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Multiple award-winner Mustafa Sarkar (OE 1997-2004) has been closely involved in a new study which identifies the right mix of mental toughness required to be an Olympic champion.

Sports psychology specialist Mustafa and his supervisor at Loughborough, Dr David Fletcher, interviewed 12 Olympic champions and found they share a unique mental resilience characterised by five key psychological attributes.

With Loughborough University hosting the Team GB Preparation Camp, the findings of the study have been used to help British athletes cope with the huge expectations they face competing at a home Olympic Games. The attributes identified should help them overcome the pressure – and even thrive on it – as they target Olympic gold.

They are:

A positive personality: Olympic champions possess positive personality characteristics including openness to new experiences, conscientiousness, competitiveness, optimism and proactivity.

Motivation: Gold medallists have multiple internal motives (such as passion for the sport) and external motives (such as proving their worth) for competing at the highest level. Champions consciously judge external pressures as important and so choose to perform in challenging sports environments.

Confidence: Gained from various sources including preparation, experience, self-awareness, visualisation, coaching and team mates.

Focus: Champions are able to focus on themselves without distraction, and to concentrate on the process rather than the outcome of events.

Perceived social support: Olympic gold medallists believe high quality social support is available to them, from family, coaches, team mates and support staff among others.

Mustafa and Dr Fletcher interviewed eight men and four women who had won Olympic gold at seven different Olympic Games spanning the past four decades. The champions represented nine different sports: figure skating, pentathlon, hockey, athletics, rowing, cycling, modern pentathlon, curling and sailing.

Mustafa said: “The interviews revealed many fascinating aspects of performing under pressure at the highest levels of international sport, but two things were very clear.

“Firstly, Olympic athletes experience considerable adversities during their preparation, training and competition, often over long periods of time. Secondly, and most importantly, athletes must learn to develop and maintain a very specific combination of psychological strategies and attributes to enable them to perform at their best and win in Olympic competition.”

Mustafa sat A-levels in Economics, Chemistry and Mathematics, before taking a gap year, during which he worked for PricewaterhouseCoopers as an assistant tax consultant for eight months and travelled in South America for three months.

He graduated from Loughborough University in July 2008 with a first-class honours degree in Sport and Exercise Science and then went on to complete a Post Graduate Diploma in Psychology (with distinction) from Middlesex University.

Since then, he has returned to Loughborough and not only gained a distinction on the MSc Psychology of Sport and Exercise programme, but also won several awards. These included the university’s Sir Robert Martin Faculty Prize for academic and non-academic achievements and the Head of School's Postgraduate Prize for Academic Excellence, awarded annually to the student with the highest overall mark in a Masters Programme. He also received the British Association of Sport and Exercise Sciences (BASES) Conference’s Masters Dissertation of the Year Award for 2011.

In addition, he won the Xcel Sports Student of the Year 2009 award, with the judges praising him both for his academic work and for coaching cricket with Loughborough school children, climbing five UK mountains for charity and running the London Marathon for charity, raising £2,350.

The interviews with Olympic champions were part of his MSc work. Mustafa is now studying for a PhD in Sport and Performance Psychology at Loughborough.

His research focuses on the psychology of sporting excellence and how this can be applied to other high performance domains. Specifically, it provides an insight into how high achievers deliver sustainable performance in high-pressure environments.

Year 12 pupil Shane Mahen’s essay has been selected for the final shortlist in the highly regarded Royal Economic Society (RES) Essay competiton.

Of the hundreds of entrants the competition attracts each year – some from as far afield as Singapore and Auckland – Shane is among just 18 who have made it to the final.

“We are very pleased for Shane that his essay has been so well received,” said Headmaster Neil Enright. “This is a competition that is renowned as demanding and rigorous. It requires an ability to express a high degree of economic knowledge in a fluent and well-presented style, so to make the final shortlist is an excellent achievement.”

Shane submitted a 2,500 word essay on the topic Africa is well-placed to achieve rapid and sustainable development in the decade ahead. Do you agree?

The annual competition is run in conjunction with tutor2u – an online tutoring platform that specialises in Economics and Business Studies. Co-founder Geoff Riley, who was formerly Head of Economics at Eton College, said: “The standard of writing this year was very high – judging by the quality of the entries, the future of our wonderful subject is in good hands.”

The final judging panel comprises Professor Richard Blundell of the RES, Charles Bean from the Bank of England and the BBC’s Economics Correspondent, Stephanie Flanders. The prize-winners will be announced in August 2012 and the first-prize of £1,000 and runner-up prizes of £500 will be awarded at the RES Annual Public Lecture in the autumn.

A trip to Cambridge offered a group of Year 12 boys an insight into both ends of the historical spectrum of biological research.

During a visit to the University of Cambridge Museum of Zoology, the group of 30 sixth-formers saw a range of historic exhibits including finches collected by Darwin on his research expeditions on The Beagle. And at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, close to Cambridge, they were initiated into the cutting edge of modern genetic research.

The collections at the Museum of Zoology are used for academic study by researchers both from Cambridge University and other top academic institutions from around the world. It is seen as a repository of information about the history of the fauna of the world and the history of science itself.

“We saw part of Charles Darwin’s beetle collection and examples of early carboniferous tetrapod fossils found in Scotland. It gives you a different perspective on Biology when you see things like this outside the classroom,” said pupil Alex Drozd.

At the Sanger Institute, a charitably funded genomic research centre which took a leading role in the human genome mapping project, scientists are currently focusing on understanding the role of genetics in health and disease.

The boys enjoyed a tour of the research laboratories and were given a talk on cholera epidemiology – tracing the evolution of the bacterium through its genome. “We took part in an activity which enabled us to identify faulty and healthy ‘BRAF’ genes. The faulty ones we identified can cause melanoma, that is skin cancer,” said Year 12 pupil, Vishal Popat. “It is amazing to think that therapies based on this research are already in clinical trials. It was a fascinating experience and the facilities were very impressive. I thought the new prototype DNA Sequencer was particularly cool!”

After successive defeats by girls from Henrietta Barnett School in the annual engineering competition between the two schools, QE boys struck back with a win this year.

The competition between 15 Year 9 QE boys and 15 Year 9 HBS girls required the construction of either a tower or a bridge. The buildings were judged on a combination of which was the strongest and tallest tower or the widest and lightest bridge, with aesthetics also taken into account. A mark was also awarded for the presentation of the team’s design.

There were six teams in all; three from QE and three from HBS. QE’s winning team comprised Keerthanen Ravichandran, Gaviththusan Jeyakumar, Rishi Umeria, Reece Patel, Omar Haider and Constantinos Economou.

Ashley Dyson, a Physics teacher at QE, said: “This was the third annual QE/HBS Engineering Competition and HBS had won both the previous events, so the boys were very keen to see honour restored.”

Year 7 boys literally got to grips with artefacts from the past on a trip to the British Museum.

The museum has a number of Hands On desks, where at certain times visitors are invited to hold historical objects and listen while experts describe and discuss their origin and significance.

The boys particularly enjoyed these elements of the visit, which was a great success, reported History teacher Stephen Edwards. “All the boys had a fantastic day and learnt a lot. The amazing range of historical objects and artefacts in the museum really brings History to life and gives the pupils a wonderful insight into how different civilisations lived in the past."

QE’s History Department uses the annual trip to enhance classroom topics on the Romans, Greeks and Egyptians.

During this year’s visit, the group of 45 pupils saw Egyptian mummies, the Rosetta Stone and the Hoa Hakananai’a, or Easter Island Head. The Hands On desks include: the Roman Britain Gallery; the Living & Dying Gallery and the Money Gallery.