Bradford celebrates Olympic coup
Published on: 17th August 2011
Top class athletes from the Far East and Africa will be heading to Bradford next year to complete their final preparations before the 2012 Olympic Games.
Stars from Tanzania and Vietnam will acclimatise and hone their skills in the city next July before heading to London for the competition at the end of the month.
They could be joined by athletes from Sierra Leone, Georgia and Kazakhstan after a delegation from Bradford spent last week selling the city as the ideal base for preparations.
One of the men leading the delegation from West Yorkshire described the news of the athletes’ attendance as a “fantastic opportunity” for Bradford.
Ronnie Todd, of Bradford College, said the athletes from Vietnam and Tanzania had already shown their willingness to visit schools during their time in the city to talk about their lives in sport.
The college is part of a partnership including Bradford University and Bradford Council hoping to entice international Olympic committees from around the world to send their best athletes to the city for their final preparations.
Mr Todd said he eventually hoped up to 200 athletes would be in the city, using top-class facilities at the college and University of Bradford and showing that the Games were not just about London, but the whole country.
“It’s a completely unique opportunity in the history of British sport,” he said.
The arrival of the athletes could be worth several hundred thousands of pounds to the local economy and the announcement comes days after Leeds secured a “phenomenal honour”, with Chinese Olympic officials selecting the city as the country’s official training base ahead of the Games.
http://www.thetelegraphandargus.co.uk/news/9194631.Bradford_celebrates_Olympic_coup/
