South Olympic Dreams

The London Olympics 2012. 15,000 athletes from all over the globe,

sharing one goal - to win a medal. For some those dreams started in

the South. In just a few months time, years of

dedication will all boil down to their one moment in the spotlight.

This is their time. This is their moment. These are their Olympic

Dreams. On tonight's programme we meet the

Olympic athletes from the South who need your support. From the fastest

on land... And on the water...

I'll be getting behind their tough- edged skin to find what drives

their passion. If you do that you are entirely

isolated... The sacrifices they make to be at

the top of their game. It's on my mind when I wake up,

it's on my mind when I go to bed. And discovering the pressures of

competing in the greatest sporting event in the world.

I still believe in myself and believe I can go out and compete

for a medal. It is a once in a lifetime

opportunity. I am going to try and hold my head and really enjoy the

experience. Get your flags at the ready. This

Let's go straight in at the deep end. Hoping to make a splash in the

diving event here at the aquatics centre its Southampton's Peter

Peter Waterfield one of the world's most experienced and successful

divers. A specialist on the 10 meter platform, Peter has medals

from the Olympics, World Championships and Commonwealth

Games. And its silver for Leon Taylor and

Peter Waterfield. In 2004 at the age of just 23 he bagged silver in

the 10m Synchro event. 2012 will be Peter's fourth and possibly last

Olympic Games. I caught up with Peter on dry land at his home in

Southampton where he spends his free time encouraging a new

generation of water loving Waterfields.

Lewis is ten, he's the oldest and Marshall is three. Yeah, they are

my life. They are what I live for, at the end of the day. Everything

that I do is to support them and give them as much as I possibly can.

That's Mummy and that's Daddy. I never classed myself as any

different to anyone else, you know? I live on a council estate. I am

just lucky I found something I am really good at. I like to think

that whatever I found in my life I would work hard at it and try to be

the best I possibly could. That is what I am doing - I am trying to be

the best. Peter trains six days a week at the

Quays Swimming and Diving Complex in Southampton.

But almost half that time is spent out of the water, in the gym. Every

muscle has to be toned, strengthened and conditioned to

reduce the risk of injury. You hear the water at 30 miles an

hour so you have to train your joints to take that impact. I have

had shoulder it surgery. I have been told to do these on both my

shoulders to keep the stability in them. Do you still have that fear

factor when you are about to go off a 10 metre board? Like a new worry

child? Every day. Every day and getting my pool and I get up on the

platform and I do a dive that I am uncomfortable with, then you will

always scared. It would be dangerous if you were not scared

because we take the sport for granted and in this sport you can

kill yourself if you make a wrong move. One dive that we do we are

spinning backwards towards the board and if you hit your head on

the concrete it is game over. You're always scared but it is good

because it makes you concentrate more. It makes you realise that

something can go wrong but that is part of the fun for me. That is

what gets me up in the morning, knowing that I will get a great

adrenalin rush and doing something that I love doing. There is another

guy, his name escapes me... Hill is it? Is set... Tom Daley!

Heart throb of the nation Tom shot to fame at the 2008 Olympics. He

has since become the youngest ever British World Champion in any sport.

He has got all the teenage girls, every time you die if the cameras

are on you and the two of them are on year and the camera just sticks

with him and you were the other man in this duo. Yes. Every partner he

has had has always been the other man. Every partner he will have

Will Always Be the other person. Quite rightly. He deserves the

needy and stuff that he is getting and the attention. But the Olympics

just around the corner, Peter is hoping he can bring gold back from

the capital to Southampton. Does it matter more because it is

London? Yes. Without a doubt. To go to the Olympic Games anyway was a

dream come true for me. To get an Olympic medal is another dream come

true. The thought had not crossed my mind that I would ever compete

in at the Olympics in my own country. If I am feeling a bit

tired like a am this morning and you wake up sometimes and you have

not got the energy, what pushes me and makes me find the energy is

knowing that I will be competing in London. Next up a genuine medal

contender who could be certain of everything on fire.

It is the 1,500 metre race at the world championships. An England is

in 7th place making a surprise attack.

