Long-jumper Jordan Charters is no stranger to international competition, having represented Scotland in the Loughborough International Athletics championship earlier this year. Next week, however, he’ll be taking part in his most high-profile competition yet.

The 22-year-old (pictured) will be testing his skills in the painting and decorating category at the biennial WorldSkills competition, dubbed the “Skills Olympics”, which is taking place this year in Abu Dhabi.

Charters is one of 34 young people who next week will be representing Team UK across 30 different disciplines, from joinery and jewellery-making to web design and welding. During the competition, he will have to demonstrate a variety of skills, from spray-painting a door to wallpapering.

The Team UK contender will also be working on a scale drawing of the Abu Dhabi skyline, as well as putting together a complex design of a gold-leaf star above a mosque, which he has spent months perfecting.

Since Charters was selected for the team in April, he has spent training weekends away with the whole squad, learning about everything from nutrition to team-building. He has also spent one week each month away from his workplace, training with his expert mentor Peter Walters to prepare for the competition.

This is only a small part of Charters’ preparation, however. He has spent hundreds of hours training in his parents’ garage - on top of his full-time job working for his father’s decorating business, George Charters painters and decorators, in the Scottish borders.

“I would be working from eight to half-past four, and then from 10 to midnight I would train in the garage,” he says.

‘I know what it takes to win’

Once a week, Charters has also been working with former WorldSkills gold medallist Mark Nevin, who has been sharing his own insights into international competitions and the minute details that can ultimately make the difference between returning home with or without a medal.

“I know what it takes to win,” explains Nevin, who returned from WorldSkills Calgary in 2009 with a gold medal in painting and decorating. “We go through the ins and outs, where you can get points and where you can lose them.

“I throw spanners in the works in training quite a lot. Jordan has never had an easy training session. We don’t want a smooth week in training - we cannot give it to him too easy. This way he is prepared.”

Nevin is also aware of the impact that taking part in the competition can have on a small, family-run business. His father once calculated that the cost of taking part in WorldSkills to his business had been around £15,000.

Charters acknowledges that his father has made “a lot of sacrifices” for him to take part, missing out on his labour and having to turn down work as a result.

For his final week of preparation before leaving for Abu Dhabi, Charters returned to Edinburgh College, where he trained as an apprentice, for one final test: a trial run in the college’s reception area.

This, Walters explains, is an important part of preparing for competition.

“The idea of him being in a public space is to try to simulate the crowds [in Abu Dhabi],” he explains. “We try to give him the best training possible.”

While Walters expects the competition in Abu Dhabi to be tough, not least from established WorldSkills nations such as Austria, both he and Nevin believe their protégé has nothing to fear. Nevin says: “I am a lot more excited about Jordan that I have been about anyone. He is more advanced in his abilities.”

Not surprisingly for a highly competitive athlete, Charters’ sights are set only on a gold medal: “I have five days and I am not going to settle for a medallion for excellence [awarded to competitors achieving the set standards for international excellence]. “I want the big one. I am going to win; no one is going to beat me. I haven’t been giving myself 10- or 12-hour days for the last year to come second.”

@JBelgutay