Sports

New baths for North Sheffield

Sheffield North Active is going to be a new baths opening  in 2016.  The facility will offer a swimming pool and gym to people in the North of the City and encourage local people to have a more active life style.  The current Chapletown Baths will be closed down.

Sports club refurbished

Sheffield Wheelchair Sports Club has been able to refurbish its snooker and gym rooms after successfully raising £15,000.  The club enables people to play rugby, basketball, archery as well as pool and have a good work out in the gym.

Silicon Valley of Sports revealed

Plans for Sheffield’s Olympic Legacy Park have been unveiled.  Richard Caborn, former MP for Sheffield Central, revealed plans for Sheffield’s “Silicon Valley of Sports”.  The Olympic Legacy Park is going to be built on the Don Valley Stadium site and will cost around 50 million pounds to build. The park will provide permanent home grounds  for the Sheffield Sharks and The Sheffield Eagles.

Kathryn Smiles reports for Sheffield Live!

Great Yorkshire Run

Around 6,000 people took to the streets of Sheffield yesterday for the Great Yorkshire Run.   Athlete, Ross Millington won the 10K, in thirty minutes and twenty seconds. Gemma Steel was the first woman to cross the finish line, for the second year in a row.

Kathryn Smiles reports for Sheffield Live!

Steelers back home

The Sheffield Steelers are back on their home ice.  The Steelers had to start off their season  at ICE Sheffield because the ice at the Motorpoint Arena had melted due to a leak. Today was the  first day the team have been able to  train at their home venue. Sheffield Live! was there to see them and spoke to team owner Tony Smith.

David Richards reports for Sheffield Live!

Sheffield Steelers to play their first game at Ice Sheffield

The Sheffield Steelers will play their first home game against the Fife Flyers at Ice Sheffield this Sunday. This follows work on their home venue, the Motorpoint Arena.

The Steelers have played at the arena for 23 years, but faults with the ice plant meant it needed maintenance. The team had expected the arena to be ready for their first game.

Commercial Manager, Mike O’Connor said: ‘It’s just a little bit frustrating when we can’t fulfil our first game for season ticket holders in the arena.’

He said the team are ready, and lucky to be in Sheffield, where another large ice rink is so close.

Rob O’Shea,  the arena manager at The Motorpoint Arena in Sheffield, said: ‘We are throwing all our resources at the issue. Since a problem was first identified on the 26th August we have been working with the ice engineers to expose and check the pipework.’

Not all the fans will be able to attend the game on Sunday, but they are being reassured that they will see the same number of games allocated on their season tickets.

The Steelers expect to be back in their home venue next week.

Watching The Tour

By Sam Newton

As Sheffield prepares to welcome the world’s largest sporting event into the City, organisers have advised spectators to plan ahead in order to get the most out of their day.

Hundreds of thousands of cycling enthusiasts are expected to descend on the City next week for the Tour de France which has gained a worldwide appeal since its formation in 1903.

Spectators will have the opportunity to savour the full race experience on 6th July at special designated Spectator Hubs along the route, with each hub equipped with a live coverage screen, refreshments, entertainment and facilities. Admission to the hubs is free as organisers set to make this the most inclusive Tour to date.

Councillor Isobel Bowler, the City Council Cabinet Member for Culture, Sport and Leisure said: “we aim to provide a safe, enjoyable and well-managed experience for all spectators when the Tour arrives in Sheffield. The spectator hubs will be set up along the course as well as in the city centre and we have worked with local community groups to ensure as many people as possible are involved”

Two official hubs will be in place at Don Valley Grass Bowl and Oughtibridge, alongside 4 additional hubs at High Bradfield, Abbeyfield Park, Wincobank Common, and Meadowhall.

Activities on offer at the hubs include free entry to the first ever Bradfield Beer Festival at High Bradfield. The Greentop Circus performances at Abbeyfield Park. Drumming workshops from group Unbeatable Energy at Wincobank Common and a Fan Fest at Meadowhall.

