GUERNSEY is likely to provide 10% of the total competitors at next year’s NatWest Island Games in the Shetland Islands. A total of 2,655 are expected to take part, though teams are still being drawn up. More should be known next month.

‘We are hoping to be going up there with about 250,’ said Dave Dorey, the Guernsey Island Games Association chairman.

‘All the sports have been asked to give a final number at our meeting on 1 September so we will know more then.’

Mr Dorey was in Shetland last month and had a tour around the facilities that will be used next summer. He will be presenting a short report on that visit to the sports at the next GIGA meeting.

‘We were very impressed with what they have up there. As you would expect, not all the venues are quite ready yet but preparations are going very well.

‘They have access to revenue which is indirectly related to North Sea oil and they have a sporting trust set up that is helping with the finance so the facilities are of a high standard,’ Mr Dorey added.

Unsurprisingly, team sports will make up much of the athletics.

Some 500 footballers, men and women, are expected to take part and more than 250 athletes and volleyballers should arrive, with nearly as many set to appear in the swimming pool.

At the other end of the scale, board-sailing is expected to be the least-populated sport with 21 competitors, while the shooting events (clay target and airgun) are restricted to 41 marksmen, mainly because of the UK’s gun laws that forbid competition in rifle and pistol.

Other figures that have been quoted are 71 gymnasts, 75 table tennis players and 84 each in archery and cycling.

The 2005 Island Games organiser Gary Jakeman revealed that preparations for the event, the biggest tournament the Shetland have ever staged, were well advanced.

On the accommodation front, one cruise ship, the Van Gogh, has already been booked and another, the Caribe, is likely to be hired by the end of this month.

‘It is a very nice ship,’ said Jakeman. ‘It is owned by a Lisbon company and is currently in the Caribbean.

‘So all the accommodation for the other islands is just about sorted out and the two vessels will be moored close to each other in the main harbour.’

At the moment, the Shetlands are enjoying a summer tourism boom and all accommodation in the islands will almost certainly be fully booked when the Games are held in just under a year’s time.