Doctor helped hockey stars go for gold

He explained: "The players get medals but the support staff and coaches don't. They go and win the thing; our job is to make sure they are prepared to compete and to win in those environments."

While in Rio, he spent part of his time socialising with fellow Jewish Olympians.

"Team GB's apartment block was right next to the Israeli block", he said.

The 31-year-old is now due to start a new job at the Football Association as a physical performance coach.

"I won't be working with the senior England team," he said. "But I'll be working across all the age groups and putting a strategy in place to develop their physical performance."

Dr Rosenblatt is the son of Ian Rosenblatt, a senior lawyer who, earlier this summer, was awarded the OBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours, for philanthropic services to music.

He grew up participating regularly in Jewish sport, playing in the Maccabi League and subsequently with the Wingate and Finchley amateur football club.

But he said that his career had rarely brought him in to contact with professional Jewish sportsmen or women.

"Hundreds of Jewish kids turn up and play football every week, and play all these other sports when they're growing up. But for one reason or another they don't seem to continue it past their teenage years," he said.

"Maybe it's not on everybody's radar within the Jewish community that they can have a career in elite sport," Dr Rosenblatt added.