Britain's London Olympic heroes face daunting leap into unknown world of office work after sporting success An effervescent personality but with only a limited employment record as a part-time swimming teacher to support her water polo career, Leighton, 30, is hoping her experience in captaining a squad of 20 super-competitive water polo players will land her a managerial position when she bows out of her sport after this summer's World Championships. "It's frightening but exciting at the same time," she said. "After the Olympics, I did feel, "Oh my goodness." Everything I've done since London won the bid seven years ago has been about Olympics, Olympics, Olympics. Suddenly you're feeling, "Gosh, what do I do now?" There was about a month of total confusion when you're not really sure what path you're on. The fair - a joint initiative by the British Olympic Association, the British Paralympic Association, UK Sport, the English Institute of Sport and the Dame Kelly Holmes Legacy Trust - is a continuation of the work of the EIS "Performance Lifestyle" programme that has run since 2004 to help athletes find employment after retiring from sport. Over the last four-year cycle, nearly 100 athletes have been offered part-time placements or internships with companies such as O2, Cadbury and InterContinental Hotels Group. Nick Slade, who heads a team of 22 performance lifestyle advisers at the EIS, believes the programme is as beneficial to potential employers as it is to the athletes. "We've seen various high street stores going to the wall recently, so it's a tough time for employers," he said. But when you see these kind of individuals with extraordinary levels of commitment, dedication and intrinsic motivation to achieve a particular goal, it sets a lot of them apart from the wider population. They are used to working under the levels of pressure that most of us couldn't contemplate, and in terms of performance they are used to working with the minutiae, with massive attention to detail and the process of performance to a point of obsession in some cases. Slade's faith in the athletes" employability is backed by British Gas sponsorship manager Matthew Leopold, one of the exhibitors at the fair gathering phone numbers and email addresses. "Athletes are incredible people," he said. They have time management skills like no other human being and they have levels of motivation that are way above what most of us are capable of. To haul yourself out of bed at five o'clock in the morning, day in day out, with a very clear focus at the end of it are skills that are so transferable that anyone would snap up an athlete. Unlike Partridge and Leighton, some of the Olympians and Paralympians attending the fair were not quite ready to call time on their careers but were hoping to forge links with employers for when the day finally arrives. They included Serita Shone, the bobsledder who broke her back in a horrific crash in 2011. Although she plans to continue her sliding career, her experience has taught her the importance of keeping one's options open. "You never know what can happen in sport," she said. For me, the worst did happen and I've come through the other side, but it shows you need to have qualifications to fall back on if things go wrong. Slade estimates about 10 per cent of the GB Olympic and Paralympic teams are "maybes" - athletes who are contemplating retirement but who were so blown away by the London 2012 experience that they find it difficult to let go. "Due to the euphoria of the Games, there are quite a lot of athletes thinking, "I can't put this down yet" and who are trying to get their head around what the next four years might look like," he said. An example is Sophie Christiansen, who became a heroine of the London Paralympics when she won with three equestrian gold medals. It was her third successive Games and although she does not rule out a fourth in Rio, she also has a first-class Master's degree in mathematics and a hankering for a stimulating career away from sport. Combining a part-time job with her equestrian career is one option, and she believes her high-profile success in London could open doors. "The problem with applying for jobs, particularly when you're applying online, is that if you click on the wrong box your CV goes straight into the bin," she said. In the past, I've obviously had to click on the box that said I wasn't that flexible in terms of location and time, so my CV didn't even get read. "But now I can go to the person in charge and say, "Look I'm a triple gold medallist. Wouldn't it be great for you to have that kudos? That's what London has done for me. It means I'm now able to sell myself a bit more.