Our impressive Olympic CV!
Posted: Friday, 10th February 2012
Vanuatu's Olympic volleyball hopefuls train at Crewe campus
THE SPORTS Unit has submitted a substantial report to Universities UK on our involvement with the London Olympic Games.
UUK – the umbrella body for higher education – is collecting data on impact and contribution that universities are making on the 2012 Olympics and Paralympics Games, its legacy and the sports industry as a whole. This includes the range of participation from world class athletes competing in the Games through to the research and development and cultural contributions.
Its report to be published during Universities Week (30 April – 7 May) will feed into government channels and the media.
Information from Harry Korkou’s team covers involvement of staff and students as athletes, volunteers, and coaches and via community projects, training camps and research.
Our Olympic CV includes:
- Pre-Olympic Training Camp, Crewe. This is a collaboration with Cheshire East Council which opens up sporting facilities, including the new £10 million sport science centre to national teams. The university is included in the official IOC games guide recommended to host training for football, archery, badminton, basketball, volleyball, fencing, table tennis and triathlon. To date, we have hosted South Pacific island nations, including Vanuatu and Kiribati, creating a huge amount of interest both sporting and cultural in the local community. The camp is managed by Professor Neil Fowler and Phil Cook.
- Volunteer Programme: Man Met was selected as the training provider for the Selection Event Volunteers (SEV) programme for the North-West region for the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. Volunteers will be given six hours of training before being able to interview some of the estimated 100,000 people who have applied to be volunteers. Sixty post and undergraduate students have become SEVs, while MMUBS lecturers Helen Schutzmann and Steve Mansfield have been asked by the London 2012 Organising Committee to train 100 volunteers recruited from across the North West to become interviewers.
- Cultural events: Vice-chancellor John Brooks will join two MMU students to carry the Olympic Torch ahead of London 2012 partly in recognition of the MMU Cheshire Olympic training camp.
- World Class Performance Programmes: The Department of Exercise and Sport Science and the Institute for Performance Research host World Class Performance Programmes which have led to applied research specifically designed to support athletics, canoeing, climbing, football, hockey, rowing, shooting, swimming, and sports for disabled athletes.
- More research: Researchers in the IRM have produced data for the British Olympic Medical Institute on elite handball players and are conducting research in partnership with the Lawn Tennis Association on physiology issues for elite tennis players.
- Student athletes include Holly Bleasale (pole-vault), Ben Swain (diving), Gary Johnson (swimming) and Robyn Nicholls, Rebecca Kershaw, Fiona McCann and Angela Winstanley-Smith (waterpolo).