Having volunteered during London 2012 Macclesfield table tennis coach David Bruce didn’t think his year of sport could get any better. But how wrong he was after the 19-year-old rubbed shoulders with Britain’s greatest-ever Olympian Sir Chris Hoy following his successful application for Gillette’s 2012 Great Starts campaign.

Keen to not let the Greatest Show on Earth pass him by, Bruce volunteered his time during London 2012, helping out at the ExCeL during the table tennis, the sport he is heavily involved with at Lancaster University.

However, his brush with sporting greatness didn’t end there. Bruce made another trip to the capital last week as a successful applicant for Gillette’s 2012 Great Starts campaign, a programme working in partnership with Sports Coach UK to sponsor a significant number of coaching qualifications.

Bruce said: “Being successful on the Gillette Great Starts campaign means a lot because obviously money is tight for me as I am still a student and it has restricted me in the past but it is great to have this support behind me so that I can become a coach.

“I want to have the opportunity to influence more people to get into the game. I have been playing for a long time so I have the basic skills but I will be interested to learn how best to transfer this knowledge across to others.”

He added: “I actually volunteered at the table tennis during London 2012 and all the people I spoke to around the venue, even people who had never played the sport before or didn’t know the rules, they said it was fantastic and that they wanted to play.

“Members of the public want to play more and I hope in this country more people will get involved.”

The 2012 Gillette ‘Great Starts’ campaign celebrates community coaches and inspires the next generation of coaches by providing them with grants to fund their next level qualifications.

By Ryan Walters, Sportsbeat, 0870 445 0156