There are 93 Fridays until the 2028 Olympics. Gary Anderson knows that.

He knows that Fridays excite people and that everyone looks forward to them. And breaking a four-year, 1,461-day Olympic cycle into 208 Fridays can change people’s perspectives.

“People personalise that, and they take ownership of that,” he says.

That’s the insight that a Performance Director can bring to athletes and entire Olympic programmes, and it’s what Anderson has been doing for the last two decades.

Olympic Memories

“The Olympic Games were always an interest, but not a career path for me,” Anderson told The 14t61. “It was [only] during the Barcelona and Atlanta Olympic cycles that I started to work with Olympic sports.

“Atlanta was my first Olympic experience as an official team member, and then going through to Sydney and through to Athens.”

Athens, says Anderson, was his favourite Games ever.

“It was the centenary in Athens, being held at the birthplace of the Olympic Games. Prior to that, my flirtation with the Olympic Games was always a general one.

“And it wasn’t until 2004 when I led the judo programme to Athens that I got a taste for running an individual sports programme.”

The Role of Performance Director

The Olympics were well and truly part of Anderson’s career now, and he explained how he eventually grew to live his life and view his career through the lens of four-year cycles.

“I knew what to expect in year one, year two, year three, and then ultimately the culmination of four years of work.”

With so much experience, Anderson knows that most performance director jobs come up after year two, because things are “normally not going to plan”.

“I’ve tended to come into sports that I’ve worked with a couple of years out from the Games and trying to then resurrect a programme to ensure that the athletes are in the best possible shape to get to the Games.”

But there can be a limit to how much a Performance Director can impart to an individual programme.

“I’m a great believer that if you do more than two Olympic cycles in one sport, you’re either the most successful performance director or team manager ever, or no one really cares about the outcome.

“In any line of work, certainly in sport, if you’re doing eight years, it probably means that it’s perfect or it needs a fresh face.”

That’s why Anderson sees 4 to 6 years as the optimum for any leader in any sporting context.

“I mean, professional football, forget six years, six days is probably the norm for some people these days. “

“In Olympic sport, you are given time to get things right. If you want to put a strategic plan in, for instant success, you’ve got to start it six years ahead of that.”

Working with GB Bobsleigh

With a career so widespread and varied in terms of sport, you’d imagine it would be difficult for Anderson to pick a favourite. However, he immediately points to bobsleigh as the one that gave him the most satisfaction.

Having been approached in 2010 about heading up an eight-year program ahead of the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, he took his time and did his research.

“We had a programme with so much potential going into Vancouver [2010], but didn’t deliver. [After I was approached] I looked at it and went to my trusted advisors at the time.

“And all of them told me not to touch it with a barge pole. So, two days later, I took the job.”

Working closely with Clive Woodward, they put together PROJECT50, as it had been 50 years since Great Britain won Olympic Gold.

“We put a blueprint together of how we were going to achieve this in eight years. But, as history shows, we did it in four. But that medal was not won in the traditional way.”

Just four years after Anderson joined the programme, Great Britain’s men would finish fourth at the 2024 Olympics in Sochi.

It was only after the disqualification of the Russian gold medal winners for doping offences that the bronze medals were reallocated to Great Britain, with the four men ultimately receiving their medals in 2019.

“It was a very interesting time. As a Performance Director, you don’t learn how to deal with Russian security forces or how the Russians like to do things.

“But it was also the most satisfying team. Employing the right head coach, being told by them that the strategy we had was correct, but being done in the wrong way. And then flipping it three years out from the games, and achieving what we achieved.”

“Lifestyle Not a Career”

Anderson says that to be a performance director, you don’t need to have the “technical intricacies” of the sport. That’s the job of a head coach.

What a Performance Director needs is “a licence to ask questions.”

“That then leads to trust and empathy. I think a big part of performance management is empathy and understanding what’s needed.”

He says he has a philosophy that he sticks to whatever sport he’s in.

“It’s recruiting the right people, having the right people in place and then allowing them to do their job, empowering them to do that job.”

“If you give the people the responsibility to deliver the medal, you also have to give them the authority to make the decisions to achieve that.”

He calls being a performance director a lifestyle, not a career.

“It’s all-consuming. I never think of it as a career or a job. Fortunately, my family are extremely supportive. My girlfriend comes from a sporting background. 
We have a number of Olympians in my family, and they all understand what I go through and what it takes

“If you’re going to use anything from me, it’s if you’re going to be a performance director, it’s a lifestyle, not a career.”