Going for gold in São Paulo
Apprentice panel technician at Just Car Clinics Hinckley, Ryan Jones has been selected to represent Team UK in the World Skills in Brazil and today starts his quest for Gold. We caught up with Ryan before he flew out to Brazil with the rest of Team UK.
Ryan explained ‘The World Skills is massive, I try to explain it to my family and friends but they don’t understand the size of it. It is on the scale of the Olympics.’
Ryan’s preparations for World Skills started around two years ago at a small competition demonstrating the basic skills involved with panel beating where he achieved second place. He then was shortlisted to begin the process of World Skills which lead onto squad selection against 9 other young apprentices and then team selection against one other competitor in which Ryan came out victorious gaining a place on the plane to São Paulo.
Ryan has been supported all the way by his Father, Gavin a fellow panel technician at Hinckley who said ‘Ryan has shown potential throughout the whole process, he was listening and improving as the stages went on, taking things on board and gaining more and more knowledge.’
Ryan joined Just Car Clinics as an apprentice at the beginning of the year and the company was keen to support him in his competition, something that has been greatly appreciated by Ryan adding, ‘Just Car Clinics have been really supportive, Barry (Whittles), Dawn (Swales) & Mick (Murray) have been great, they have bought a vehicle for me to train on, gave me time off for extra training and are even sending my Dad over to Brazil to support me. There aren’t many employers that would do that.’
Training has been the main focus for Ryan in the build up to competition, Emtec College in Nottingham is where most of his skills development has taken place as well as intense training trips to places such as Belfast, Denmark and Sweden.
Regarding his training Ryan added, ‘Over the two years I never really noticed how much my skills were progressing until I got to the team competition. I didn’t think I would be able to complete it but I did and to a high standard. When I put all the training together on one vehicle I thought, wow, I’ve done that and that is where I saw the rewards of all the training.
‘When you are working on a car that comes in, it doesn’t matter if it’s worth £100 or £100,000 you have to take pride in your work on that car and whatever you do, you want to do it right and to the best standard.’
It is that type of mentality that his Dad is extremely proud of explaining, ‘He’s grown up and matured through all this and I’m as proud as you can ever be to see my child representing the UK in a profession he enjoys. It’s fantastic!’
At Hinckley general manager, Mick Murray echoes that sentiment stating, ‘It’s a fantastic achievement by Ryan, he is already a winner in our eyes. It’s been fantastic for the Moral of the site and the company, we are all really proud and hope he goes onto win.’
Ryan celebrates his twenty first birthday on the first day of competition in Brazil but that won’t take Ryan’s focus away from competition despite his mixed emotions in the build-up expressing, ‘I’m feeling nervous but I know other competitors will be feeling nervous too which will put me at ease but I want to get cracking, get there and get it done!’
Everyone at Just Car Clinics wishes Ryan the best of luck for the next few days and we will be keeping up to date on his progress with updates throughout the competition.
