Kristian Thomas: From Olympic gymnast to Premier League player welfare manager

Imagine competing at your debut Olympic Games.

Now imagine competing at your debut Olympic Games in front of a home crowd?

And now imagine competing at your debut Olympic Games in front of a home crowd needing to perform an error-free floor routine to win your country a first men’s artistic gymnastics medal in 100 years?

Kristian Thomas did exactly this, securing team bronze for Great Britain at London 2012, so it's safe to say he knows all about pressure on the big occasion.

Now retired, Thomas is using his experience to help top footballers as the English Premier League's Player Care and Engagement manager.

It may be a different sort of pressure to the one he went through as an athlete but Thomas, who took up the role in January 2022, says the basis of being an elite sportsperson is very much the same.

“Ultimately sport is sport at the end of the day, and I like to think that what I bring to the role is that knowledge and understanding of what being an elite sportsperson looks like, whether you're a footballer or a gymnast.

"That exposure and competing under the spotlight and having a goal, a focus, training towards that, it might happen, it might not happen, the bounce-back resilience shown with injuries, setbacks, and so on, that still stays the same.”

The role Thomas has taken on is two-fold. The player care role offers support to all 20 Premier League clubs and their player-care staff, helping to raise that provision within the clubs.

“The clubs have the day-to-day interaction with players,” says Thomas, “so we want to try and give them the best support that we possibly can for them to do their role to the best of their ability.”

The engagement side revolves more around players’ voices, canvassing opinions on certain matters and feeding back to the Premier League for any potential rule changes.

“Taking the knee (which allows players to show solidarity in tackling discrimination) would be a good example,” says Thomas. “Recently the captains decided that instead of doing it every game, they would do it in selected matches instead and hopefully drive the exposure that way.”

World Cup return challenges

The Olympic bronze medallist spoke to Olympics.com in December, 10 days before the resumption of the Premier League season following an unprecedented month-long break for the FIFA World Cup in Qatar.

Having only started the role 11 months ago, Thomas has no comparison for this unique season. Nevertheless, he and his team are aware that players will be experiencing a myriad of contrasting emotions on their return to Premier League action.

There are those that have been fortunate enough to win the greatest prize in men's football and others who have missed penalties, suffered injuries, or been catapulted to fame courtesy of breakout performances.

And for the first time, the physical and mental wellbeing challenges following the World Cup will be navigated in the middle of the season.

Thomas insists clubs, with their own psychologists and day-to-day support mechanisms, remain the first port of call for returning World Cup players. But he says he can have an influence "from the governance side of what actually can the league do to try and support the players" in areas like managing fixture congestion.

He said, "The clubs have that contact with the players and they understand the players best. That's certainly more appropriate for the club to be leading on that in terms of how they prepare their player to come back from what might be excitement, disappointment – sort of decompress and then to go again for the rest of the season.

"We can look at the rules in terms of making sure that games aren’t played within 48 hours of each other, making sure if they're playing in Europe there's an appropriate amount of time before let's say, that (if they play) Thursday night somewhere in Europe they're not on the early kick-off Saturday.

“Obviously there's a lot of things in there that we have to take into consideration such as what the other team might being doing. We can't just pick a new fixture, that's not possible, it involves police security, it involves the selections in terms of what broadcasters might be doing for that game."

Facilities are available all year round, not just for returning World Cup stars. For example, a 24/7 helpline run by charity Sporting Chance offers support including mental and emotional wellbeing services for those who would prefer to seek independent advice away from their club.

Education sessions are also available whether that's around life skills or exploring opportunities outside of football. One of Thomas’s roles is to make sure players and club staff know all the support that is available to them, and how to access it.

Gymnastics heartbreak and recovery

Thomas says navigating the very different football landscape has been one of the main challenges in the past year.

In his previous role at the British Athletes Commission (BAC -,now the British Elite Athletes Association, the independent body for GB's Olympic and Paralympic sports) he had a maximum of eight staff compared to around 250 in his Premier League position.

