Games’ lasting legacy success
EVERYONE remembers the success of the Commonwealth Games in 2014.
The city became alive with an electric atmosphere and many of us were inspired after watching first-class athletes compete on our doorstep. Even I took up running.
Its lasting legacy seems to be continuing with three of the main venues having 6.7m attendances since the Games.
Inspiring others into sports, and in particular young people, is invaluable to the city’s future and wellbeing.
COMMONWEALTH Games venues in Glasgow have been used millions of times since they opened, a report shows.
Three of the main venues for the 2014 Games, the Emirates Arena and Sit Chris Hoy Velodrome, Tollcross International Swimming Centre and Scotstoun Sports Campus between have seen 6.7m attendances since they either opened or re-opened after refurbishment for the Games.
Scotstoun Sports campus which includes the athletics track, rugby pitch used by Glasgow Warriors and the leisure centre, swimming pool and badminton centre attracted more than three million attendances with 9000 regular Glasgow Club users.
More than 2.2milion attendances were recorded at Tollcross Swimming Centre, which is home to the City of Glasgow swim team.
It is used regularly by almost 7000 Glasgow Club Users.
The Emirates Arena and Sir Chris Hoy Velodrome has been attended more than 1.m times including 20,000 every year at the velodrome and 3800 Glasgow Club users.
The figures are revealed in a paper to the Scottish Parliament Health and Sport Committee on participation in sport.
As well as community use, the venues have been used for major international sporting events including the Davis Cup in tennis and the IPC World Swimming Championships.
The report by Glasgow Sport, the council-owned leisure company, stated: “Commonwealth Games venues, new and re-furbished, have become an unparalleled legacy for Glasgow and Scotland leaving Glasgow with some of the best sporting amenities in Europe.
“Since 2009, £196m has been invested in sports facilities across the city including those which served as Games venues. All sports facilities were complete and in use by the community more than a year before the Games. Glasgow adopted a deliberate policy of capital investment in the most deprived areas of the city.”
The report also note barriers preventing people volunteering with sports clubs to increase participation in community sports across the city.
Among the main reasons were lack of available time, lack of understanding of the roles to get involved in and being unable to afford extra expense that might be incurred.
Also misunderstandings about disclosure checks and a lack of qualifications was also seen to be holding people back for volunteering.
Glasgow Sport said it was taking actions to overcome the barriers and enable more people to get involved with community groups.
The actions include encouraging clubs to advertise flexible hours of shorter time commitments. It was also encouraging the recruitment of local volunteers to keep travel costs down and was offering coach education and training course.
Information workshops are available to understand the system of disclosure checks to work with children.
Glasgow Sport said it has launched the Volunteer Bureau to help people sign up and access vacancies across the city and for sports clubs to recruit and co-ordinate volunteers.
It said there are 2592 volunteers registered with the bureau who have clocked up more than 16,000 hours volunteering.