Chinese Bounce Into Lisburn For Olympics

China's artistic gymnastics team is to use Northern Ireland as a training base ahead of the London Olympics.

They will be based at the Salto National Gymnastics Centre in Lisburn, Co Antrim which opened in 2007 at a cost of nearly £1.5m.

China's decision to base its gymnasts in Northern Ireland follows that of the Australian boxing team last month.

NI Sports Minister, Sinn Fein's Caral Ni Chuilin welcomed the move and said she hoped it would inspire "young people to get involved in sport".

Alliance Lagan Valley MLA Trevor Lunn welcomed the announcement and the fact they are the second team to decide to make Northern Ireland their base ahead of the Olympic Games.

"This is great news that a second Olympic team has decided to train in Northern Ireland ahead of the Games. Hopefully we will see more international sport stars train here. I hope that this announcement will inspire local children to one day be Olympic stars themselves.

"It is great news for Lisburn both in terms of the money that it will put into the local economy and by the relations that it will create with China.

"I have no doubt that local people will show our renowned hospitality to these athletes and make them feel at home," he said.

Also on Wednesday, links between China and the UK as a whole were shown to be developing as never before with the Prime Minister meeting with a Chinese State Councillor in Downing Street.

The high profile meeting also examined the current world economic crisis with David Cameron and the Councillor Dai Bingguo each hailed a great relationship between the two countries.

Mr Cameron said: "It's a great pleasure to welcome State Councillor Dai to Number 10 Downing Street.

"I think the relationship between Britain and China is at a period of great strength.

"We are partners for growth. We both want to see the complementary strengths of our economies grow together and there's much to talk about there.

"We also have the upcoming G20 where we'll be discussing the stances that we need to take to get the world economy moving to meet all those challenges too," he said.

(BMcC/CD)