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| Home » News » Double gold medallist expects Sheffield to attract big names
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| Double gold medallist expects Sheffield to attract big names |
Sheffield’s bid to attract the world’s top athletes to train in the city ahead of the Olympics in 2012 received a major boost from one of Britain’s greatest ever sporting heroes.
Shirley Robertson OBE, ranked as the greatest female Olympic sailor of all time, was at the English Institute of Sport – Sheffield (EISS) to celebrate the announcement that 21 venues across South Yorkshire appear in the London Organising Committee Pre-Games Training Camp Guide.
And she believes that the world-class facilities at EISS will turn the heads of the top nations, including America and Australia.
Her comments come with the timely boost that a further three EISS based British boxers qualified for Beijing, taking the total of Sheffield boxing representatives to seven.
Scottish-born Shirley said: “This announcement is great news for South Yorkshire and it shows the quality of facilities here available to Olympic athletes from around the world.
“The standard of EISS in particular means it can easily attract one of the big teams and I’m sure the Americans and Australians, for instance, will have a close eye on Sheffield as 2012 gets closer.”
Shirley, who is the only British female athlete to have won gold medals at consecutive Olympic Games, was involved in the bid to bring the Games to London in 2012 and firmly believes that its success is an opportunity to show off the whole of Britain to the world, and that Sheffield has much to shout about.
“It is important that the Olympics in 2012 is a spectacle for all Great Britain to be part of and we are lucky enough to have so many places and venues of which we can be proud,” she added.
“For the last two Games I’ve been involved in I have always been made to feel really welcome by the locals and impressed by the training camps so I’m extremely passionate about the top athletes from around the world coming to Britain and feeling exactly like that.
“And from what I’ve seen, Sheffield has the perfect ingredients.”
Boxers Billy Joe Saunders, Khalid Yafai and James DeGale, who all train at EISS, put in fantastic performances in the Olympic qualifiers in Pescara, Italy, to qualify for Beijing.
They will now join fellow Sheffield-based qualifiers Joe Murray, Frankie Gavin, Bradley Saunders and Tony Jeffries at the Olympic Games later this year. |
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