Design student wins Sports Technology Award

The MA Design student won the Sports Technology Design Challenge for his seat for disabled rowers. The award was jointly created by Sports England whose aim is to get more young people, women or disabled athletes involved in sport.

The Sports Technology Awards (STAs) are dedicated to championing and celebrating innovative and inspiring advances in sports technology.

Other nominees in his category include Stockton Borough Council’s Funky Feet project which provides games and dancing sessions for preschool aged children, Sportarian, a sports social platform that connects sportspeople with sports coaches and Shot Scope which creates wearable technology for sportspeople to use in performance tracking and data collection.

James said: “To win the award was completely unexpected. I knew that I had a really good idea and proposition but I went into the competition thinking of myself as very much the underdog as I was against companies who already had product ranges developed with teams of people behind them.

“The ceremony was a fantastic event with sporting companies and organisations from all over the world represented including Formula 1, Sky TV and the BBC. It was a really great opportunity to meet a wide range of people from a developing international industry.”

James - who runs his company JAS Product Design alongside studying for his postgraduate degree - is a rower himself and was inspired to create his design after realising there was a gap in the availability of equipment for disabled rowers. The award comes with a grant from Sport England which aims to give his project a boost and get the seat ready for market sooner than expected.

He said: “Achieving this award and the recognition and opportunities it presents is really special as it will enable the concept to be developed ready for market and give real accessibility for so many people into the fun sport of rowing.

“The next step in the project will be to realise the concept solution with commercial partners, through the full testing of prototypes and finalises the finished product ready for market, hopefully by the end of the year. And then I want to develop more products that will help people access all sports.”

Warren Fearn, Head of Programme (Design) at York St John University, said: “The Sports Design Technology award is a tremendous achievement for both James and the design programme.

“James has worked incredibly hard to compete against other established organisations and has produced a worthy concept which addresses disability issues and great entrepreneurship.”