As part of the School Games National Finals 2024, for the first time in Games history, all competitors across the eleven sports will have the opportunity to take part in an experience designed around this new discipline of an Olympic sport.

The Youth Sport Trust and Sport England have worked with Pentathlon GB to create an Obstacle Course Experience event as part of the Immersive Athlete Experience of the 2024 Games.

The experience is intended to provide an opportunity for play, exploration and fun, as well as learning, and isn’t designed to be competitive. The wheelchair sport athletes will participate in the Para equivalent competition to ensure that this experience is open to all School Games National Final athletes.

The ambition is for athletes of all sports to take part in this new discipline of an Olympic Sport and put themselves out there to learn and explore their athletic potential away from the sport they know best. Integral to the Obstacle Course Experience approach is:

• A belief that shared experiences, fun, and novel activities are crucial for development. Exploring comfort and discomfort zones, ensuring physical literacy at all development levels, and highlighting the value of sampling and multisport experiences.
• The merits of broadening athletes’ perspectives regarding their individual strengths and capabilities within and beyond their primary sport and improving relationships, reinforcing friendships and raising awareness of other opportunities within the sporting system.

For team staff and coaches responsible for nurturing and developing athletes: this is a great way to explore with the athletes their hopes and fears, their willingness to go out of their comfort zone and to provide a safe and supportive environment to explore risk or concerns around perceived failure or lack of competence. It offers a different opportunity, out with the norms and habits of their primary sport, to observe and explore calculated decisions and judgements about risk, and opportunity – the Obstacle Course Experience is potentially a ‘leveller’ which may allow different athletes to explore and exhibit leadership, communication or teamwork out with the hierarchies of their primary sport.

Athletes will have the opportunity to ‘try it’ and be taught how to complete each obstacle, and to ‘go for it’ and try the full course if they so wish - against the clock and potentially against a peer.