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Impression of the Cardiff Whitewater Centre

Cardiff hopes to host Olympic Canoeists

Jul 4 2008 by David James, South Wales Echo 

SOUTH Wales’ hopes of hosting Olympic competitors before the London Games in 2012 have been boosted by the news work on a canoeing course will begin this August.
Cardiff council and the Welsh Assembly Government have finalised the funding for an Olympic standard canoeing and white-water rafting centre at the International Sports Village, Cardiff Bay. The centre will be the UK’s first Olympic-standard artificial course using pumped water and is expected to cost £13.3m, some £8.7m of which is being provided by the Assembly.
Richard Harvey, chief executive of the Welsh Canoeing Association, said: “This is wonderful news for Welsh sport. This centre will be of national importance to canoeing in the UK. The centre will cater for a number of canoeing and kayaking disciplines on both the recreational and competitive sides.”
It is hoped that the centre could help attract competitors for the 2012 Olympics considering using South Wales as a training base.
The centre has been designed by French firm Hydrostadium, which has designed courses for the last three Olympic games in Sydney, Athens and Beijing. A spokeswoman for the city council said the centre would be built in concrete with moveable plastic barriers to alter the difficulty of the course. It is expected to be completed in late 2009 and meet all requirements for white-water rafting and canoeing.
Councillor Nigel Howells, the city’s executive member for leisure, said: “This venue will offer-state-of-the-art facilities and will further enhance Cardiff’s reputation as a city of genuine world-class sporting excellence – a real capital for sport.
“The fact that it will be of Olympic standard means that the centre will hopefully play an important role in the run-up to and during the 2012 games.”
Welsh Canoeing’s Mr Harvey said the course would also help train the next generation of Olympic athletes.
He said: “The adjustable nature of the course means that a wide range of users can be catered for, ranging from novices to elite performance athletes. The production of this much-needed facility will lead to enhancements in the development of grass-roots participation and yield greater success in international competition.”

Impression of the Cardiff Whitewater Centre

(Above) Course Plan  (Below) Development Modelling

Sydney 2000 Olympic Course

Athens 2004 Olympic Course

Have you heard about what could happen to the HPP whitewater course in

Nottingham?

Plans are nearly finalised for a £1.2m investment into the whitewater course at Holme Pierrepont in

Nottingham. They’re shutting the course for three months from November this year to get started. Major changes to the river channel will change the face of the course forever. It’s a fantastic opportunity, but there’s a problem.

No-one’s asked for our input.

Have a look at the most recent plans we’ve seen, developed by the World Class team:

The back channels and pools have been filled in completely with concrete, and the gradient and depth of the course levelled out to make way for more plastic rocks that only create eddies. This means…  

• No waves or holes for groups of whitewater improvers
• Not enough depth to get your playboat vertical
• No power to the features for dipping raft tubes
• Shallow ledges to slam the stern of your wild water racer.
• And a shallow, narrow river channel to punish the shins of anyone practicing safety and rescue.

We’re seriously concerned. Without asking the people who use the course day-in day-out, who work there and who travel the length and breadth of the country to visit it, this could be £1.2m cast to the wind. It could turn the high-volume, deep-pool HPP into a shallow-channel like the Teesside white water course.

Even worse, it could leave HPP a costly white elephant. When the Broxbourne course opens in 2010, the World Class slalom paddlers will desert

Nottingham. And if the changes mean less people paying to raft, canoe and kayak, Nottingham City Council will face a stark decision. Do they keep the course open and lose money with every day of operation? Or do they just shut it?

Ill communication

The prospect of huge investment in the course has been rumbling on for a while now. At the HPP users’ forum on 27th May, the World Class team assured us they’d consider the broader needs and interest of the course’s users. They told us we’d be part of the next stage of the feasibility process. We hadn’t been involved in the process up to that point, but this newfound openness boded well for the future.

Then, last week, a casual conversation with one of the slalom paddlers shot down these hopes. They told us the course is shutting in November for three months. And they’re unveiling finished plans on August 11th. That’s a week’s time!

A course for all

All course users NEED to have their say on major changes like this. We want to be involved. And we need to make it clear that changes on this scale can’t happen without everyone’s input.

This isn’t a slight on slalom or slalomists. HPP is fundamental to

UK slalom and to GB slalom’s global success. It’s great to see enormous groups of juniors out training on weekday evenings. We don’t want to lose that. And we’re supporting every paddle stroke our team make out in

Beijing right now.

But as soon as these changes are made to Holme Pierrepont, our World Class athletes will have the Broxbourne 2012 site, built just for them. All we ask is that before making any changes, the course designers take into account all river users – just like the developments at Teesside, the Washburn,

Cardiff and on the Wye. We need to look outside the BCU World Class slalom office if we’re going to find inspiration for a course to last another 30 years – so we can’t make any hasty changes until we know they’ll work for everyone.

We need your help

I’m helping out with communications for a loose group of water users with real concerns about the course’s future. If you want to help us put forward views to represent water users outside the BCU World Class slalom office, there’s one single thing you can do to help. And it’ll take under a minute.

Send us an email

It’s the single most powerful thing you can do to help. We’ve been talking to a million different organisations – the BCU, World Class, Sport England, Nottinghamshire County Council, Leisure Connection and more – and we need to be able to show broad support with a stack of emails. Then we might need to get back to you and ask for further support. From what I’ve been told, we need 280 BCU member pledges – but I’ll confirm that number during the week when I’ve checked my facts.

Send your mail to hpp.concern@googlemail.com. And, if you’re an individual member (basic or comprehensive) of the ECA/BCU, WCA, SCA or CANI, please, please include your full name and BCU number: