UKA Athletics (UKA) today announced that Britain’s track and field athletes will be given a unique opportunity to prepare for the London 2012 Olympic Games. An Olympic track has been laid at each of the two UKA National Performance Centres at Lee Valley and Loughborough.
The London Marathon Charitable Trust has committed £220,000 to enable UKA, with the support of Lee Valley Regional Park Authority and Loughborough University, to lay an exact replica of the Mondo FX track that will be in the Olympic Stadium in 2012.
The tracks will be in place at the facilities from April, and are ‘engineered to return the maximum level of energy from the surface to the athlete’. This type of track is currently installed in only ten stadia around the world with two of those in Beijing.
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UKA’s Lee Valley Athletics Centre Director Dan Pfaff said: “The two National Performance Centres will be the only training centres in the world with this track installed, giving our athletes considerable advantage. It is super fast and is of particular benefit to structured running events such as sprints, hurdles and all horizontal and vertical jumps. Training on the track day in and day out will mean the Olympic Stadium will feel like home in 2012.”
Athletes based at the UKA National Performance Centres at Lee Valley and Loughborough will be able to train on an indoor straight, long and triple jump runways, and pole vault and high jump areas.
Chris Knight, Sportsister
The Women’s Sports Magazine
