Hang in here with the idea, but if Great Britain does indeed achieve its stated goal of finishing fourth in the Olympic medals table in 2012, we may have to attribute much of the success to a Gulf War military leader.

The man in question is Major-General Patrick Cordingley, who led the Desert Rats into Iraq in 1991 – and it is not a case of him leading our troops into Olympic battle. But if you ask a group of the best young sports coaches in the country, they will tell you that they have learnt as much about their trade from this man as any other. That said, they will also tell you about having to learn to be a stand-up comedian and how going house-hunting is important, too.

The eight-strong group of coaches officially graduated last night. At a ceremony at The Belfry, in the West Midlands, they were presented with their certificates by Gerry Sutcliffe, the Sports Minister. For three years these wannabe British coaches have been the guinea pigs fast-tracked in a new project called Elite Coach; today they are no longer potentially elite, they are officially so. At least that is the intention.

It is hard to argue that the intention has not been fulfilled. One of the eight, Tim Foster, the Olympic rowing gold medal-winner in 2000, has been appointed chief coach of the Switzerland squad. Another, Graeme Randall, formerly a world champion, is head judo coach at the Scottish Institute of Sport in Stirling. Kevin Renshaw, formerly a surveyor with a part-time presence at poolside in Chester-le-Street, coaches David Davies, one of Britain’s best hopes of swimming success at the Beijing Olympics next year.

Foster’s appointment was fascinating because Elite Coach was a scheme initiated by UK Sport partly to counteract the disturbing prevalence for recruiting coaches from abroad. Now one of our own has done the same in reverse.

Next year, fellow Elite Coach graduates will include Chris Boardman, the Olympic cycling gold medal-winner in 1992, and Nigel Redman, the former England rugby union player. This year’s new recruits include Rhona Martin, the Scottish curling queen who won gold for Britain at the 2002 Winter Olympics. And by the time her three years are done, she will probably have completed a five-minute stand-up slot, too.

The relevance of doing comedy? “It was one of the most nerve-racking things I have ever done,” Paul Ratcliffe, an Olympic canoeing silver medal-winner in 2000 and another of the graduates, said. “We all knew how to deal with pressure situations with which we were familiar. But this was to see how we would cope in a different one. It taught us a bit about another kind of courage as well.”

It is also a typical example of how the coaches have been trained to broaden their perspective. “The course has been a life-changing experience,” Renshaw said. “It has changed my entire outlook.”

For example? Renshaw took Davies house-hunting. Three years ago he saw his job as a coach as doing two hours a day by the pool. And it is not a long way from one anecdote they took from Cordingley. He told them that one of his priorities for motivated troops was making sure that the mail got to them as fast as possible. “Now I look at the athlete as the entire package,” Renshaw said. “If I can destress a stressful situation – like the buying of a house – then I feel I should.”

Other examples? Foster studied yacht design to see how that could influence the design of rowing boats. Adam Sotheran, a diving coach, went to New Zealand to learn from the All Blacks how they measure the impact of collisions on fatigue and he hopes to apply that science to diving by having his athletes training when their testosterone is at its peak level. Egg-heads? Yes, but these new coaches have a strict Clive Woodward-esque, no-stone-unturned approach to their métier.

They are fascinating, too, in who they aspire to as the market leaders in coaching. A number of names surfaced: Sir Alex Ferguson (football), Nick Bollettieri (tennis), Jürgen Grobler (rowing), Béla Károlyi (gymnastics) and Alex McLeish (football). “He has such a small talent pool,” Randall said of McLeish, the Scotland manager. “What makes a small country successful is a big thing for me.”

But of those they have met and been influenced by in the past three years, it was Cordingley’s name that kept cropping up. “We think of world finals as intense pressure, but it just cannot compare to war,” Randall said. “It’s the ability to read the situation and then get your message across that I took away from him.”

They also liked the fact that he always sat in a tank to plan his strategy, although that option will probably not be available to them in Beijing or at London 2012 – or wherever they happen to be applying his wisdom.

But does this all work? Are they better coaches? The best answer for now may come from DDI, a company whose trade is the development of leadership skills and which tested and scored the Elite Coach eight three years ago and again recently. The improvement, apparently, was extremely impressive. “Clients in other business sectors would be delighted to achieve such results,” was the line from DDI. The next step is transferring such results to the medals table.

The eight

Jon Amos Head coach of British Paralympic powerlifting

Tim Foster Rowing. Head coach of the Switzerland team

Mike McFarlane Athletics. Performance coach with UK Athletics

Graeme Randall Judo. Head judo coach at the Scottish Institute of Sport

Paul Ratcliffe Canoeing. Peformance coach with the British slalom programme

Kevin Renshaw Swimming. Coach to David Davies, Olympic bronze medal-winner

Adam Sotheran Diving. Coach to Leon Taylor, Olympic silver medal-winner

Nick Strange Rowing. Head coach of Britain Under23 women’s squad

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