Olympia builds on University’s sporting prowess

Teesside is making a powerful bid to turn itself into one of the country’s premier universities for sporting prowess with the latest addition to the campus in Middlesbrough.

The £6.5m Olympia Building on Victoria Road, just behind the University’s showpiece Learning Resource Centre, includes a number of specialist sport science laboratories as well as squash courts and indoor and outdoor pitches for team sports.

During the official opening, the Prime Minister will see inside the temperature-controlled environmental chamber, used for both teaching & research and helping athletes to acclimatise themselves to taking part in sporting activities in very hot or very cold temperatures.

Meeting One: Martin Pout, Senior Lecturer, Sport & Exercise, will greet the Prime Minister and introduce him to disabled athlete Sarah Loughran

Martin Pout says:

"The new laboratory will give Teesside the cutting edge and provide our staff and students with an excellent research resource. We will be able to control the environment from -20ºC to +40ºC with pinpoint accuracy and simulate the climate of almost any country in the world. This will enable us to 'transport' our sportsmen and women around the world in temperature terms - from running in Athens to climbing a mountain in the Artic. It is an amazing facility."

Meeting Two: Jocelyn Tantawy, section leader for Sport & Exercise at the University, will introduce the Mr Blair to another Olympic hopeful Anthony Borsumato on a treadmill.

Jocelyn Tantawy says: "The University's new centre for sport, the Olympia Building, will enable us to develop our athletes, particularly those from the region, to their maximum potential so that they can compete on the world stage."

Meeting Three: Matt Portas, Senior Lecturer, Sport & Exercise, will welcome the Prime Minister to the Biomechanics Laboratory, where students will be taking part in an experiment to discover whether stretching exercises just before 'ballistic' sporting activities, such as sprinting or gymnastic, reduce rather than enhance an athlete's performance. This overturns previous advice to athletes.

Under Matt's supervision, two Sports Therapy students, Kathryn Rennie, 20, and Darren Cooper, 21, will do a stretching exercise just before Darren does vertical jumping on an aluminum force plate. This will be recorded online and via video equipment, and compared with Darren's earlier performance - minus the stretching exercise build-up. Assisting will be Sport & Exercise MPhil student, Adam Stops at the computer, with researcher, Allistair McRobert, behind the camera.

Adam, 23, graduated from Teesside with a BSc (Hons) degree in Sport & Exercise, and is now studying for his Master of Philosophy degree (MPhil). In summer 2002, he worked in the biomechanics department at the prestigious Institute of Sport in Canberra, Australia, for three months. He worked with international athletes from various nations during their training for the Commonwealth Games. He says: "The resources in our Olympia Building here on Teesside compare extremely well to the Institute of Sport."

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