Spring 2012 - Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council

Making 2012 a year to
With the countdown to the Olympic Torch
Relay well and truly underway, the borough is
gearing up to celebrate the Games and leave
a lasting legacy.
Brighton Hill School pupils were the first to try out the new
Down Grange running track
The council’s focus for summer 2012 will be the London 2012 Olympic Torch Relay
coming to Basingstoke, welcoming the Olympic Flame on behalf of all the communities
in the borough, on Wednesday 11 July. Sebastian Coe, Chair of LOCOG, said: “I want to
encourage people across Basingstoke and Deane to start planning how they can be part
of this once in a lifetime opportunity.”
The London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games (LOCOG) will
be announcing the exact route through the town this month (March). People will be able to
find out more about the last time the Olympic Torch came through Basingstoke in 1948 at
the exhibition INSPIRE! Hampshire’s Stories of the Olympic Games at the Willis Museum
in Market Place, Basingstoke, from 2 June to 15 September.
Find out more about the torch relay and where to view it at
www.basingstoke.gov.uk/go/torch.
Five Gold Rings
The Hockey Festival is the biggest Olympic project in the borough supported by the council’s
Five Gold Rings initiative, encouraging community organisations to organise activities. Other
community projects across the borough supported by this scheme include:
•
Castle Hill Junior School’s Olympic Values project with visits from Olympians and
opportunities for pupils to try different sports and a sponsored Marathon
•
Buckskin
•
Basingstoke
and Worting Community Association’s ‘Going For Gold’ Community
Garden outside The Ridgeway Centre
Consortium’s Olympic themed enterprise challenges for secondary
school and college pupils, focusing on language and culture, nutrition and athletes
and design and marketing.
To find out more about the Five Gold Rings project see
www.basingstoke.gov.uk/go/fivegoldrings
(Left to right) Chris Instone,
Ruth Crawford and Stuart Coleshill
Leaving
a legacy
The council has invested £1 million in
improving its main outdoor sports complex
at Down Grange. This has included bringing
the athletics track up to high standard,
making it attractive as an Olympic training
camp. Basingstoke and Mid Hants Athletics
Club will now be hosting a major regional
competition there.
In the run up to the Torch Relay, the Down
Grange Complex will host the Basingstoke
Mixed Hockey Festival (our cover story) for
the first time in nine years. When last held in
2003, the festival saw around 500 people
enjoying over 200 games of hockey. But the
festival didn’t run again after the club moved.
Now the Hockey Festival is back, running
from Friday 6 July to Sunday 8 July 2012.
The event marks the return of the club,
which runs a total of seventeen teams from
under eights to veterans, to its old home at
the Maidenwell Pavilion at Down Grange.
This follows the club’s makeover of the old
Clubhouse Bar and the borough council’s
investment in a new Astroturf pitch and
refurbishment of the shower and changing
facilities at the Maidenwell Pavilion.
The pavilion upgrade includes a new entrance
and lift to make it more accessible to all.
Club Chairman Miranda Smith said:
“We’re delighted to be re-launching the
Festival after a nine-year break. As well as our
partnership with the borough council, we’re
also partnering with Great Britain Hockey as
part of their ‘Hockey Nation’ programme.”
For more information about
the hockey festival see
www.basingstoke-hockey.com.
6 Basingstoke & Deane Today