They did not need to share my story to become part of it.

That experience continues to influence how I think about talent, particularly as Chair of Sport England’s Talent Inclusion Advisory Group (TIAG). 

One of the questions at the heart of talent inclusion is deceptively simple: “who gets the opportunity to be seen?”

Through TIAG, I have become increasingly conscious that inclusion cannot begin only after somebody enters a talent pathway. 

By then, earlier experiences may already have influenced who had the opportunity to participate, who stayed and whose potential became visible.

But talent does not always arrive fully-formed. 

A young person who has benefited from years of coaching may appear more developed than someone encountering structured sport for the first time. 

But if opportunity helps shape performance, we must be careful not to mistake previous chances for greater potential. 

Sometimes identifying talent means looking beyond what someone can do today and remaining curious about what, with the right environment, they might become. This is where and why communities are so important. 

Schools, clubs, families or community organisations are often the first part of a talent pathway, even if we don’t describe them that way. 

A coach noticing unusual speed. A teacher encouraging a child to enter their first competition. A volunteer making someone feel welcome enough to return. A parent finding a way to get their child to training.

These moments may appear ordinary at first, but years later, we may understand how important they were.

Black sporting history is filled with people whose excellence eventually became visible to the world. 

We rightly celebrate those athletes and the power of seeing someone who looks like you, comes from somewhere like you, or has travelled a journey you recognise.

But behind that visible history there is another, quieter narrative. We remember the names of those who made history, but not as much the names of those who helped make their journeys possible.

Those that created opportunities, sustained belief and kept doors open, because talent pathways may produce individual achievement, but they are often sustained by collective investment.

For me, that is an important part of Honouring Our Communities: celebrating achievement while also recognising the people and places that make them possible.

Because access alone is not enough. Representation can open the imagination and opportunity, doors, but people also need encouragement to return and relationships that create belonging. 

Potential develops over time and if somebody leaves because they do not feel welcome or understood, we may never discover what could have been.

This is why inclusion and excellence should not be competing ambitions. 

Strong talent pathways should not simply reach into communities. They should listen, learn and work alongside them.

Different stories, same ambitions

Sport also reminds us that none of us belongs to only one community. 

At its best, it brings together people whose lives might otherwise never have crossed, because sport does not simply benefit from community – it can help create it.

Sharing experiences across communities helps us understand lives beyond our own, challenge assumptions and discover what connects us without pretending our experiences are identical. 

Sharing Black history does not require everyone to claim the same history. 

It gives us an opportunity to understand one-another better and recognise the contribution different communities make to our society.

Some of the strongest communities I have known were not strong because everybody shared the same story, but because their people cared about what happened to one another despite their differences.

Community is built when we decide that somebody else’s future matters too.

Most of us can remember somebody who once invested in our possibility. 

In my case, some came from my community and some didn’t. So perhaps one of the most meaningful ways of honouring that gift is to become that person for somebody else.

History is not only what previous generations leave behind, but also what the next is given the opportunity to become.

As we honour our communities this Black History Month, that leaves all of us with a question worth carrying beyond October: whose possibility are we prepared to invest in next?