How I turned an unremarkable state school in Cardiff into a breeding ground for Olympians

Llanishen High School produced no less than four medallists at the Paris Games. So what’s the secret to its success?

“That kid’s leg speed is phenomenal,” Harry Trelawny, now head of PE at Llanishen High School in Cardiff, remembers a colleague saying to him of a little 11-year-old boy he’d watched running during one lesson. “If he actually starts training properly, he’s going to fly.” As it turned out, he did. 
A decade on, that boy, Jeremiah Azu, now 21, has just got back from the Paris Olympics where he ran the first leg of the 4x100m relay for the GB team, securing bronze on the podium.
His rise to Team GB is extraordinary – “because he wasn’t from a family of runners. He liked all sport, but it was the PE department who told him: ‘You need to get to an athletics club immediately!’,” explains headteacher Sarah Parry.
“And in Year 10, it started to get serious,” she tells The Telegraph on GCSE results day.
“Often, parents need help with all the races. My PA Sue Healan would drive Jeremiah to fixtures and pack a bag of books and snacks to make sure he studied for his GCSEs while he waited for his race. His father was a minister so Sundays were out – but my PA took him then, too, along with her own son.”
Azu the Olympian, now the fastest man in Welsh history, was no fluke for Llanishen High.
Three more ex-pupils bagged medals in Paris. Track cyclist Elinor Barker, 29, won a silver in the women’s Madison and a bronze in the women’s team pursuit. This came on top of two previous medals: team pursuit gold in 2016 and team pursuit silver in Tokyo 2020.
With her medals in Paris this summer, she is the most successful Welsh female Olympian in history.
Her sister Megan, three years younger, and Anna Morris (a reserve), riding alongside her, and also ex-pupils of the school, both got bronze too. 
Their success has raised the question: How does an otherwise unremarkable state school in Cardiff become a breeding ground for Olympians? There are 1,738 pupils, a third of whom are eligible for free school meals. There are 53 different ethnicities at the school, 63 different languages spoken at home and a boundary change to the catchment area that means the school educates pupils from some of the most deprived areas of the city. 
When Barker returned to the school after winning gold in team pursuit in Rio 2016, the hall was so packed with children that Parry worried it posed a fire hazard. Certainly, inspiration sparked. Children for years afterwards have basked in the Olympic glory and new potentials are now coming up through the ranks.
Sport at Llanishen is the holy grail – it’s at the centre of everything – whether the outcome is finding and building an Olympian or simply helping a child enjoy being active.
“We prioritised the mental and physical health and wellbeing of our pupils,” says Parry. “Yes, there have been elite track events, but also huge inflatable obstacle courses and dodgeball. The PE staff are very much a driving culture in the school. It’s very very strong, well established and well respected. Harry Trelawny has been at the school for 20 years. Sport is the bedrock, it’s the foundation, it’s where we build from.”
For years, the department was headed up by another “extraordinary” PE teacher, Terry Charles, son of the famous Welsh footballer John Charles who played for Leeds United and Juventus. Charles and Trelawny together helped yet another pupil, Jake Heyward, the 25-year-old now-professional middle distance runner who was a European champion at under-18 and under-20 level, and who despite an Achilles injury, won silver at the 2022 European Athletics Championships. The Llanishen PE department think he, too, will bring the school Olympic glory.
Along the PE corridor there is a mural, painted in red white and blue, by the graffiti artist Tee2 Sugars showing the GB female cycling team, with the message “Strong People Don’t Put Others Down They Lift Them Up”.
It was commissioned by the school to celebrate Barker’s gold back in 2016. She took up cycling at the age of 10 to get out of swimming classes. The school worked closely with her family – Barker’s father is a deputy headteacher himself in Newport and they often spoke daily – while she was in British Cycling’s Olympic Development Academy.
It was only after she had sat her A-levels that she moved to Manchester full-time to train at the Manchester Velodrome. In 2012, not long after leaving the school, Barker was named Carwyn James Junior Sportswoman of the Year at BBC Wales Junior Sportsperson of the Year. 
