Yasmin Harper and Jordan Houlden flying flag in Paris for independent Sheffield Diving Club
ELEVEN years ago, when Sheffield Council relinquished control of Sheffield Diving Club, Nikki Smith, Tom Owens and the team at Ponds Forge faced a dilemma – accept their fate, or fight for the programme.
They elected to do the latter, and the result a little over a decade later is two homegrown divers who will represent Sheffield and Great Britain at the Olympics.
Yasmin Harper and Jordan Houlden will make their debuts in Paris, with Harper competing for a medal on Saturday when she teams up with Scarlett Mew Jensen in the 3m synchro.
“Sheffield was set-up very differently, it was a council-run programme, a high performance centre for the country,” explains head coach Owens of a club that helped Leon Taylor to a silver medal in Athens and sent Monique Gladding and Nick Robinson-Baker to subsequent Olympics.
“Nikki and I have been running it as a business now since 2013 after the council pulled out.
“It’s a private business, very unique, and we’re the only 10-metre programme in the country that’s run like that. It’s been an uphill struggle, it’s never been easy, but when 2012 came round things were changing, a lot of veterans like Monique and Nick retired and that was a real turning point.
“Part of our mission statement was to create homegrown Olympians, people who have lived and trained in the Sheffield programme for the entirety of their careers, and putting them on the Olympic team.
“So these two Sheffield athletes are the only two on Team GB trained at the same place and by the same coach for the entirety of their careers. And that’s something we’re very proud of.”
Harper, 23, pictured, who was originally from Chester but moved to Sheffield when she was nine when her dad relocated for work. Originally a gymnast, she started diving with Sheffield a decade ago.
Her partnership with Jensen is relatively new, but in the 18 months they have been together they have won national titles and a bronze and a silver at the last two world championships.
“We’re planning for the podium in Paris,” Owens told The Yorkshire Post from the squad’s base in Paris.
“They are in great shape, they’re in good form, they’ve won medals at major championships, arguably the field is tougher with just eight going straight into the final, but they’re definitely in a place where they can go in and challenge the Chinese, Americans and the Australians.”
Both Harper and Houlden will contest the individual 3m event in the second week of the Games. Owens believes Harper is good enough for top-six in the final - “on her day she could challenge the medals” - and rates Houlden as one of the best springboard divers in the world.
Coaching Houlden has thrown up its challenges. Two years ago the 25-year-old sought answers for why he had a short attention span and was told he had ADHD.
“Jordan is extremely laid back, because of his ADHD a lot of times he knows what he’s doing but I don’t know what he’s doing,” says Owens. “He’s quite independent, goes about things in his own way, is very happy. He comes and does his training, does his work, he’ll give me a high-five and then he’ll leave.
“Yasmin is a lot more deliberate about her process around it so we’ve spent a great deal of time leading into these Games thinking about how we manage her energy, manage her time, manage her emotion, the things she does around her training to stay in a positive mental state.
“At the core of it is a really personal, close relationship between us all.”