Nigel Walker is one of a rare breed - an athlete who has changed lanes successfully from one sport to another and graduated to senior management. What makes this high hurdler-turned- rugby star even more exceptional is that he is black. And black bosses in British sport are as uncommon as a smile on Arsene Wenger's face, despite the burgeoning contribution members of the ethnic communities are making on the playing fields.

The 47-year-old former Welsh Olympian and rugby international is currently settling into his new role as national director of the English Institute of Sport, the organisation which helps ensure elite perfomers in all sports can get to their marks in peak condition by providing the best possible back-up facilities, including medical and psychological assistance, and coaching expertise.

Last week, there was a gathering of the great and the good in British sport organised by the Sports Lobby group – scribes whose beat is the often perplexing world of sports politics. And one of the most  perplexing aspects of that congenial night at the Royal Thames Yacht Club was the almost total absence of black faces. I spotted Paul Elliott, the former Chelsea and Celtic footballer who does such great work for the Kick It Out campaign, the anti-racist football movement, and a woman named Ashanti Dixon, agent for a a handful of rugby players.

Similarly, at the annual conference of the CCPR, which is acknowledged as the parliament for sports leaders, among more than 200 delegates you will never find more than a couple from the ethnic minorities. If that.

Of those currently in  the corridors of power of British sport I can think of only one black chairman - and ironically named White: Densign White, hubby of Tessa Sanderson and chair of the British Judo Association. There is also Zara Hyde Peters, chief executive at British Triathlon. And, er, that's it.

As it happens more and more women are putting their high heels through the glass ceiing iof British sports administration. UK Sport, for instance, has become a woman's world, with Baroness Sue Campbell in the chair and the newly-upgraded Liz Nicholl as her chief executive, replacing John Steele who has moved to run the shop at Twickenham.

British Judo seems a rather enlightened body, with a female chief executive, Margaret Hicks, working alongside while Jennie Price is Sport England's very capable chief executive. Not to mention Lord Sugar's  own Apprentice, Karren 'The Sacker' Brady who is doing the hiring, and more frequently the firing, at West Ham.



Paul Elliott has said that a "dinosaur mindset" exists in football about  appointing black managers. So why is it, I asked Walker, that there are so few black personalities in the board rooms  of sport? He replied: "An interesting question and a rather worrying one. A lot of it is about having role models.  In football, black managers are just about beginning to break through, yet for sometime there has been a high proportion of black players, sometimes as many as four or five or more in a team. so to have so few managers in a game is disappointing.  I'd like to think that in ten or 15 years time there will be more.

"If you look at rugby union 20 years ago there were very few black players, now there are many more.  It takes a while, Black players in all sports have to feel that they are given a chance, that it's going to be an even playing field.  It's a slow-burner, I don't think it will change overnight.  We know black people are interested and involved in sport and there is really no reason why there shouldn't be more black administrators, even at the highest level. It's happened for women.

In UK Sport (where he has been a Board member) equality is something we talked about all the time, trying to get a true representation of the entire UK.

"Black people have to be persuaded that administration is a worthwhile career and one that is open to them. There are now plenty of women in prominent positions, rightly so, and there has to be some way of ensuring that black and Asian people are equally represented in future."

The Cardiff-born Walker comes to the EIS after nine years at the BBC where he was  head of sport for BBC Wales and later head of internal communications, negotiating sports rights.  As a track and field athlete he won his first international at 19, represented GB in the 1984 Olympics but after failing to make the team for the 1992 Games he switched to rugby, which he had played at school, joining Cardiff, where he played on the wing.

"After three months I had a sponsored car, a radio programme, and a new job. How my life had changed.  Within five months I was capped for Wales against Ireland."  As an athlete he had won world and European bronze medals "but the passion for rugby in Wales was just phenomenal.  It turned my life upside down."  His last competitive match was against England at Twickenham in 1998 when he dislocated his shoulder for a third time requiring an operation.

"I was 33 and trying to hang on for the World Cup in Wales but it wasn't to be." He won 17 caps, scored 12 international tries and played for the Barbarians, and won the British version of Gladiators.

Now he says rugby has changed out of all recognition.  "If you look at pictures of say, Shane Williams now and ten years ago, there is no comparison.  Pound for pound I was pretty strong for my size but it's a big man's game now and the collisions are getting greater, defences are more organised and you need a lot of power to break them down."

Walker says that taking to job at the EIS was, for him "a no-brainer."

"There are a lot of good people in this organisation doing a lot of good work.  Our contribution in the build up to 2012 in terms of support for the athletes is vital.  Our main function is to provide sports medicine and sports science support to both the Olympic and Paralympic bodies.  This can be psychology, physiotherapy, nutrition, strength and conditioning – the sort of thing that a governing body may feel gives the athlete that extra edge.

"We supply a range of practitioners to cover those needs across a range of disciplines.  This is a crucial back-up role.  UK Sport are the main body providing the funding and checking that it is used appropriately and from that money the governing bodies can buy our services.

"My role as national director is to oversee all of this and make sure that money is spent efficiently.  We employ have about 250 employed, most of them practitioners.  For example, just before Beijing, Jessica Ennis broke her take-off foot in long-jump.  The medical prognosis was that she couldn't continue to take off with that foot so our physios and strength and conditioning coaches helped her and with a bio-mechanist worked on changing her take-off foot.

"Jessica is a fantastically talented athlete and it was great that the EIS could help her further her career.  We like to think that what the EIS can do is help make the difference between silver and gold or between fifth and sixth.

"I've been involved myself in elite sport one way or another for quite some time and I've done a bit of coaching myself (he assisted Linford Christie when some of his athletes, (including Darren Campbell, Jamie Baulch and Katharine Merry) were based in Cardiff.  So I know how fine the margins are between success and failure.

"We play a valuable role in the support system and if we are not indispensable at the moment, we hope to make sure we are at the time of the Olympics and Paralympics.  We play a valuable role in the elite performance system and we need to make sure that those who are providing the pounds, shillings and pence realise that, and I am sure that they do.

"We have been through a very challenging economic review and although exchequer funding was cut by 28 per cent the uplift in lottery money just about balances that, so I think sport generally is in a pretty good position."

A few more Nigel Walkers might make it an even better one.

Alan Hubbard is an award-winning sports columnist for The Independent on Sunday, and a former sports editor of The Observer. He has covered a total of 16 Summer and Winter Olympics, 10 Commonwealth Games, several football World Cups and world title fights from Atlanta to Zaire