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Award-winning sport psychology specialist Mustafa Sarkar is helping leading athletes step up to become champions.

He is forging an academic career that includes equipping talented sportsmen and women with the psychological attributes necessary to succeed at the highest level.

Mustafa (1997–2004) has won a string of awards, attracted national press interest for his research and gained his PhD. He has a permanent post at Nottingham Trent University, where he teaches across the undergraduate and post-graduate degree programmes.

In 2016, he gained international recognition, winning the Association for Applied Sport Psychology (AASP)’s Doctoral Dissertation Award. He travelled to Phoenix, Arizona, to be presented with the award in front of more than 1,000 conference delegates – one of very few British psychologists to have gained such recognition from the AASP, which is dominated by Americans and Canadians. He received his award from 2015–2016 AASP President Brent Walker.

After taking A-levels at QE in Economics, Chemistry and Mathematics, Mustafa spent a gap year working for PricewaterhouseCoopers as an assistant tax consultant for eight months and travelled in South America for three months.

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

In 2009, he was named Xcel Sports Student of the Year, with the judges praising him both for his academic work and for coaching cricket with Loughborough school children. He has climbed five UK mountains for charity and run the London Marathon, also for charity, raising £2,350.

He was awarded the British Psychological Society (BPS) Division of Sport and Exercise Psychology (DSEP) PhD award for 2015.

Other accolades he has won include Loughborough’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.

At the time of the London 2012 Olympics, he made headlines in the mainstream press with a piece of in-depth research – conducted jointly with a Loughborough colleague – which looked into the minds of 12 Olympic Gold Medal winners, exploring how qualities such as resilience helped them achieve success.

He later had a two-year role as a Research Fellow at the University of Gloucestershire, which involved working within the School of Sport and Exercise, across the Faculty of Applied Sciences (psychological sciences subject group), and with external partners to develop the faculty's research profile in related areas.

At Nottingham Trent, Mustafa is Module Leader for Advanced Topics in Sport and Exercise Psychology as well as contributing to several other modules across the undergraduate curriculum. He is also Leader for the postgraduate module, Current Issues in Sport and Exercise Psychology.

Mustafa is married to Tasnim, who is a qualified speech therapist. His younger brother, Mustali (OE 2000–2007) got married in 2013, just a few months after Mustafa’s wedding.

Mustafa was awarded his PhD in Sport Psychology from Loughborough University in July 2015.

Old Elizabethan Peter Wells competed in the high jump at two Olympics – Helsinki in 1952 and Melbourne four years later.

Born at Friern Barnet in May 1929, he first attended Byng Road Council School and then joined QE in 1939. Having initially begun competitive athletics as a runner, Peter became interested in the high jump while still at QE. He practised at the School high jumping pit, which was equipped with a bamboo bar and sand.

To learn his craft, he perused a scrapbook of newspaper cuttings from the 1936 Berlin Olympics in the School library. His efforts to emulate the styles pictured were, however, somewhat hampered by the fact that the photos did not show which was the take-off foot – a deficiency which led to him developing an unusual style.

Nevertheless, he soon began picking up trophies, including one at the London Public Schools vs Paris athletics fixture in 1946. At the same fixture a year later, he became the first English schoolboy to clear 6ft (pictured top), setting a new public schools record and helping QE to its fourth-consecutive victory in the Public Schools Challenge Cup.

After leaving QE in 1947, he began his two years’ compulsory National Service in the Army. In 1949, his jump of 6′ 6¼” in Bristol broke the English Native High Jump record – a record which stood for ten years.

After first touring New Zealand when competing for England at the 1950 Empire Games in Auckland, Peter decided to emigrate. He was New Zealand champion for seven years from 1950/51 to 1957/58 and broke the New Zealand high jump record twice – his December 1954 jump of 6ft 4½in stood for 14 years. He came 12th in Helsinki, 16th in Melbourne, fifth at the 1950 Empire Games and fourth at the 1954 Empire and Commonwealth Games in Vancouver.

Peter still lives in Christchurch, New Zealand. He is married with five children and ten grandchildren. More than half a century after becoming an Olympian for the second time, he still keeps fit, cycling 100 miles every week.

Sunil Tailor (OE 1999-2006) is making his mark in the sport of Fives after first playing the game at QE.

After leaving the School, Sunil read Economics at UCL. In his second year there, he got in touch with QE Fives coach Ian Hutchinson to ask for advice on playing the game as an adult. Since Mr Hutchinson is a teacher at Mill Hill School, he urged Sunil to join the Old Millhillians Fives Club, which has been enjoying considerable success in recent years.

