Starting as Superstars

Daniel Thorsen seems like an ordinary, 20 year old university student. That is, until you manage to get a glimpse of his trophy cabinet.

Three Commonwealth Youth Games gold medals, as well as two silvers and two bronze from the Junior World Championships adorn his bedroom which, along with 10 national titles, stem from a dedicated junior cycling career.

Daniel began competitive cycling in 1996, concentrating mainly on sprint cycling until switching in 2006 to long distance endurance races, and this year competed in and finished the arduous 750km Tour de Taiwan.

“I competed in cycling for 10 years - starting when I was 10 - and probably started to train and race seriously at 14, when I started to realise I had some talent and could go places if I put my mind to it,” Daniel says.

“When I first started getting serious about cycling, it started to take over my life. I lived and breathed it and schooling just became something I had to do because my parents told me.”

As the required skill levels and professionalism of sport continues to rise, so do the levels of dedication required in order for athletes to reach the highest level – which means Daniel’s half-hearted attitude towards school is a common one among aspiring athletes.

As talent identification technology and scouting improves, the age at which potential athletes are singled out from the bunch becomes lower – seeing children at primary school age take up heavy training schedules.

A report by the West Australian Institute of Sport in 1999 claims that potential champion swimmers are able to be identified as young as 10 and a recent review by the Scottish sporting body, SportScotland says that if the specific movement skills for swimming aren’t developed by 13, success in the sport is not possible.

As training sportspeople become younger, sporting bodies and teams are forced to understand they have more of a responsibility to their athletes than simply turning them into on-field superstars.

Issues such as career ending injuries, young athletes ‘burning out’ – both psychologically and physically, losing interest after years of competing and heavy training, and aspiring athletes failing to reach their potential makes having options outside of sport vital.

In track and field, roughly half the athletes who represent Australia at junior level fail to continue on to compete at senior international level.

Daniel is one of those young athletes who had had enough of his sport by the age of 20, having competed for more than half his life.

“I just didn’t want to ride any more and wanted to do other things in life like work and travel,” he says.

“Cycling is such a huge commitment and I wasn’t prepared to put the time in any more.”

When short careers are the norm, says Gillian Tan, Career and Education Manager for the AFL Players Association, sporting bodies need to keep the athlete’s best interests in mind, not just their playing interest.

“The career of a footballer can often be short, with an average career length of 3.9 years, but by pursuing education or work experience, players can ensure that they develop a balanced approach to their football careers, as well as beginning to develop skills and experiences for their careers after football,” she says.

“The numbers of AFL players pursuing education is increasing, and there has been a substantial increase in the numbers of players pursuing work experience programs. More and more players and clubs are recognizing the benefits of players having a balanced lifestyle both during their careers and after.”

Daniel says that if it wasn’t for his cycling team, Drapac Porsche, he would definitely have no form of career path when he chose to end his cycling career two months ago.

The Drapac Porsche team offers financial support for both its professional and scholarship riders to assist each rider with furthering their education, as well as a mentoring program and constant interaction with team management who look at how the riders are progressing with their studies, and help out with any concerns the rider might have.

Now studying a double-degree in Physical and Outdoor Education at La Trobe University, Daniel is a prime example of how much the kind of assistance offered by Drapac Porsche can help.

“Being part of the Drapac Porsche cycling team slowly but gradually taught me that there was more to life then just being a cyclist, and how important it was to develop all areas of life,” he says.

“I started turning more attention to schooling, and by year 12 put just as much effort into my VCE as I to the World Championships, so I had a dramatic attitude change in that short period, purely because of the team which rewarded every achievement in life.”

Although some newspapers often laud the occasional AFL player who achieves a 90+ ENTER score in VCE, reality stands that the average ENTER score for an AFL footballer who has completed year 12 is between 30 and 40.

This, along with a lack of workplace qualifications or job search skills can make life for a player who couldn’t make the cut a daunting experience.

Some players like ex-Melbourne forward David Schwartz turned to gambling as a way to pass time after his career ended, which cost him what he estimates to be a seven-figure sum.

However as sporting teams and bodies mature, so can their players, who no longer have to be millionaires with a year 10 education, left in the lurch as their careers come to an end.

The AFLPA now offers programs and scholarships to help players to get them job ready, as well as additionally supplying tuition fees for those players who want to complete VCE after being drafted.

“The AFLPA doesn’t act as a recruitment agent for football players, however, we assist players to development their job ready and job search skills, such as writing resumes and interview skills, so that they can be successful in finding employment,” Ms Tan says.

“Players are also offered the opportunity to take part in work experience placements for a period of 10 days to 30 days – experiencing a range of different industries, including banking and finance, landscape design, teaching and education, sales, fire brigade, police and many more.”

The system is still far from perfect. What happens for example to the hundreds of teenage hopefuls who miss out on draft day, and never gain access to the AFLPA’s programs? But the growing acceptance of responsibility taken by sporting teams is a vital step towards ensuring young athletes aren’t left stranded as their initial career hopes fade.