Why “8848”
8848 metres is the height of Mount Everest, the highest point on Earth. Our mission is to help every athlete, coach, and organisation reach their own highest possible performance peak.
Our lead mentor
Before he started winning international awards for business coaching and leadership, Miklós Palencsár came from humble origins in a small town. Sport — in his case handball — gave him the platform to change his life. He was only able to attend university because he received a handball scholarship. From there, he built a successful career in business, and today leads mentoring programmes for elite athletes, head coaches, CEOs, and organisation leaders across multiple continents.
His business background is central to the 8848 approach. The same principles that drive performance in complex multinational organisations — decision-making under pressure, leadership dynamics, managing competing stakeholders — apply directly to elite sport.
The Performance Architect
Athletes, coaches, and sport leaders work directly with a mentor. Behind the mentor stands a Performance Architect who coordinates the work of a specialised expert team.
This structure ensures that complex performance problems are analysed from multiple angles while athletes and coaches receive clear, practical guidance they can use immediately.
The expert team includes specialists in performance psychology, child and developmental psychology, psychiatry when required, social and generational research, data analytics, and video performance analysis.
The Performance Architect leading the system holds an advanced degree in psychology from Harvard University.
The RISE system
The mentoring process is built on the RISE Elite Performance System, currently the only personality diagnostic specifically designed for competitive sport environments.
RISE defines how athletes make decisions and behave in normal, competitive, and crisis situations. It distinguishes between the crisis personality — how an athlete actually functions under pressure — and the modified personality created by external expectations. Understanding the gap between the two is the starting point of every mentoring programme.
Specialised versions of the RISE diagnostic exist for U10, U16, U23, and professional athletes, allowing a consistent analytical framework across the entire development pathway.
8848 is the exclusive sport partner of the RISE Elite Performance System.
Exclusivity
8848 develops only one team within a league or championship. This avoids any conflict of interest and gives our partners a clear competitive advantage. We also operate a limited number of development programmes at any one time to ensure the highest level of commitment and expertise.
Confidentiality
Our clients are encouraged to present their success as their own work, because it is. We never publicly appear behind results, we never publish references, and we never claim credit for what athletes and teams achieve. This is what allows mentoring relationships to be built on real trust and to continue across many years and competition cycles.