Hannah England has taken the silver medal and nobody thought she was

going to do that. Less than a year ago nobody outside of athletics

knew her. The Welsh championships changed all of that and now she has

her eyes on the prize. Olympic gold. Backing Oxford, time to relive that

silver medal. On the final bend in the final

straight, it looked as though you had just remembered you left the

iron on. You came from 7th. I was waiting and waiting hoping they

would drift out and let me come through the inside and then I

realised no one would move so I had to go wide and sprinters hard as I

could but I felt really relaxed and totally in control. Maybe the rest

of them were bit more stressed and had more pressure on them and it

came into my favourite. At the Oxford University sports complex

Hanna showed me some of a unique warm-up routines. You could do a

good Irish jig. If athletics does not work, river dance as your name

on. You look silly doing this in a park. Roger Bannister gets away.

This is the closest track to where my parents live. I used to cycle

here when I was at school. This is where the first for a minute mile

happened. Over here towards the back straight you have the church

that Roger Bannister always speaks about. I used to run down the

straight thinking about that. It is a good atmosphere.

Bannister has done it and he is out on his feet. He has achieved his

ambition. Roger Bannister never won an Olympic medal and yet in Britain

he is as famous as any athlete who ever did. Such was the mystery of

becoming the first recorded human to run a mile in under four minutes

that his achievement became the deed of legend. Today is a special

day for Hanna as the legend himself stops by to order his support.

followed very closely. I suppose I feel as though I am in the race.

That means that I know what you are feeling. How would you describe her

style compared to yours? I think her style is probably better than

mine. Yes, I mean... How do you mean? It looks effortless and need.

My arms are a little bit out of truth. When I started I used to

tour the stride and I gradually learnt how to have more of a

cycling type of action. When did you go? Was a tad too well-50?

over there! I wonder if I should have done more exercises for the

muscles of my neck. I think you have got the credentials to win it.

You know how to get to a peak and I think that is a very critical thing.

You have to be somewhere near a peak at the time of the Olympics.

Do you think about the moment that you will be in the Olympics? Had

you get to play the scenarios through? Yes, you think about it a

lot. He tried to think about it in a positive way. If you're not

careful it can become a big burden. It is a once-in-a-lifetime

opportunity and I am trying not to let that pressure ruin it for me

and I am trying to hold my head and enjoy the experience.

The greatest factors determining Olympic success are talent and

sheer hard work. What does it take to go one step better? How much

does mental attitude a matter? We asked a professor from the

The difference between winning a gold and a silver medal is

sometimes just fractions of a second, even in a marathon. Pushing

the brain as well as the body can make a real difference. An Olympic

gold medal is about finding the best competitor from a pool of

perhaps tens or hundreds of millions of runners. With that much

competition, being psychologically equipped is essential, especially

when it comes to coping with pain. There are a number of myths about

breaking through that barrier. The first is that whatever you can

conceive, you can achieve but that is not true. Olympic athletes are

like the rest of us. Their bodies are limited by biology. The muscles

demand sugar and oxygen and the body can only process so much of it

at a time. To win medals, elite runners have to learn to do you pay

in as a friend and to train to hang out with it and get used to it and

trust what is says about their bodies. The most important thing an

athlete can do is learn to think positively. It also means that an

Olympic athlete learns to view himself as a gold medallist long

before the race is won. This is Dorney Lake in Berkshire.

It's home to the kayakers and rowers of 2012. But for one girl in

Guildford it's the place where she hopes to achieve one of the goals

24 year-old Rachel Cawthorn - one of the world's leading kayak racers.

Her accolades include holding a world record and the first female

British paddler to medal in an Olympic event. When out of the

water, she swaps her paddles for knitting needles, enjoying the art

of Amigurumi, the Japanese word for crocheting of small animals. She

also loves escaping into the world of Harry Potter. But today she is

in race mode at Eton Dorney to compete in the Canoe Sprint

International Regatta. It is pretty exciting. This is the first time I

have ever competed internationally at home. The regatta is an Olympic

test event to make sure all the nuts and bolts are in place where

competitors will come from around the world to compete for gold.

think having this event makes it seem more real. It is very good to

get through it to see what it is like, different athletes around.

