Former McLaren boss launches £ 40million project to track and reduce sports injuries in school children

Ron Dennis wanted to retire at 65, but like so many workaholics, that date has slipped away.

It wasn’t until five years later, in June 2017, that he actually drove away from McLaren headquarters with no intention of returning. He was a millionaire several times and had worked in Formula 1 since he was 18. He could have sailed into the sunset, never talked to anyone again, worked on his golf handicap and happily let the years go by.

However, Dennis doesn’t know how to stop. The only thing he knew was that he no longer wanted anyone else to “beat the drum”. He would dance to his own tune.

The easiest thing would have been to write a check to a charity of his choice or to take on some of the non-executive positions that were offered to him. But that wouldn’t be enough.

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“My way of thinking was: I want to do things that make a difference, I want to find them myself and I want to be able to use my expertise,” says Dennis I.

Charity is not a new venture for Dennis and his then-wife Lisa lost a child. He later learned that one in four conceived children never reaches the full deadline.

“Terrifying,” he says. Equally shocking was that they then worked for 10 years and felt that despite the money raised and spent on research across the country, they had not saved a single life.

Then there was a breakthrough. Tommy’s has now saved the lives of thousands of babies.

“You just get an overwhelming sense of achievement,” adds Dennis.

“No matter how little you have [done], or whatever your role, you made a difference.

“I have the ability to make a difference, and I’m not looking for any of it except to have a moment in a few years when something as tangible as the thousands of babies that come out of this initiative will be saved.”

His latest movement aims to influence children later in life, between the ages of 11 and 18. His new company, Podium Analytics, will analyze data from hundreds of thousands of children to reduce the incidence of sports injuries in young people.

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It’s a mammoth project with due support: It was built at 10 Downing Street with two government departments on board and with support from the national governing bodies of rugby union and hockey, CVC Capital Partners (shareholders of the Six Nations and former owners of Formula 1) and Oxford University, where the newly established institute that will conduct the long-term study will be located. The ten-year project will be the longest study of its kind and aims to record every single sports injury in the selected schools with up to 200,000 children – with anonymized data at the source. Schools and popular sports clubs are offered free use and training on a digital platform for recording injuries. After a pilot project in 20 schools last summer, the goal is to reach 200 by September 2022.

Finally, Dennis hopes the whole country will send injury data to the institute.

“When you get lost, the first thing you have to do is figure out where you are,” he says to Wellington College.

“A child can run down the corridor at school, fall over and cut their knee, and that goes into an accident report, but they can go to a soccer field, run into another child and get a concussion and nothing happens.

“You could go to A&E [half of all sports-related attendances relate to people aged under 20]but nothing is recorded – and something like a concussion, which is very much in the spotlight, is a cumulative injury and can occur in different places: at school, then in an academy, and then in amateur sports.

“But there is no connection between these three places.”

Still, there are links between traumatic injuries such as concussions or severe musculoskeletal injuries and problems later in life – although data in this area is sparse.

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When Dennis started in Formula 1 for the first time in 1966, the data was visible to everyone, albeit in a simplified and even more blatant form: hardly a year went by in which the paddock did not lose at least one driver in a fatal accident.

Fortunately, deaths in Formula 1 are far less common today, also because it is a sport that deals with huge amounts of data, knows how to use it and constantly changes its safety measures. This is where Dennis’ experience comes in, doing the actual modeling and design of the artificial intelligence himself, but it was he who built the team and carried out the work – and took responsibility for raising the money. He has already raised £ 40 million, a significant portion of which comes from his own family’s charity foundation, as well as from CVC and several Ultra High Net Worth Individuals.

“This is a pretty good start to a much, much bigger project than people think – and I say for sure. Because when I get something on my mind, I do it. “

Nobody who has met Dennis in the past eight decades would disagree.