There are also the usual sports day montages along the corridor: Year 10 Cardiff Schools Rugby cup winners; a celebration of ex-pupils achieving places in Welsh hockey and fast-walking teams; and a poster that reads “You don’t have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great…These girls can: And so can you.” There is nothing particularly grand about the school, its new fitness suite aside. However, against the backdrop of its Olympic success, the apparent focus on a kind of the-sky-is-the-limit philosophy offers insight into how it breeds such phenomenal young athletes.
“I think it is the PE department and the positive culture of the school,” says Parry. “The PE staff are on the lookout for the elite athletes even before they get here. When they’re still in Year Six of their primary schools, and they come here on their transition day, you can see Harry [head of PE] looking at them all. He’s thinking, ‘We’re going to find one!’ He’s out to find the elite and to spot talent, as well as to make everybody else feel there is something for them.
“And it’s made easier when the Olympians return to the school, because everybody else sees them and thinks ‘these stars live around the corner to me, they’ve had the same facilities, the same challenges, the same start in life, the same humble roots. And they’ve gone and done it.’
And in the case of Elinor, they’ve gone to not one Olympic games, but three. And you can see the rest of them thinking ‘If they can do it, anyone can.’”
Parry remembers Barker particularly well. She was her year’s team leader, along with Trelawny. “She [Megan] was so sweet and humble, and now Harry has the new ones coming up the ranks, all of them runners.” The school feeds the runners to Cardiff Athletics. In terms of cycling, the city – and the school – is lucky there is a velodrome nearby.
“That really is vital as we couldn’t provide that as a state school. The Barkers lived near our school on one side, with the velodrome on the other side. But what we did for the Barker sisters as they started to compete is to support them and the family, to make sure they could take time out but not get behind.”
Perhaps what makes the school even more unique is its commitment to creating an environment where sport and wellness is prioritised as highly as academic achievement for every pupil. It’s a grass roots approach to success. Teenage girls famously fall out of sport as they get older, but it doesn’t have to be the case if sport is central to the school’s culture. The stars at Llanishen may well build on it and become Olympians, but the others will have healthy habits for life. 
“For example, there is a strength and conditioning breakfast group,” Parry explains. “We lay on an extra bus at 4pm so that we can ensure children who rely on funded transport can stay behind and train until 4pm. We’ve got a 100ft polytunnel where we grow food. The children learn about looking after their bodies. And it helps that the entire staff is exceptionally sporty.”
Parry herself runs half marathons and actively sets out to ensure pupils see her at the start and end of the day in her running kit (rare, I imagine, among headteachers). Other members compete in Iron Man competitions. Parry has been at the school for 26 years. Teachers rarely leave, fostering happiness and commitment. 
“And I would say we are in daily contact with the parents of the elite athletes because at that level there is a lot of running around getting the children to races and they keep in very very close contact with the PE department,” she says.
“We banned phones in school seven years ago – one of the best things we ever did – and when I took over nine years ago as head, I determined that I would change the culture. Success is what every child wants it to be.”
There is a policy of being warm but strict. All 1,738 pupils are greeted personally in the morning. Staff are told to “be your bigger self – imagine yourself after a glass of wine! 
“When you are in a big school, you have to work really hard to develop a sense of identity and belonging in the students. There is no doubt that we are out to spot talent but we want every single child on a sporting fitness journey.” 
Last year, Estyn – the Welsh education regulatory authority – singled out Llanishen High School for its particularly innovative practices around health, sport and wellbeing, commending it for the way it “prioritised the mental and physical health and wellbeing of pupils”.
Year 7 and 8 pupils take part in Active Registration, which means being on the move, and the school was praised in particular for the way staff support each other’s departments. This can so often not be the case, with high-achieving sports stars being made to feel like they must choose between interests such as drama or music. There is also the additional stress that competing at a high level takes on exam results.
Parry explains: “When the Barker girls were with us, Terry Charles was head of PE. Together with the head of sixth form, we made sure that as the girls started to travel to Manchester and then Europe, they had everything they needed in terms of study.  You have to be flexible to allow them to compete. And you celebrate it.”
Olympians are, by definition, extraordinary individuals, and every single one of them has been a child. Llanishen High School now finds itself in a virtuous circle. Its pupils, whomever they are, are growing up in a culture of possibility.
All four Paris Olympians are returning to the school to talk to the current pupils. At the very least, Parry and her PE department are going to have a good stab at producing a few more medals yet.