(Tuesday, February 10) HRH The Princess Royal has officially opened Sport England’s Bisham Abbey National Sports Centre, heralding a new holistic approach to sport designed to help elite athletes achieve international success and provide world-class sports facilities for the local community.
Sport England has invested £10 million of Lottery funding into the state of the art redevelopment of Bisham Abbey’s 43-acre site to create an excellent foundation for elite and community sporting achievement.
The redevelopment has been designed according to the requirements of the sporting bodies, which predominantly use the centre. Judo and hockey, in particular, have worked with Sport England in all four stages of Bisham Abbey’s redevelopment to create unrivalled training facilities, which enable them to achieve their performance training targets. The new elements include: a dedicated judo training hall and video analysis unit; a water-based synthetic hockey pitch; two squash courts; 11 tennis courts, including four indoor; one gymnasium and one strength and conditioning hall; and a nine-hole golf course. Changing rooms, sauna and steam rooms are also featured, along with shared administrative offices for the principal governing bodies.
In total, more than 20 sports are able to use the facility with athletes training alongside a number of World, European and Commonwealth champions.
Richard Caborn, Minister for Sport and Tourism, said: ‘Bisham is precisely the sort of state-of-the-art sport centre we need to see in the UK. Designed with our best sports stars in mind, the first class facilities will give them every chance of reaching the top.’
‘With young people from the area training alongside our finest athletes, Bisham will inspire the next generation too. Let’s hope the facility will help prepare them for an Olympics in London in 2012.’
Commenting on the opening, Patrick Carter, Chair of Sport England, said: ‘We are delighted that HRH The Princess Royal has officially opened Bisham Abbey National Sports Centre today.’
‘Bisham personifies Sport England’s new holistic approach to sport, ensuring that our elite athletes have access to the very best training facilities – on the basis of their requirements and their terms – and that exemplary facilities are also available to the local community. This re-development, with all sporting bodies working together and some of them based there, is already breeding a sense of success for all sports.’
‘Bisham is an important part of our strategy in helping England to become an active and successful sporting nation.’
Bisham is predominantly used by elite athletes from judo, hockey, football, rugby union, tennis and rowing. Kate Hoey (Judo Olympic Silver Medallist), Katherine Grainger (Rowing Olympic Gold Medallist) and Craig Fallon (Judo Silver World Medallist) have trained at Bisham Abbey. Around 1,500 community members use the site for approximately 1,000 hours per week.
Bisham is home to the National Judo Academy, a full-time centre of excellence that currently houses 19 elite judo players. The GB men’s and women’s hockey teams are preparing for the Athens Olympics at Bisham. England Under 21s Rugby and England’s world ranking Sevens’ squad have also recently used the facility as a regular training venue. The England football team has trained at Bisham and, most recently, the Under 21s team has used Bisham as a training base
For further information, please contact the Sport England Press Office on 020 7273 1591 or 07748 845 692. Photographs are also available on request.