UK Sport performance director set to take LTA role

Simon Timson, UK Sport’s director of performance, will end his three year association with the quango and join the Lawn tennis Association (LTA) in November.

Timson will become performance director for the governing body, taking over from Peter Keen who developed the LTA’s latest performance strategy.

LTA chief executive Michael Downey said that “outstanding candidate” Timson had “a lot of work to do” to bring the principles of the strategy to life.

“Simon brings a wide skill set to this critical role, successfully applied against two different sports, skeleton and cricket, prior to working with nearly 50 Olympic and Paralympic sports in his current leadership role at UK Sport,” he added.

Timson joined UK Sport in 2013 from the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB). He was responsible for managing government investment of £445m (US$592.5m, €536.5m) in World Class Programmes in the run-up to the Rio 2016 Olympics.

He said working at UK Sport was a “huge privilege”, but ultimately the role at the LTA was “irresistible”.

Timson added: “I’m relishing the challenge of building seamless national and professional pathways that will enable more of Britain’s most talented players to realise their full potential and in doing so, inspire more of the nation to play and support this great game.

“This is not a short-term project; we must engage everyone in the British Tennis family. It will take collaboration and a lot of hard work to build a sustainable and consistently successful pipeline that takes players from grassroots to the pinnacle of the world game.”

UK Sport has opened the recruitment process as it hunts for Timson’s successor. Chief executive Liz Nicholl said she was “disappointed” to be losing him, but she congratulated the appointment.

“Simon remains committed to UK Sport in this crucial final phase of preparation for Rio, and will also see through the final phases of the detailed work he has already led towards Tokyo investment decisions that we will announce in December 2016,” she said. “He will leave a performance legacy that will see us confidently transition from Rio into the Tokyo cycle.”