well when 90% of the facilities are in London what do you expect
Absolute bunkum, you walked right into that one Garry!
In fact a very high proportion of our athletes have had to travel long distances and often stay away for protracted periods for their training. Since Herne Hill has been in a broken down state for years, only re-opened a few months ago and still poor, all our highly successful cyclists have had to do all their training at the Manchester velodrome. Shooting is at Bisley, white water canoeing far away in various locations like Wales, even much rowing well away from London. The same for sailing of course. With the old National Sports Centre at Crystal Palace long in a broken down and neglected state and beyond fixing for this Olympics, London has had no Olympic standard swimming and diving facilities, so all the serious swimming and diving training has been in other parts of the country. Even our running facilities have had to have some hasty patching up to make them even usable in many cases, none of them really to Olympic standard.
Of course now we have belatedly gained good facilities for the future, but as they've only just opened they've played very little part in the London athlete's success which has been down to their preparedness to travel and stay away in very many cases over a number of years.
So nice try Garry, but failed, the amazing successes of London athletes are a very real indicator of Londoners quality and certainly not their facilities which have long been a disgrace.
P.S. Coincidentally Radio 4 has just been interviewing athlete's parents and this subject of London's lack of facilities has been prominent. Mothers spoke of their frustration at living close to the Crystal Palace Sports Centre and the Herne Hill cycle track which have both been unusable due to their broken down state, as a result having to travel long distances for training.
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