Island still in the dark on Olympics

By Rob Batiste

GUERNSEY’s main sports authorities have not given up hope of providing training facilities for national squads before the 2012 London Olympics. On the day it was announced Aldershot would get a multi-million-pound dedicated Olympic training camp to house the Great Britain team ahead of the Games, the Guernsey Sports Commission was still in the dark as to what role the island would play - if any.

‘We should know by the end of this month,’ said Graham Chester, the island’s sports development manager.

‘The six sports that we have submitted for inclusion in the brochure will be distributed to the competing countries at the Beijing Olympics.

‘The sports are archery, athletics, badminton, boxing, sailing and table tennis, being the only ones that satisfied the criteria for inclusion in the brochure.’

The commission’s wish all along since London was awarded the 2012 event is that Guernsey in the height of summer would prove attractive to some of the smaller nations heading to London.

But Chester, for one, is not building up his hopes.

‘You can discount on the European countries for a start. They will stay at home because there is little or no time difference. The same goes for nations like South Africa.

‘We’re looking at some small African country, I suppose.’

While some major countries have already made their intentions clear - Australia is going to Italy - others are still being linked with the country’s major sporting centres.

Birmingham is expected to get the USA track and field team, Cuba could be off to Newcastle and the Chinese football team will be hosted by Chelsea at their Cobham headquarters.

‘The pre-Olympic training camp only really came in for the Sydney Games, so they are a fairly new beast,’ explained Chester.

‘But a lot of the competing countries aren’t going to be big teams.’

Guernsey is in the market to host a whole sport or single sports within a national team, but will not necessarily be offering facilities for nothing.

‘The nations will offer to pay for the facilities, but if they didn’t, the sports I’ve asked would still be happy to take them.’

Article posted on 16th January, 2008 - 12.00am