But there is also a vast difference in the way footballers reach the top, often starting with a club at a very young age.

“It's so, so different the football pathway, particularly Premier League clubs: how (players) could be part of an academy from eight or nine years old, and then carry through that transition all the way through to the first team and the support that's available from those academies in terms of their education. For some, it’s done on site, some in a hybrid model. For me, you went to school then you went to training and they were always kept very separate.

“Not all academies and clubs do it this way but most of the Category 1 of Premier League clubs do, and so that's learning and understanding what that looks like and how that works, what that might mean for the players and the athletes and people involved.”

Another big change for Thomas, who continues his role in the British Olympic Association's Athletes' Commission after being re-elected by his peers in November, was working for a much bigger organisation than the BAC.

He admitted, "It's a big shift and change in your mentality, how you work, the people that you have to deal with, the number of contacts, stakeholders... so that for sure was absolutely something I had to learn and get to grips with pretty quickly."

Global issues, such as tackling discrimination, affect players and therefore fall under Thomas’s remit. He also has experience of challening times within his own sport following allegations of abuse and mistreatment in British gymnastics in recent years.

The 2020 Whyte Review, an independent inquiry co-commissioned by UK Sport and Sport England, found issues of physical and emotional abuse between August 2008 to August 2020. It was based on more than 400 submissions, including 133 from current and former gymnasts.

Thomas, who says he had nothing but positive experiences at club and international level, found the report devastating.

“To see your sport absolute battered like that, that is quite tough,” he says. “But equally I've got friends, team-mates, people I've grown up with, people that are in sport that haven't had that positive experience and to give so much for a sport and to not have that same experience that I had, then that for me was... ultimately, it's just not acceptable.”

But Thomas sees a more positive future for the sport he loves – from grassroots to elite – after new leadership, new governance, new structures and new processes were put in place following the Whyte Review.

“I'm excited to see how the sport can get back and flourish again in the future and so it's about learning from those mistakes and moving it forward in the right way and I'd like to think that that is now being done.”

READ: How to qualify for artistic gymnastics at Paris 2024

Football fan

One focus particularly close to Thomas’s heart is adjusting to life after retiring from competitive sport.

“I actually had a pretty positive experience transitioning out of sport,” said Thomas who retired from gymnastics in 2017, a year on from captaining the men’s team to a fourth place at Rio 2016 and finishing seventh in the men's floor final. “But I do know that most athletes don't, and they suffer in that state.

“I loved my time in sport and what I achieved and the support that I felt I had, and was actually excited to move into other things. But there's obviously those worries concerning when you move away from sport, your identity, what you're going to do in terms of work, your schedule, and your livelihood and so on.

“I've got close friends, close team-mates who suffered and didn't have the best experience. And so I think because of that, that certainly gave me a gentle nudge in that direction and kind of explored that for those reasons because it means something to me.”

The Premier League allowed Thomas to work on secondment with Team England at the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham - close to where he was born in Wolverhampton - where he valued the lessons in athlete welfare learned across all sports.

Back in the Athletes’ Village environment he loves, Thomas was on hand to support the next generation.

“Keeping one foot in the door with the Team GB Athletes' Commission and also in football as well in terms of the player care side, I think now that's part of my DNA and an area that I think is only going to get bigger as well. And so, if I'm part of that journey and help to make that easier in terms of the transition and the support that we provide to athletes, that's something that I want to be part of and I'm proud to be part of.

“I like to think what I learned in the Olympic sport I could bring to football, and what I might learn in football I could bring to the Olympic world to gymnastics, and so on. And hopefully it gives me a little bit of a wider knowledge base so that I can offer support where it's needed.”

A football fan himself, Thomas's sign-off from the interview shows he is getting into the swing of his new role.

“You’re a Wolves fan, aren’t you?” we ask.

“Yes I am.” A pause, and then: “Although now I work at the Premier League all clubs are equally as important, obviously,” he says with a smile.