We were privileged to enjoy a visit from two world-class athletes yesterday. Ricardo Dos Santos delivered an excellent Athlete Development Session with our high performance sports pupils. He was joined by Bianca Williams and together they presented a powerful talk to lower school pupils.
Bianca is a London-born Team GB sprinter who specialises in the 100m and 200m. A World Championships Bronze Medallist 2023, and European Championship 2018 and Commonwealth Games 2018 and 2022 Gold Medallist, Bianca ranks fifth on the UK all-time list at 200m with her best of 22.45 secs.
Ricardo is a sprinter and a 400-metre specialist who represented Portugal in the 2020 Olympic Games. He also reached the 400m final at the 2018 European Championships, setting a then Portuguese national record of 45.14 in the semi-finals.
They gave a warm and honest presentation about their paths to success, training and family life. They also spoke about the stop search incident that made headlines in 2020 when they were pulled over for no reason and subjected to a frightening experience with their three-month-old son at the hands of the Met police. The officers were subsequently dismissed for the racism that played a part in the incident.
As a result of their ordeal, Ricardo and Bianca established the charity 4TheVoiceless, which aims to support people who feel wrongly targeted by the police but may not have the means to bring a legal case otherwise.
