For the first time since the competition began in 2008, the three winners were all entrants in the ‘Garage Innovators’ category and the £25,000 in research funding has been split between them.

Dr Dick Thijssen from John Moores took joint first place in the competition for his idea for a novel warm up method. His share of the money will be used to further his research immediately in the field, with access to Britain’s elite athletes as a testing pool.

Dr Thijssen said: “I'm really happy that UK Sport is providing me with the opportunity to be part of their highly committed team that strives to get the best out of British athletes. With this novel method that can be applied during the warm-up phase, I expect athletes to make an additional step forward and optimise their performance level.”

The group of graduates consists of four engineering and design specialists from London, who meet as a group regularly in their spare time to come up with new inventions, were inspired to apply their knowledge to sport when they heard about the Ideas4Innovation Awards.

The group – self named ‘The Imagination Factory’ - came up with over 40 ideas that were narrowed down to their top four which they submitted to UK Sport for consideration. Two of these made the final stages and were presented to an expert panel at UK Sport HQ, before one, an idea that could benefit several sports - including triathlon, modern pentathlon and swimming - was given a Garage Innovators Award, to allow further investigation towards 2012.

The four inventors are Charlie Ashworth (Loughborough University and Queen Mary's University London), Mark Hester (Brunel University), Julian Swan (Queen's University, Belfast) and Stuart Pallant (Bournemouth University).

Charlie said: “The Imagination Factory is overjoyed to be selected as a winner of this year's competition and cannot wait to get started on developing our idea for the British team ahead of 2012."

The third 2010 winner is Dave Richards, Group Leader for the Mechanical Design Group at Frazer-Nash Consultancy.

Head of Research and Innovation at UK Sport, Dr Scott Drawer, said: “We have been really impressed by the quality of applications for Ideas4Innovation this year, as the concepts presented to us have shown a real grasp of the need for rapid and direct performance impact. The need for this was particularly pertinent this year, as 2010 is likely to be the last Ideas4Innnovation Award that can have an impact on performances in 2012.

“We are very excited to be working with these winners in the build up to the London Games, particularly in the case of The Imagination Factory where we feel we have uncovered some talented individuals who were previously untapped in terms of elite sport, and that is what Ideas4Innovation is all about.”