Nick Butler: Rowing award for student highlights how university remains important stepping stone to elite sport

The plush extravagance of Mosimann's Dining Club in London, which hosted the Parmigiani Spirit Award Ceremony last week, was certainly a far cry from the austerity of my university days.

From a culinary perspective they were defined far more by takeaway pizza and supermarket wine - always the second cheapest bottle, of course - than exotic canapé's in rooms adjourned with photos of past diners seemingly consisting of most of British high society.

However, the award ceremony, which honoured London student rower James Cook, brought to life many of the universal values that are gained at university. All of these values remain relevant, beneficial, and arguably integral to life in sport and the Olympic Movement today.

In the era of professionalism which has transformed sport over the last two decades, it has been increasingly considered counter-productive to attend university and better instead to plunge straight into a sporting career - and all of academies and youth systems therein.

In sports like football and tennis this had long been the general case but in others, like cricket and rugby, a budding player would traditionally cut their teeth at university level before graduating on to the professional game. Financial persuasion, together with the elite training advantages of a club set up, has precipitated this shift.

With the same changes - in terms of National Lottery-funding and training techniques - occurring in Olympic events, the same trend can be seen to an extent. Yet it is interesting to see how many of Great Britain's London 2012 stars indeed attended university.

Some of them, cyclist Victoria Pendleton and rower Helen Glover for example, did sporting related degrees. Others, Sir Chris Hoy and triathlon winner Alistair Brownlee, shifted courses and locations from non-sport to sporting areas in order to maintain athletic commitments but by easing rather than sacrificing academic ones.

Others still, such as track stars Christine Ohuruogu and Jessica Ennis-Hill and shooter Peter Wilson, who studied linguistics, psychology, and graphic design respectably, did something not directly related to their sport.

Sir Chris Hoy, Victoria Pendleton and Jessica Ennis-Hill all attended university...only the tennis player Andy Murray here did not

Many other examples can be made both in Britain and elsewhere, In the United States the college system remains the way in to virtually all sports and also provides scholarship opportunity for talented overseas athletes as well as home grown ones.

Another reigning Olympic champion on show at the Parmigiani Awards was the New Zealander Mahe Drysdale who, before becoming the foremost single sculler of his generation, attended the University of Auckland.

Although the larger number of courses and institutions these days does widen opportunities, the point here is not that Olympians did not attend university in the past, but that in the modern era doing so is still seen as beneficial.

As yet another London 2012 winner, kayaker Ed McKeever explained to me, while athletes today have more financial support during their careers, they still need to make preparations for afterwards. McKeever is therefore training to be a chartered accountant and he is one of many examples of sporting diversification to pastures new.

Beyond the stream of athletes departing for the coaching or media ranks another growing trend is for them to climb the ladder to high level administrative positions.

An early example of this was the Baden-Baden conference of 1981 which eventually spawned the inaugural International Olympic Committee (IOC) Athletes' Commission. Among the six athlete speakers there two stand out: a British middle distance called Sebastian Coe, and a German fencer by the name of Thomas Bach.

Thomas Bach and Sebastian Coe are two students turned athletes turned Olympic administrators

Thomas Bach and Sebastian Coe are two students turned athletes turned Olympic administrators

Sebastian Coe and Thomas Bach are two students turned athletes turned Olympic administrators

It is indisputable that the skills and values that these two garnered at university - Coe reading economics and social history, and Bach law and politics - have helped them in their future careers, as well as first in their sporting success.

Three decades on and we have the Russian International Olympic University (RIOU) in Sochi which, in the words of that same German fencer in his new guise of IOC President, produces "talented students who will shape the future of the Olympic Movement".

Somewhere between the aspiring RIOU scholars and the heights of Bach is the new President of the International Rowing Federation Jean-Christophe Rolland. After studying engineering at university, he has used these skills in a lengthy career with EDF and managed their sponsorship of London 2012. At the same time he competed at three Olympics and won gold as recently as Sydney 2000 before moving up the administrative echelons to the helm, or perhaps the cox, of his sport.

With its history steeped in the public school and university scene, best encapsulated in the annual Boat Race between Cambridge and Oxford, rowing is a particularly apt example of this. There is certainly more of a university scene in rowing than in, for example, boxing.

However, thanks to schemes such as Sport England's Satellite Clubs project which works with universities among other areas, there are increasing opportunities for youngsters from a wide variety of sports to combine training and further education.

Sport England's Satellite Clubs project gives opportunities to school and university students across a variety of sports including, and to rather spoil the point here, rowing

So what is it about university that is so beneficial to life in the sports world?

As well as the opportunity to take advantage of a free lunch, which no student should ever turn down, the Parmigiani Spirit Awards Ceremony highlighted several key factors.

University is essentially about trying a multitude of different things, or burning the candle at each ends, so to speak. It is about education, but also about life and about other experiences, be they in sport, or in drama, music, debating, or anything else. Even journalism...

It is this ability to meet new people from new places, to be put in new situations and to be pulled out of your comfort zone which is most important.

James Cook's idea of testing himself is slightly more intense. He explained the concept of "three eight hours days" - eight hours of work, eight hours of training and eight hours of sleep, that is.

"That came from my undergraduate course tutor who knew nothing about rowing," Cook explained to insidethegames. "He said that if you're going to do something else besides studying you have got to be really disciplined about it."

"I liked it because it was really simple, and you inevitably don't stick to it, but it's a nice way of thinking that if I do my eight hours of working then I can just enjoy everything else."

The assumption here is obviously that training for rowing is "enjoyable".

Parmigiani Award winner James Cook was a good example of someone talented in multiple areas

Parmigiani Award winner James Cook is a good example of someone talented in multiple areas

With the Universade held in Kazan last summer the ultimate example, student sport can reach very high levels but, for us mere mortals, the two great sporting advantages of university are variety and opportunity.

Out of my first year neighbours we had hockey, cricket and tennis and rugby players - male and female. But we also had a windsurfer, a table-tennis player and, bizarrely, an underwater hockey player. Nowhere else is life do you have the scope to try out so many new things.

Opportunity was also particularly true for us because, in a collegiate system, there were chances for those less talented to compete at a lower standard college level instead of the more intimidating university one.

My college rugby team, for example, was memorably once short of players for a vital match. So they roped in several members of the university first team but, still short, made up the numbers by effectively begging anyone and everyone in the dining hall. The result was that, playing alongside the university captain and a player hovering on the fringes of the US national team, were "players" who not only had never played before but had no idea of the rules.

But this is the whole point. It gave them the chance to do something new and to consequently become more rounded.

Many in Britain are being put off university by the spiraling tuition fees and the supposed lack of job prospects thereafter. Why bother, they say? In some case maybe, but I would argue that generally attending university is always beneficial.

Without wishing to downplay the credentials of anyone who has not attended university, it is being a student which best creates individuals like James Cook, and also like Jean-Christophe Rolland, Sebastian Coe and Thomas Bach.

It may not teach you, or not in my case anyway, too much about fine dining but as the Parmigiani Spirit award recognised, university is the best pre-requisite of a well rounded person, and of a well-rounded athlete.

If more people, sportsmen and Olympians are therefore able to first be students in the future, then that can only be a good thing.

Nick Butler is a reporter for insidethegames. To follow him on Twitter click here