Rachel's journey into the world of kayaking began in her home town of

Guildford. She's hoping her accolades will help inspire a new

generation of kayakers. This is the club. This is what I first started

learning. Make sure you get enough rotation. I turned up one day in

the summer. I try to get in. really wriggle around. Really tight.

That's good. We are really excited. Be is a good thing to say, someone

from your club, to see her before she competes. Someone to look up to.

Someone that makes you think, I can get that far in life. Rachel dreams

that soon she may be adding an Olympic gold to her impressive

collection of mementos and memorabilia. It would just be like

the greatest achievement you could get within any sport. Especially

being at home. To raise and feel like you have put everything into

it and it comes out like you hope, that is what I would like to do.

With the test event under her belt, her eyes are set on the Olympics.

Meeting Rachel has really given me an insight into the dedication it

takes to become a winner. We will not tempt fate. You do the

presentation. Imagine this is the At London 2012, men's and women's

teams will be shooting for gold at the new Olympic hockey venue in the

Olympic Park. Hockey demands speed, stamina and super-honed hand-eye

coordination. The people hoping to fine-tune those skills falls to the

coaches. I went to the training ground to meet a man everyone wants

to stay friends with. Hang on! Hold on... Don't let them go that way.

You should have got that! You'd better go around... That is it.

Jason Lee - GB's hockey coach. A man with the power to make dreams

and take them away. A we are in the firing line. They might run into

was just to be funny. It is a love- hate relationship. Jason is a very

busy man who doesn't mince his words. He juggles his time on the

pitch with his other family at home. This is my wife, Laura, we have

been married for a long time. This is Jack, in the year Number One at

primary school and Chloe is three years old. She is at Montessori

primary school. It's a very happy family in it. Jason lives close to

the hockey training ground in Bisham Abbey which means he can see

the kids off to school before hitting the pitch. It is a nice

piece of normality. I often travel in my tracksuit and people look at

me oddly. It stands out. Love you... With the family sorted, it's down

to business. It's a tense time for the players on the pitch today.

Jason will soon select which of this lot will play in the Olympics

and which ones won't. Only a third of them will make it through. On

the pitch, the players' performance is closely watched and recorded for

later analysis. Mistakes made today could result in bitter

disappointment. These boys all have dreams, they go to bed at night and

tree not winning and scoring that all-important goal. You are the

coach. You are the one who will do all of the worrying? I dream about

them playing well and having a very worthwhile experience. Our

confidence is growing, we have positive experiences, but I do not

dream about winning. I probably have nightmares about losing, to be

honest. I know stuff about the players that the players do not

know. They are not full-time professionals all the time and they

are not well-funded. They have to combine a lot of things in their

life and sometimes they can become quite emotionally challenged.

men's team underachieved in the Champions Trophy in Auckland in

December, finishing down in sixth place, so the pressure is on to

deliver at London 2012. And every player on this pitch wants to rise

up to the challenge. Having represented Great Britain twice for

the Olympics, Jason understands how desperate these players are to be

selected. Some will see their dreams shattered. How difficult

will that be? I did not like it to start off with. But I just realise

it comes with responsibility. When in charge of large crowds. But it

is very personal, they put so much into this. They are on their knees

at the end of it. We are excited, it's a fantastic event, can you be

excited and feel the same way? try to tell myself that I should be

excited. Trying to encourage myself and everybody around me to do the

best that we can and make it feel special because what we cannot put

into it isn't because of what happens to us. Two weeks after the

Olympics finish here, thousands of disabled athletes will arrive to

compete in the Paralympic Games. The event was the brainchild of a

surgeon at Stoke Mandeville Hospital near Aylesbury in

Buckinghamshire more than 60 years ago. The movement has changed many

lives, including that of one Buckinghamshire woman set to lead

out later this year. Clare Strange is captain of the Great Britain

Wheelchair Basketball team. London 2012 will be her fourth Paralympic

Games. She played her first match for GB in 1998, a year after she

was paralysed. I first came, I just watched and cheered and lost my

voice and was happy. In the second, I was in the starting line-up

because one of my team-mates was injured. I was in at the deep end

from the start. It is part of your life, it makes me who I am. I have

to do great things that I never even dreamed of. Clare, from

Buckinghamshire, always played sport and harboured dreams of being

an Olympian. Those dreams were dashed when she was 18. I was

riding my horse and he changed direction at the last minute and I

hit my head off the teach -- tree- trunk and a severed my spinal cord.

