Behind every youth injury is a potential drop in participation and long-term engagement. Through research-led prevention strategies, Podium Analytics is working to reduce injury and help young people stay in the sports they love.
In sport, injury is often treated as an unfortunate interruption – a problem to fix before returning athletes to performance as quickly as possible. But for Dr Catherine Wheatley, that mindset misses something fundamental.
Injury prevention, she argues, is not just about reducing time out of sport. It is about keeping young people in sport for longer, protecting both their physical and mental health across a lifetime.
Dr Wheatley is a health psychologist working with Podium Analytics, a non-profit organisation dedicated to reducing the impact of sports injury, particularly among young people in grassroots sport. Founded five years ago by Sir John Bond, former chairman of McLaren and a key figure in Formula 1 safety innovation, the organisation takes inspiration from elite-level safety systems and applies them to everyday sport.
“What we do is quite a niche focus on sports injury prevention,” Dr Wheatley says, “but it broadens into mental health and long-term sport participation. If we can keep young people injury-free, they get to stay in sport for longer. That’s good for both physical and mental health.”
That dual focus of physical safety and psychological wellbeing sits at the heart of Podium Analytics’ work. The NGO combines research, data and intervention design to better understand how and why injuries happen, and how their impact can be reduced.
Unlike traditional sports medicine models that focus primarily on treatment and rehabilitation, Podium Analytics’ places strong emphasis on prevention and long-term participation. Its programmes are grounded in evidence, with interventions developed through research and tested in real sporting environments, particularly at grassroots level where medical and performance support is often limited.
Dr Wheatley’s own role reflects that broader ambition. As Mental Health Research and Programme Manager, she sits at the intersection of psychology, injury science and participation. Her work explores not only how injury affects mental health, but also how mental health can influence injury risk itself
“There’s growing evidence that anxiety and stress can increase injury risk,” she says. “If your attention is elsewhere, it’s harder to react, harder to follow instructions, harder to read what’s happening on the pitch.”
It is a feedback loop that is increasingly being looked into: injury affects mental health, and mental health can in turn increase vulnerability to injury. Understanding that cycle is central to designing better prevention strategies.
Dr Wheatley points out that grassroots athletes frequently face a very different reality. Limited resources, long waiting times for diagnosis, and a lack of specialist support can leave young players in a prolonged state of uncertainty.
“That uncertainty can be really difficult,” she says. “If you don’t know what you’re dealing with, it’s much harder to cope with it.”
Her research consistently highlights the social and psychological consequences of being injured, particularly the isolation athletes feel when separated from their teams.
“You become disconnected from your social group,” Dr Wheatley says. “Sport is about so much more than performance – it’s your friends, your routine, your identity.”
Instead of isolating injured athletes during rehabilitation, she advocates for keeping them embedded within team culture; such as attending training, participating in non-physical roles, or completing rehab alongside teammates in shared spaces.
More recently, Podium Analytics has also been exploring peer-led approaches to recovery. Through its ‘Young Voices in Sport’ programme, the charity is gathering lived experiences from young athletes to inform new mental health interventions.
“Hearing how other people went through injury helps normalise what you’re feeling,” Dr Wheatley says. “It shows there are different ways to navigate it.”
High-profile conversations around mental health in sport, from athletes like Naomi Osaka and Mark Cavendish, have helped bring visibility to the issue. However, Dr Wheatley believes the real impact will come from a change in how sport understands injury itself.
“The goal isn’t just return to sport. It’s long-term participation. If we can get that right, everything else improves too: performance, wellbeing, and athlete longevity,” she says.
