Sir Kenneth Charles Branagh is a British actor and filmmaker. Born in Belfast and raised primarily in Reading, Berkshire, Branagh trained at London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and has served as its president since 2015. His accolades include an Academy Award, four BAFTAs, two Emmy Awards, a Golden Globe Award, and an Olivier Award. He was appointed a Knight Bachelor in the 2012 Birthday Honours, and was given Freedom of the City in his native Belfast in 2018. In 2020, he was ranked in 20th place on The Irish Times' list of Ireland's greatest film actors.
Bryce Dallas Howard is an American actress and director. Howard was born to filmmaker Ron Howard and writer Cheryl Howard. She attended the New York University Tisch School of the Arts, left in 2002 to take roles on Broadway but graduated in 2020. While portraying Rosalind in a 2003 production of As You Like It, Howard caught the attention of director M. Night Shyamalan, who cast her as a blind girl in the thriller The Village (2004). She later secured the starring role of a naiad in Shyamalan's fantasy film Lady in the Water (2006).
Sir Bradley Marc Wiggins, CBE is a British former professional road and track racing cyclist, who competed professionally between 2001 and 2016. He began his cycling career on the track, but later made the transition to road cycling. He won world titles in four disciplines, and Olympic gold in three. He is the only rider to have won both World and Olympic championships on both the track and the road as well as winning the Tour de France. He has worn the leader's jersey in each of the three Grand Tours of cycling and held the world record in team pursuit on multiple occasions. He won a gold medal at four successive Olympic Games from 2004 to 2016, and held the record as Great Britain's most decorated Olympian with 8 medals until Jason Kenny won his 9th in 2021. He is the only rider to win both the Tour de France and Olympic Gold in the same year, winning them a week apart in 2012.
The Cutting Edge is a 1992 American sports-romantic comedy film directed by Paul Michael Glaser and written by Tony Gilroy. The plot is about a wealthy, spoiled figure skater who is paired with an injury-sidelined ice hockey player for Olympic figure skating. Competing at the 1992 Winter Olympics in Albertville, France, they have a climactic face off against a Soviet pair. It spawned a film series including a number of sequels. The film was primarily shot in Toronto and Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. The film has come to be known as a cult classic.
Sir Christopher Andrew Hoy MBE is a former track cyclist and racing driver from Scotland who represented Great Britain at the Olympic and World Championships and Scotland at the Commonwealth Games.
Lee Valley VeloPark is a cycling centre in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in Stratford, London, England. It is owned and managed by Lee Valley Regional Park Authority, and it was opened to the public in March 2014. The facility was one of the permanent venues for the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.
The 1999 Pan American Games, officially the XIII Pan American Games or the 13th Pan American Games, was a major international multi-sport event that was held from July 23 to August 8, 1999, in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada and surrounding towns and cities. Canoeing competitions started the day before the games officially began. Approximately 5,000 athletes from 42 nations participated in the games to vie for a total of 330 medal events in 34 sports and 42 disciplines.
Victoria Louise Pendleton,, OLY is a British jockey and former track cyclist who specialised in the sprint, team sprint and keirin disciplines. She is a former Olympic, World, European and Commonwealth champion. With two Olympic gold medals and one silver, Pendleton is one of Great Britain's most successful female Olympians.
Paul Franklin Dano is an American actor. He won the Independent Spirit Award for Best Debut Performance for his role in L.I.E. (2001) and gained wider recognition for playing a troubled teenager in Little Miss Sunshine (2006). For playing identical twins in Paul Thomas Anderson's period drama There Will Be Blood (2007), he was nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Supporting Actor.
Rebecca Jayne Romero, MBE is an English sportswoman, a former World Champion and Olympic Games silver medallist at rowing, and a former World champion and an Olympic champion track cyclist.
Chris Cleave is a British writer and journalist.
Moonrise is a children's fantasy novel, the second book in the Warriors: The New Prophecy series. The book, which illustrates the adventures of four groups of wild cats, was written by Erin Hunter, with cover art by Wayne McLoughlin. Moonrise follows six cats, Brambleclaw, Squirrelpaw, Crowpaw, Feathertail, Stormfur, and Tawnypelt, as they return to their forest home from a journey to the ocean. They travel through the mountains, where they meet the Tribe of Rushing Water, a new group of cats first introduced in this novel. The Tribe cats are being attacked by a savage mountain lion called Sharptooth. The Clan cats eventually agree to help the Tribe get rid of Sharptooth. Series editor Victoria Holmes drew inspiration from locations such as the New Forest and the Scottish Highlands.
Sir David John Brailsford is a British cycling coach and performance director. He was formerly performance director of British Cycling and is currently team principal of UCI WorldTeam Ineos Grenadiers. He is currently working with French football club Nice and British football club Manchester United as part of his role as Director of Sport at Ineos.
Zoe Smith is an English weightlifter. In October 2010 she won a bronze medal in the women's 58kg division at the 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi, India, her first senior international competition, to become the first English woman to win a Commonwealth Games weightlifting medal. Smith competed at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London and finished 12th in the Women's 58kg division. After missing the 2016 Summer Olympics following an injury, she finished eighth in the 59kg at the 2020 Summer Olympics.
The Mysterious Benedict Society is a quartet of children's books by Trenton Lee Stewart chronicling the adventures of four children, initially gathered together by the eccentric Mr. Benedict. The first children's novels written by Stewart, each of the first three books were published annually from 2007 to 2009, with the fourth installment following a decade later. A prequel novel detailing the backstory of Nicholas Benedict was released in 2012.
Blood Ties is a 2013 crime thriller film directed by Guillaume Canet and starring Clive Owen, Billy Crudup, Marion Cotillard, Mila Kunis and Matthias Schoenaerts. It is a remake of the 2008 French thriller film Les liens du sang by Jacques Maillot, an adaptation of the French novel Deux frères: flic & truand by Bruno and Michel Papet. The screenplay was written by Canet and James Gray. The film was selected to be screened out of competition at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival. The film is a co-production between France and the United States. It was released in France by Mars Distribution on October 30, 2013, and by Roadside Attractions in the United States on March 21, 2014.
Philip Hindes MBE is a British track cyclist, specialising in sprints. He holds dual nationality, having been born in Germany to a British father. Having initially competed for Germany at a junior level, in 2010 he switched to the British Cycling programme. At the 2012 Summer Olympics he won the gold medal in the Men's team sprint, and again at the 2016 Summer Olympics he won the gold medal in the Men's team sprint.
Ancient Light is a 2012 novel by John Banville. First published on 7 July 2012, the novel concludes a trilogy concerning Alexander Cleave and his daughter, Cass. Eclipse (2000) and Shroud (2002) were Ancient Light's literary predecessors in the Banville canon.
The F Word is a 2013 romantic comedy film directed by Michael Dowse from a screenplay by Elan Mastai, based on the play Toothpaste and Cigars by TJ Dawe and Michael Rinaldi. It stars Daniel Radcliffe and Zoe Kazan as two young people who meet and, because she has a boyfriend, decide to be "friends". The supporting cast includes Megan Park, Adam Driver, Mackenzie Davis, and Rafe Spall.
Peter Keen CBE is a former cyclist, coach, and now performance director.