In many ways and was lucky because I was airlifted to Stoke Mandeville,

one of the local hospitals. In fact, Stoke Mandeville is much more than

just a hospital. It's the birthplace of the Paralympic Games.

Whenever I saw how the support is accepted, by the paralysed, it was

a logical thing to start this sports movement. In July 1948,

neurosurgeon Sir Ludwig Guttmann deliberately held the first-ever

Stoke Mandeville Spinal Games to run parallel to the opening of the

London Olympics. That was the beginning of the first

international sports event for anyone disabled in the world.

yes... Good. People still think it does Paralympic because of

paralysed but ticket sales for London, they have sold more tickets

than any other again. It is the attitude that we have to the

Paralympic Games. Clare trains in the gym twice a week and on the

basketball court another five times. That's 20 hours a week on top of

her job. We train alongside the Libyans and do the same type of

training. That is what you have to do to get to the highest level in

anything, dedicating the right amount of time. Thank you. Another

one and a quarter on the first set of him. That adds to the body

weight and makes it harder. Even from Des number two, people come in

to visit and tell me about everything I could still do but

within one month of my accident, I was doing sport again. Because it

is part of rehabilitation. It gives you independence. From the wing.

Clare Strange! Great Britain finished eighth at the last

Paralympics in Beijing. At 32, Clare has already got world and

European Championship medals and she has won the World Cup. Next up,

Paralympic gold? There is so much more to the Paralympic Games. Baker

that any other event. In some ways I cannot wait but in other ways I

want longer to prepare. I just have to do the hard graft. In just six

months, athletes in Weymouth will be battling it out on the water for

that all-important Olympic gold. A windsurfer here will hope that his

home waters will count. Hoping to beat his bronze and Athens. With

the wind in his sail, it's Nick Dempsey But Nick is hoping all this

hard work will pay off. I am doing the interval session. Six

repetitions of five minutes on and off. The first 30 seconds or the

total sprint and then just hanging on for the pace for the remaining

4.5 minutes. The heart rate within the first seconds gets up to about

92% of the maximum. You are working flat out. Today is a hard session.

Nick narrowly lost out on a medal, finishing 4th. And just recently he

failed to qualify for the medal race at the World Championships in

Perth, finishing down in 13th place overall. The pressure is on. I had

been doing this since I was seven years old, it is a long time and I

love it. I think it is the speed, the freedom, you can go whenever

you like. It is always different. It is like nothing else. I left my

sea legs behind on the day of filming, but Nick and I share a

passion for a sport that doesn't require a sail. I am really in

trouble here. And clearly Nick doesn't need any wind assistance

with this one. Great shot. 2012. It is huge, how does it feel for

somebody ahead of an event that nobody will ever forget? Yes, it is

the biggest event of my life. Of all the British sailing team. For

sure, it is on my mind when I wake up and when I go to bed. I just

have to keep all of those thoughts positive and really look forward to

it and make sure I am training as hard as I can. You're up already.

Exciting stuff. Tremendous to be part of? Massive exciting, I am

lucky because it is coming at the pinnacle of my career and hopefully

I can perform well and deliver on those expectations. And deliver

this birdie? I doubt it! That is a good strike, it had everything.

Pressure! Not easy. It has taken a bounce to the right. There is one

person Nick can rely on for support. His wife, Olympic medalist, Sarah

Ayton. If I am having a lapse, and I need something of a kick-start,

she is the one that is there to help me. To make sure that I give

100%. Having her every day is an asset. To she pull rank on you and

say, look, there is my gold medal. It is quieter, now! No pressure.

That is a top shot. There you go. That is what happens. These sports

may? The competition? They thrive on it all the time, even in golf?

Good way to finish. Another victory for Dempsey. Thank you! Not one

that you will remember as well as maybe some of the important ones.

They do not... My golf still needs some work. That's about it. A