Nick Westby: Five key ingredients as to why Yorkshire has set Games alight

A haul of five gold medals, two silvers and three bronze has been claimed already by people either born or bred in the great Broad Acres or representing the White Rose in some shape or form.

There could still be more to come, too, with Nicola Adams fighting for gold today and fellow boxer Luke Campbell of Hull guaranteed at least a bronze for reaching the semi-finals.

Doncaster’s Barry Middleton leads the GB men’s hockey team, which includes Sheffield’s Alastair Wilson, into a semi-final with the Netherlands today, while another Doncaster Olympian – Beijing bronze medallist Sarah Stevenson – goes for gold in the taekwondo tomorrow.

With Middlesbrough’s Commonwealth champion Johanna Jackson a strong contender in Saturday’s race walk, the booty heading back up the M1 from the nation’s capital could swell even further.

Interest in the rise of Yorkshire folk began to grow as far back as Super Saturday, when of the incredible six golds won that day by Great Britain, three of them were forged in Yorkshire.

Jessica Ennis, a force of nature from the Steel City, Andrew Triggs Hodge who grew up in Hebden, near Grassington, and Katherine Copeland, who returned home from a spell down south to rediscover her love for rowing back at Tees Rowing Club, all triumphed on a memorable day.

Ed Clancy’s gold and bronze double and the remarkable acheivement of the Brownlee brothers – Alistair winning the triathlon and Jonny a brave bronze – only reinforced what a momentous games Olympians from Yorkshire are having.

For days the county was in the top 10 on the medals table, above the likes of Australia and Japan.

The interest it has generated has been amusing, particularly in the worldwide Twittersphere.

One of many pundits tweeting of Yorkshire’s success this week, I was inundated with responses from places like Canada and Australia – either bristling at such a statistic or inviting me on their radio shows to offer some explanation and defend the county’s honour. For some, Yorkshire’s medal-laden Olympics is due to luck, the aligning of the stars above Bradford and Barnsley, or just the sheer size of the biggest county in England.

But I say hogwash to that and here’s why.

Hard Work

We are a county of grafters, people who are not afraid to put a shift in at the proverbial coal face.

All Olympians work hard, but none more so than the Brownlee brothers, Ennis, Clancy, Armitstead and Hodge for example.

Alistair and Jonny Brownlee train 35 hours a week in wind, rain or snow, and they revel in it.

Coach Toni Minichiello has been working with his protege Ennis for 15 years and to this day marvels at how hard the heptathlon gold medallist works to achieve her goal.

Hodge and Clancy are tireless perfectionists, schooled at the scientific institutes of the British Rowing and British Cycling, where a day’s slouching can result, in the long run, in gold becoming silver.

Talent

The debate between whether Olympic champions are made through nature or nurture is a fascinating one. The best athletes all work hard – even the extraordinarily-gifted Usain Bolt puts the hours in on the track back home in Jamaica.

But there has to be a spark somewhere.

Minichiello saw raw speed in Ennis as an 11-year-old and developed that. The Brownlees have always been strong runners. Our athletes are hard workers, but let’s face it, this is a talented generation.

landscape

Yorkshire is blessed with a wonderful countryside, from the peak district down on the border in the south to the Dales way up north.

The Brownlee brothers and Lizzie Armitstead can often be found running or cycling in the picturesque scenery around West and North Yorkshire.

Speaking after winning gold, Alistair Brownlee jokingly encouraged the organisers of the triathlon in Rio in 2016 to put more hills in the course, to make it resemble the Yorkshire hills he runs on daily.

facilities

Sheffield and Leeds are two major hubs for international venues. The legacy of the World Student Games of 1991 in Sheffield has not just increased taxes, but the superb facilities at Ponds Forge International Swimming Pool, Don Valley Stadium and Sheffield Arena.

City of Sheffield divers train at Ponds Forge, while Ennis’s office is the state-of-the-art English Institute of Sport, which also houses Britain’s boxing, volleyball and Paralympic table tennis squads.

The John Charles Aquatics Centre in Leeds is base to three homegrown Olympians from City of Leeds Diving Club and two women in Rebecca Gallantree and Sarah Barrow who moved north because of the standard of facilities.

Sporting venues at the big universities, Sheffield, Sheffield Hallam, Leeds, Leeds Metropolitan and York also provide athletes with top-class training facilities.

universities

As well as those facilities, universities in Yorkshire offer sporting scholarships and degrees in everything from sports exercise to sports science.

Experts are employed to impart their wisdom to hungry young students who can then go and put what they have learned into practice at the county’s plentiful facilities.

Leeds Met for instance, is becoming a hub for sport as much as Loughborough is in the Midlands.

In short, there are any number of reasons why Yorkshire has been blessed with this successful generation.

It’s a novelty story at London 2012, but at least we’re giving them something to talk about.

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