Yorkshire runs out Olympic winner as Chinese pick their training base

The Chinese track and field team, consisting of the 2004 Olympic 110m hurdles champion Liu Xiang, will hold their-pre-Games training camp at Leeds Metropolitan University next July.

The 50-strong squad is to spend two weeks at the university in the run-up to the Games, which start on July 27, 2012, and in the intervening 17 months have the option to use the facilities for European meetings and Olympic acclimatisation sessions.

It is a partnership Leeds City Council and Yorkshire Gold have been working on for nearly two years and is set to net the region’s economy up to £250,000.

Six other Olympic teams have signed up to stage their preparations in Yorkshire. The Serbian team will be based in Sheffield and Leeds, the Dutch swimmers will train in Leeds, the United States’s diving team will prepare at Sheffield’s Ponds Forge and three West African countries will be based in York, all of which amounts to close to £3m for the region’s economy.

Peter Smith, Leeds Council’s project manager for London 2012, said: “Clearly there are a number of Chinese businesses in the city and it provides a platform for business, for culture and for our own Chinese community to make the most of the most powerful sporting nation, and now the second biggest economy in the world, coming to Leeds to do their training for 2012.

“It’s hard to put a figure on how much it will be worth to the local economy but the Chinese team will be paying the going rate for the facilities, and they want to make sure they are suitably trained, prepared and ready for the Games and we have a key part as a city to play in helping them.”