Student

Oli Gibson started his academic career at Hampton Community College where he studied for five years between 2002 and 2007. Oli then moved on to study for A levels in Maths, Geography, Business Studies and Physical Education at Esher College, successfully graduating in July 2009.

In October of the same year Oli started at the University of Reading to study Human Geography and Economics. After spending a year on this course Oli has now moved on to focus solely on Human Geography and continues to study with the aim to completing his degree in 2012.

Athlete

Sport has always played a major part in Oli’s life. As a child he played football, tennis, took part in athletics and was a competitive swimmer but it was kayaking that eventually captured his imagination.

In September 2005 Oli first raced as part of the Great Britain Sprint Kayak Team and from then on never looked back. After racing at a number of international events through the rest of 2005 and 2006 Oli found success in June 2007 at Bochum International Regatta, Germany, where he won a silver medal in the K2 500m, his first international medal.

2007 was a good year overall for Oli. Soon after winning a medal in Germany he joined forces again with K2 partner Tom Simmons to win a silver medal at the Sella Descent in Spain, an 8 mile race down the rapids of the river Sella that sees around two thousand competitors each year.

In September 2007 Oli raced at the Olympic Hopes Regatta in Poland. Again he and Tom Simmons paired up to race in the K2 500m and won an unexpected bronze medal. Oli still believes this to be the best race of his career.

Soon after returning to the UK Oli was made a TASS ambassador (Talented Athlete Scholarship Scheme) to promote the funding and support of developing athletes. He held this role for two years and in this time attended a number of high profile events such as starting the JP Morgan Chase charity run.

2008 was a mixed year for Oli, while he had much national success it was tough to top the results of 2007. At Bochum he won another silver medal in the K2 500m but at the Olympic Hopes in Hungary he failed to medal, finishing sixth overall in the same event.

2009 saw much improvement, after a slow start to the season Oli raced at Bochum again and won a gold medal in the K4 500m and a silver medal in the K4 1000m. Everything looked good for selection to race at the European and World Championships however unexpectedly Oli failed to be selected and on querying this decision no explanation could be given.

Following this decision Oli decided to take time out from the sport to focus on other sporting challenges.

Entrepreneur

Oli showed entrepreneurial spirt from an early age buying and selling almost anything he could get his hands on in his school years and spending much time thinking up money making schemes both successful and unsuccessful. In his last year at school at just 16 years old Oli started R16 Media a web and graphic design company that provided exclusive design and service at a very un-exclusive price. R16 Media is now very much a lifestyle business and continues to operate today.

In March 2009 Oli started blogging at oligibson.com. At the time of starting the aim of the blog was to help athletes and business people to become more efficient, effective and in turn more successful however it didn’t take long to develop into a more personal blog with posts focusing on more broad topics such as health, sport, business and productivity.

The beginning of 2010 saw Oli turn his focus to starting another new business. PSA Coaching. The company was founded with the aim of providing high quality coaching at summer sports camps and to encourage young people to get into sport. Unfortunately after much effort by all involved to make PSA Coaching a success the company was still born and never managed to run it’s camps in 2010.

Currently Oli is looking into new projects and for partners to work with.