“Nothing quite brings home the impact of injury than experiencing it for yourself. At the point of impact, I knew immediately that bone was broken. Although not a situation I wanted to be in, it was somewhat comforting to know that the damage could be clearly depicted on X-rays and Standard MRI, bones could be fixed, tried-and-tested rehabilitation plans could be followed and recovery timeframes in this case were, more or less, predictable. Not knowing how a suspected concussion might manifest itself – that is a different feeling altogether.”

Podium Analytics publishes its latest Annual Report from 2024–2025, and celebrates key achievements made as the team works to reduce the incidence and impact of sports injury.

Worth a read:

• Explore Our Journey So Far on pages 14–16.
• Read our introduction to our Applied Research Strategy 2030 on pages 29–32 – a structured research programme delivered by our in-house Research Team, in tandem with partner universities, to drive real-world impact by accelerating groundbreaking discoveries into scalable practice. 
• Understand more about our Trusted Research Environment for Global Sport and the opportunity it provides, for the benefit of all sport, to advance sports injury research on pages 45–48. 
• Find out more about our partnership with the Lawn Tennis Association (LTA) and 4 key workstreams focused on supporting the experience of young tennis players (10–14-years-old) across the LTA’s Regional Player Development Centres on page 39.
  
  

Key achievements for the 2024–2025 period include:

• The Podium Institute for Sports Medicine and Technology at the University of Oxford has progressed several multimodal research studies including a world-first multimodal head injury study with Gloucester Rugby and Gloucester-Hartpury that (as of July 2025) is employing (effectively pitch side) a high-specification mobile fMRI scanner to obtain acute neuroimaging of rugby players’ brains within three hours of a confirmed or suspected concussion event, as well as an innovative longitudinal study imaging adolescents presenting at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford with sport-related head injuries.
• Two unparalleled systematic reviews have been submitted for peer review by The Podium Institute – the extensive, DCMS-endorsed project to produce the first nationwide report quantifying the incidence and economic burden of sport-related concussion, in addition to a review of the relationships between sports injury and mental health symptoms in young people aged 10–24-years-old with the study demonstrating a bi-directional correlation between mental health and sports injury for the very first time.
• A significant endorsement of our work, we have been approached to take on the Community Rugby Injury Surveillance and Prevention Project (CRISP), in partnership with the RFU and the University of Bath.
• SportSmart continues to be embraced by Premiership Rugby, with Northampton Saints and Gloucester Rugby implementing the programme across their academies to monitor, manager and reduce the risk of injury.
• Made possible by support from East Head Impact, we completed our Developing Child study with the University of Bath, resulting in a meaningful improvement in PE teachers’ knowledge and understanding of growth and maturation (with growth spurts being a factor uniquely affecting 11–18-year-olds and a period that puts young people at increased risk of sports injury).
• Young Voices – our multi-component programme of research, co-design and intervention implementation to support young people’s mental health during sports injury – is progressing well, including a key study in collaboration with the University of Bath – exploring young people’s dynamic mental health though the injury course, including risk and protective factors for good mental health and long-term participation post-injury.
• We convened a panel of global experts – appointed with the support of the Association of Summer Olympic International Federations (ASOIF) – to develop, and subsequently endorse, a Governance and Ethics Framework that ensures exemplary governance safeguards for our Trusted Research Environment for Global Sport.
• We completed an extensive project, working closely with Professor James Calder, Chair of the Expert Drafting Group for the new UK Concussion Guidelines for Grassroots Sport, and an expert group of Chief Medical Officers of major sports to develop a new workflow and language for Graduated Return to Activity and Sport (GRAS) that could be implemented with any digital platform. This has been subsequently developed as a feature in our Head Injury Tool Suite within SportSmart. This SportSmart Concussion Recovery Tool, providing a step-by-step guide to returning to play following a concussion, is live as of September 2025.
• We welcomed Paddle UK (formerly British Canoeing) alongside our existing collaborations with the Lawn Tennis Association (LTA), the Rugby Football Union (RFU), England Hockey, Hockey Wales, England Athletics, The Royal Ballet School, British Judo and England Ice Hockey.
• Critically, we maintain our commitment to providing the highest level of information security and, having achieved ISO/IEC 27001:2022 in May 2024, we successfully passed our annual audit.

“As we seek to continue to give The Podium Institute, our internal Research Team and our Academic Partners the runway needed to enable groundbreaking strides forward in sports medicine and technology, and thus fuel systematic change that will impact the health and wellbeing of generations, we must sustain the independence, integrity and long-term financial viability of the charity. The ongoing and considerable support of our Founding Funders – the Dreamchasing Foundation, CVC Funds and CVC Foundation – continues to protect this runway, in addition to support from East Head Impact, enabling us to meet the substantial financial commitment necessary to invest in our extensive research programme and, together with our remarkable Board of Trustees (to which we welcomed renowned Historian, Author and Educator, Sir Anthony Seldon, over the period) and the broader Podium Team, work to create a world with more sport and less injury.”

Sports injury is a big issue. And, it’s a shared issue. Alongside our partners and funders, we remain committed to reducing the incidence and impact of injury in youth and grassroots sport and welcome the support of others who share the same sense of responsibility and urgency for protecting the health and wellbeing of those playing sport.

READ THE FULL REPORT

About Podium Analytics

Podium Analytics is a charity (registered in England, Wales and Scotland) with a vision to create a world with more sport and less injury. Founded by Sir Ron Dennis CBE, its mission is to significantly reduce the incidence and impact of sports injury, with a focus on youth and grassroots sport. Podium’s team is made up of hand-picked specialists with proven expertise in business, academia, science, technology and sport, who share in a sense of responsibility for shaping a safer legacy for sport.

podiumanalytics.org

The Podium Institute at the University of Oxford