Royston schools benefit from the facilities at the world-class training venue

MORE than 100 talented athletes from Greneway and Meridian schools were given the chance to use the world-class athletics facilities at the Lee Valley Athletics Centre in North London recently.

It is an award-winning, state-of-the-art training centre serving London and the south of England and home to three of the four British track and field medallists at the Beijing Olympics. Also it is one of the key London 2012 training venues for Olympic and Paralympic athletes next summer.

The schools travelled to further extend and enrich the athletic experiences of their young athletes by giving them the opportunity to use the same venue as some of the top athletes in the world, including the use of video analysis to enhance their learning.

“We wanted to inspire our talented athletes to achieve their personal bests through living the Olympic and Paralympic values and where better than here, where you feel inspired to perform citius, altius, fortius,” said Greneway’s assistant head teacher Terry Graves.

Every athlete had two, specific event training sessions, where they followed individually tailored programmes expertly planned and coached by the PE teachers from both schools.

Russell Franklin, Meridian’s head of PE, reinforced the feelings of all the teachers when he said: “A world-class venue which has bought the best out in our talented athletes.”