Having thus taken up Fives again after a gap of a couple of years in which he did not play, Sunil became the first-ever QE old boy to reach the quarter-finals of the sport’s national championship, the Kinnaird Cup, playing alongside Old Millhillian Joe Coakley. He was also nominated for the Eton Fives Player of the Year award.

Sunil, who works for accountancy firm MHA MacIntyre Hudson LLP, harbours hopes that he can one day be instrumental in establishing a Fives club for old boys from QE, where the first Fives court was opened as long ago as 1880. “It is a great sport to continue playing after school and I do recommend it fully to QE leavers,” he says.

Guest speaker Claude Francois Muhuza (OE 2001-08) urged boys at QE’s Junior Awards Ceremony to make the most of their opportunities – and he has certainly practised what he preaches.

Having escaped from war-torn Rwanda as a small child, he did not begin primary school until he was six and later spent seven highly successful years at QE, before making his mark at Cambridge University and beginning a career in law.

Born in Kigali, Rwanda, in 1990, Claude spent the first four years of his life there before being forced to flee the country with his mother. During the next two years spent with his mother in Tanzania and Kenya, he had no formal education. Arriving in London, he started to learn English when his mother enrolled him at Harlesden Primary.

Claude quickly established himself as a model pupil upon joining QE in 2001: he was Deputy Form Captain in Year 7, started Year 8 as Form Captain and was chosen to greet visitors at open evenings and School events. He also studied hard, gaining many commendations in the Lower School.

In Year 10, he was appointed as a Colt Prefect and later, when in the Sixth Form, became a Senior Prefect. As a Sixth-Former, he became a skilled debater and was jointly responsible for organising and leading the School’s entry to the European Youth Parliament. The team’s success saw them ultimately being invited to represent the UK in events in Turkey and Greece, which was a first for the School.

His significant contribution to the life of QE was recognised when he was awarded the Chairman of Governors’ prize in his final year. His Year Head’s report praised him as “One of the outstanding students in his year group, or indeed any other, Claude is all that one would wish for in a Year 13 student; he balances academic drive with good humour, while giving of his time freely and openly.”

Claude gained A grades in Economics, English Literature, French and History A-levels, together with an A in the AS Critical Thinking qualification.

Having secured a place at Pembroke College, Cambridge, to read Law, he was elected President of the college’s Student Union. He was presented with the Crowden Award for making such a distinguished contribution to the life of his college.

Claude has consistently lent his time and abilities to the support of good causes. At Cambridge, he served as treasurer to a committee charged with putting on a Law conference for more than 300 Sixth-Formers from around the country and also sat on the 1347 Development Committee, which raises money for causes including an African Scholarship scheme and student support. He was the Publicity Officer for the Black and Ethnic Minorities Students’ Campaign, helping to organise careers events and a diversity week.

Claude (OE 2001-08) is beginning his career at the London offices of international law firm Baker & McKenzie.

He was the guest of honour at QE’s 2012 Junior Awards Ceremony.

Marine biologist Nick Jones has worked in some of the most beautiful locations in the world – and with some of the most exotic animals too.

Nick (OE 1996-2004) became passionate about science – especially biology – while still at QE, but he feels sure few would have predicted then that he would become a marine biologist working in remote locations all over the globe.

Alongside the interest in biology, he also had a love of the sea, and it was these two passions that led him to enrol in the Marine Biology course at Southampton University. Gaining his Master’s degree in 2009, he won a scholarship for an internship at the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences to work in the coral reef ecology department. That led on to an opportunity to establish a new coral reef research programme for the research and conservation company Blue Ventures in Belize, Central America.

During this time, he enjoyed some “awe-inspiring occasions”, including swimming with colourful reef fish, endangered manatees and turtles, and also sharing the water with potentially dangerous sharks and crocodiles.

In fact, sharks were a long-standing interest, so when he was then offered the chance to study Great Whites in South Africa, it was an opportunity too good to miss. Working with this endangered species was a dream job for Nick, albeit one that required constant vigilance, given that the sharks can reach over 20 feet in length and weigh over a tonne.

From there, he was drawn to the warmer waters of the Seychelles, working on a cutting-edge project to grow coral reef on large artificial reefs in an attempt to replenish the depleted coral reefs of the region. It meant living on an island with five times as many giant tortoises as people and being regularly interrupted by nesting Hawksbill turtles (he is pictured with one above).

After spending three years in the field, he has now returned to England to work for the Environment Agency. Since returning, he has been able to indulge another long-term interest – cricket. This has included organising an OE team for the Founder’s Day match against the School’s current First XI. This Founder’s Day match, an old QE tradition, was re-established in 2012 by Headmaster Neil Enright. It was also given a new name, The Stanley Busby Memorial Match, in honour of Mr Busby, a former QE parent and also a Governor from 1989-2011.