On Wednesday our Year 11 Class of 26 pupils were introduced to Daniel Caines and his inspiring story of self-belief and visualisation as he looked to become the youngest world champion on record in his sport.

Daniel is a world class athlete that hails form the West Midlands region, having been bought up in an elite sporting family. Despite this, his focus in sport was not initially clear and it took him until his early adulthood to really decide on his future goals. From here Daniel’s story of self belief and how focusing on 5 specific things would lead to him making British trials, qualifying for the Olympics and becoming the youngest 400m World Champion in history.

Daniel’s story was an important build up for our pupils in their programme as we hurtle towards the second mock series of the year. Discussing both his resilience and his self-belief in line with Etone Values, he was able to provide a clear message of focus to all pupils who were eager and engaged throughout the session.

Following the year group talk, pupils were able to ask some interesting questions of Daniel and this led to him selecting a number of pupils to ‘dig deep’ into aspirations and workshop some specific goals for individual pupils. This workshop was extremely well received with pupils eager to consider this goals and more importantly the specific stepping stones they need to achieve to get there. From owning an Alpaca Farm to running for Team GB at the Olympics (hopefully winning Gold) the aspirations of our pupils are truly inspiring. The session was a massive success and we are so thankful to our Etone friend, Daniel for coming back an visiting Etone. Well done Year 11 and thank you again Daniel.