Budding biostatistician desperate to know how to access case control data sets to build and validate risk prediction models.

I'm trying to follow this very well written paper by Wacholder et al. to reconstruct a simple risk prediction model for breast cancer risk (link below). It's the Gail model + 10 specified SNPs.

I think I understand the biostatistics theory and the paper makes every step of building the model easy to follow. But to actually test and validate a model, i require at least some population data. Now, Wacholder compiled four data sets into a larger pool but I'd be happy with even one of the data sets to build a proof of concept model for myself.

I realize these are medical data and subject to approvals. But since I'm not associated with any research organisation, i'm not sure what's the best way to get access to any of these data so i can practice my biostatistics.

Before I go submitting applications for the data, what do I need to be/have/prove? Any guidance at all would be greatly appreciated by this amateur.

Wacholder et al. (2010) http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa0907727#t=article