Heroes and heroines putting golden Yorkshire ‘nation’ on the global map

Tourism bosses say they spotted the golden opportunity to celebrate the county’s Games prowess after five athletes from the region grabbed golds.

It was launched online yesterday – before Leeds boxer Nicola Adams became the sixth from Yorkshire to win gold – and print copies could be produced after the Games, tourism agency Welcome to Yorkshire said.

The guide pinpoints all 43 of the county’s finest athletes and includes a profile on each. It also features the locations of five golden postboxes, painted in honour of gold medal winners Jessica Ennis, Alistair Brownlee, Ed Clancy, Katherine Copeland and Andy Triggs Hodge from as far south as Sheffield and as far north as Stokesley.

Tourism chiefs decided to design the guide following demand on social networking sites, including Twitter, to know more about the region’s contenders.

Gary Verity, chief executive of Welcome to Yorkshire, said: “Our landscape lends itself to a life outdoors and so we fully expect people inspired by the achievements of our brilliant athletes to come to the county that has competed like a country in London.”

Yorkshire currently has more gold medallists than Canada, South Africa or Japan, meaning if it was a nation, it would sit among the top 15 countries in the international medals table. And as of Wednesday, it had more medals per head than anywhere else in the world – one per 0.71 million people.

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