That’s the message I get from an article in her local paper in the U.K.
How can that be?
Becky Downie finished 12th AA at the Beijing Olympics and is a national star in the lead-up to Europeans and the Olympics in her own country?
Perhaps the story is overblown?
… the gym where she trains, at Rushcliffe Leisure Centre, has suffered from broken heating, outdated equipment and overflowing rubbish bins. …
But training had to be cancelled in December because the gym was unheated.
“It was too cold and dangerous,” said Claire Starkey, head coach at Notts Gymnastics Club. “We’ve complained to the council. …
The gym has been selected as a pre-Games training camp for 2012.
“It’s a joke,” says Claire. “If I brought my colleagues from the US and China here it would be embarrassing. There’s one toilet for 150 kids. Unless the facilities are improved, we won’t be producing any more Olympians.” …
3 comments ↓
“Unless the facilities are improved, we won’t be producing any more Olympians.””
Seems to me if the facilities hurt them so much they wouldn’t have Olympians in the first place. It’s the coaching that matters most. Ferrari trained in a dump when she won her World Championship.
We train trampolining and DMT, not gymnastics but where we train is not really suitable for either! We have to train with a 12m run for the DMT instead of 20m and a smaller landing area just to fit it in, and the ceiling isn’t high enough really for trampolining. I’d say most of our top level competitors can touch the ceiling pretty easily. Still, over the last 6 years we’ve sent 5 kids to compete at worlds or world age. It is definitely about the coaching.
However, I can see the point that perhaps world class athletes should be training in better facilities but I don’t know how that could be managed. Becky has the choice of moving to a different club with better facilities I suppose. We would love to have a bigger, higher gym to train in but these things don’t just happen!
Perhaps each region needs its own purpose built training centre fully equipped and top level competitors from around the region should train there once a week or once a month in addition to their usual training. At least they can then get the chance to train on the equipment they will be competing on, and if, like in Becky’s case, their own sports centre or gym is closed then they will still be able to train somewhere.
Greater gymnasts have had to put up with less in their home gyms. Suck it up, wimps.
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