Olympic 2012 Roadshow arrives in Belfast

Belfast Lord Mayor Pat McCarthy has today re-affirmed the city’s commitment to help make the London Olympics in 2012 the best in the competition's history.

The Lord Mayor was speaking as the ‘Olympics 2012’ Roadshow arrived in Belfast as part of its national tour to promote the world’s biggest sporting showcase.

Councillor McCarthy re-iterated the pledge of his predecessor, Wallace Browne, to give the London Olympics Committee whatever support they needed to make the Games a success, and to ensure that Belfast itself reaped the maximum benefit possible.

With Belfast City Council committed to the development of a new multi-sports arena, and investing heavily in new leisure facilities, the Lord Mayor pointed out that the city was perfectly poised to make a valuable and positive contribution to the Olympic effort.

Paying tribute to what he described as “the tremendous amount of work which already has gone into the preparations for 2012, the Lord Mayor said: “I am delighted to help spread the message to the people of Belfast to ‘Be Part Of 2012’ - ensuring that we here can make the most of the unique opportunities the Games can bring. Today’s Roadshow will encourage local participation in the Games whether hopefully as a participant, volunteer or spectator and will remind our business sector of the numerous opportunities that will come with the hundreds of contracts needed to deliver this huge festival of sport.”

Many of the sportsmen and women from Northern Ireland who have competed in previous Olympics, representing either the United Kingdom or Ireland, joined the Roadshow at Belfast’s City Hall today, led by Northern Ireland’s two most successful athletes: Dame Mary Peters, who won Northern Ireland’s only Olympic gold medal at the 1972 Munich Games, and top Paralympian Angela Hendra, who won seven medals - three silver and three bronze for table tennis and one gold medal for bowls - at four Paralympics between 1972 and 1984.

Also among the guests were boxers Freddie Gilroy and John Caldwell, both bronze medallists at the Melbourne Games of 1956, Jim McCourt, bronze medallist eight years later in Tokyo, and Hugh Russell, another bronze medallist, this time at the 1980 Moscow Olympics.

The guest list was rounded off by 84-year old Ernest McCartney, who was picked to represent Ireland in the swimming pool at the last London Olympics, in 1948, but could not compete because of a nationality ruling by the Olympic Council.

(EF/SP)