Olympic beach volleyball teams wooed by Margate and Blackpool
Paul Kelso
Monday March 3, 2008
The Guardian
Beach volleyball, one of the newest and most telegenic of Olympic disciplines, is usually associated with glamorous sun-traps such as the Copacabana in Rio de Janeiro, Sydney's Bondi Beach or Camps Bay in Cape Town.
Now holidaymakers in Margate, Blackpool and Great Yarmouth could be sharing the sand with the world's top beach volleyball players under ambitious plans to host Olympic training camps in some of Britain's best-known seaside resorts.
The resorts hope that, come 2012, a combination of spacious beaches, plentiful accommodation and hospitable locals will help to persuade competing nations to base their training camps on the British coast. "Even if a resort was hosting a small team, there would be huge interest in watching them prepare for London, and we are sure they would be welcomed with open arms by the local communities," said a spokeswoman for the London 2012 organising committee (Locog), which will today launch its pre-games training camp guide for overseas teams.
The resorts are among 600 potential training venues across the UK in the guide, which will be distributed to national Olympic associations this summer.
Training in local conditions in front of holidaymakers could help with the acclimatisation process, while helping familiarise British audiences with the sport before the Olympic competition itself, which will be staged on Horseguards Parade in London.
While larger teams are expected to head to established sporting hubs such as Loughborough and Bath universities or big cities with adequate facilities - the US team is expected to be based in Birmingham - smaller facilities are aiming to attract national teams sending a small number of athletes that require sport-specific venues.
Brands Hatch, the former formula one racing circuit in Kent, has pitched to host road cycling preparations, while numerous cricket grounds have put themselves forward for archery, and some cities have taken a coordinated approach. Nottingham offers at least five facilities in the guide, including Nottingham Forest FC (football), Trent Bridge (archery), the Holme Pierrepont national water sports centre (canoeing and rowing), the Nottingham Wildcats Arena (basketball) and the Nottingham Tennis Centre.
http://sport.guardian.co.uk/news/story/ ... 19,00.html