Full details of the Tour route, road closures and other important information can be found at www.welcometosheffield.co.uk/tdf2014, while the interactive map at www.letouryorkshire.com/travel can be utilised to help spectators further plan their day. Further guidance can be found on Twitter @TdFYorksTravel

Academic Tour de France

By Sam Newton

With just under a month remaining until the Tour de France proudly rattles through Yorkshire, academics from the University of Sheffield have created an innovative website designed to offer a fresh perspective on the world’s most prestigious cycling event.

This will be the first time the Tour has come to Yorkshire and the University of Sheffield are eager to celebrate it. Their new interactive website – Deconstructing the Tour – gives an academic viewpoint of the Tour de France. It drawing on the event’s diverse history and evolution through video clips, sound files and blog posts.

Perhaps owing his career to the Tour, the first set of videos on the site comes from Emeritus Professor of French David Walker. A cycling enthusiast from a young age, Walker became interested in the Tour and began learning the vocabulary of the event, alongside taking a serious interest in France’s language and culture.

Noting the importance of the event in France, Professor Walker said “The Tour de France is significant as a cultural event in France and dates back before the invention of modern bikes. “ Walker continues, “It can initially be traced back to young apprentice artisans travelling around France to work with skilled masters in their field to learn their craft. This was a process known as the ‘Tour De France”.

Running between Saturday 5 July and Sunday 27 July 2014, the 101st Tour de France will cover 3,656 kilometres split into 21 stages, with the 2nd stage culminating at Sheffield’s Motorpoint Arena on July 6th after a 201 kilometre flat race from York.

The Deconstructing the Tour website will be regularly updated with new content between now and the start of the race, and can be found at www.deconstructingthetour.group.shef.ac.uk/

Bents Green Pub Puts goes distance

By Andrew Tildesley

The staff and regulars at The Hammer and Pincers of Bents Green have hit on an innovative exercising method of raising money for charity. This Saturday they will be cycling the full length of the Yorkshire leg of the Tour de France on a static bike!

Manager Anthony Crawford will be cycling in between shifts he will be joined by both pub regulars and 9 members of his staff, all with the aim of raising over £1000 for Cancer Research. Taking turns on the static bike to cycle at a steady speed of 20km per hour, and beginning at 4am, they aim to tackle the 390kn route of the first two stages of the Tour de France in just 20 hours, with the aim of being finished by midnight.

Local Bents Green businesses, including Cannisters Butchers, Le Crunch and Bents Home and Garden, have been happy to jump on board with sponsorship and the fundraiser is intended to be a community event, with a barbecue and bouncy castle laid on (British summer weather permitting!).

Hammer and Pincers’ manager Crawford said, “We’re a small part of a larger company, Mitchells and butler, which has raised over £34,000 for cancer Research already, we hope to do our own small part.”

Please share your thoughts on Sheffield’s ‘great outdoors’

_1040946Sheffield is often described as the greenest city in England, including one third of the Peak District National Park; when in Sheffield you are never far from parks, woodland or countryside.

Now a new piece of research, being undertaken on behalf of Sheffield City Council and Creative Sheffield by Sheffield Hallam University’s Sport Industry Research Centre, is being undertaken to asses the value of Sheffield’s outdoor economy – and your views are invited!

You can help to assess the importance of Sheffield’s ‘Great Outdoors’ to you and your family by completing the quick survey here before 6pm on Sunday, 1st June – it will only take a few minutes and you can be entered into a prize draw for £100 cash.

The survey is for everybody to complete – whether you participate in outdoor recreational activities or not. It will only take 2 minutes; your responses are confidential and will only be used for this research. You will only be contacted if you are the prize winner.  The deadline for survey completion is Sunday 1st June.

What next?

  • Take the survey here
  • Maxine Gregory of the Sport Industry Research Centre (SIRC) will be discussing the survey, the wider research and the work of the SIRC on Sheffield Live’s Business Live programme on Friday 30th May from 9am-10am. Listen live via 93.2fm or our live stream, or get the podcast afterwards here.