THE world has been captivated once again by the Olympic Games - but, for one Worcester man, they are particularly poignant.

Richard Brown and his parents set up the Joanna Brown Trust to support and inspire young athletes after his sports-mad sister Joanna died in 2008, aged just 30.

The former Dyson Perrins pupil fell to her death while walking near Lake Baikal in Siberia during a holiday that had included a visit to the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

Today (Thursday) marks the eight anniversary of Joanna's death.

The charity set up in her name was dedicated to supporting sporting achievement and it led to Mr Brown being given the honour of carrying the Olympic torch through Worcester before London 2012.

Four years later and two of the athletes supported by the Trust, wheelchair racer Kare Adenegan and para-swimmer Alice Tai, are on the verge of representing Great Britain at Rio 2016 in the forthcoming Paralympics.

Mr Brown called the anniversary "bittersweet", saying Miss Brown would be "so proud" to see the support the athletes have been given in her name.

Mr Brown said: “I think we will always have a connection with the Olympics because it was effectively the last thing that Jo did. Every four years it comes around and makes me reflect on how far we’ve come and what we’ve done in Jo’s name.”

Initially, Mr Brown was heavily involved in the charity, working full time to get it off the ground, but he took a back seat after 2012 after having his own family.

That changed at the start of this year when Mr Brown wrote to all of the athletes the trust had supported and asked for updates.

He said: “The responses we got back were amazing.

“It has taken this time for those young athletes to have spent the money and for that to have an effect. I was blown away by the impact we’d had on them. I’d lost sight of that a little bit."

“When it started to happen I said, ‘it’s alive again.’

“It was like a runaway train when we first set it up. It just exploded and it was like a rocket going off.

“This time I’ve tried to make it more sustainable and a bit less taxing on me.”

Mr Brown said he will be watching the athletes in Rio with interest.

He said: “Others can give more (financially) than we are able to but often we are the first to support them and it gives them that little foot up to go on and win more recognition and attract more sponsors.

“We’ve now provided £30,000 to 53 athletes since we set the trust up. We’ve tried to find people that Jo would have been in support of and who shared Jo’s passion for sport and the desire to be as good as they can with the ability they’ve got.

“That’s what the Olympics are about really.”

Mr Brown hopes to see more of the trust’s athletes at Tokyo in 2020 and is considering taking his young family there.

He said: “I think there will always be a connection. I think it will always be bittersweet but there has been so much positive stuff we’ve been able to do.

“We know Jo would be so proud. It has been so lovely we have been able to do something so positive out of something so tragic.

“She was such a winner. I think she would just keep saying, do more.

“You can always push yourself to do more, be the best you can.

“It’s the whole ethos of why and how we’ve done the Joanna Brown Trust.

“In a way, she’ll always be sat behind me saying, do more.”