North 'Losing 2012 Olympic Race'

News that Northern Ireland hasn't been selected to host training for any of the teams competing in the 2012 Olympic Games has angered a local MLA.

It has emerged that 27 venues in the North are included on a list of suitable sites for Olympic and Paralympic training camps and yet not one of the 51 teams so far registered have signed up for any of them.

This led to Ulster Unionist Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure (DCAL) Spokesman David McNarry to slam Sport NI for its failure to attract a single overseas team to base their pre-Olympic training camp in Northern Ireland.

In September, DCAL announced it had to make savings of approximately £17m from next year through to 2015 - cuts that are partly to blame for the failure to attract atheletes.

The Strangford Assemblyman said: "For the Chief Executive of Sport NI to cite Northern Ireland's image as the reason why teams competing in the 2012 Olympics have not chosen to base themselves here is merely seeking to mask Sport NI's own failures.

"His comments give credibility and publicity to the threat posed by dissident terrorists, and I have to say that for people to avoid Northern Ireland due to a perception of danger is moist unfair given the higher murder rate and incidences of gang violence in London itself," said the MLA.

"In my opinion, Sport NI is hiding their own inadequacies. They promised us an Olympic pool in time for the Olympics and they failed.

"They said that some of the smaller countries would be attracted to use Northern Ireland as a training base and once again they failed.

"They have blown it and should look to themselves for the reasons why," he fumed, noting that other regions of the UK interested in playing a part in the United Kingdom's Olympic Games started preparing and planning immediately after Beijing: "Clearly our people didn't even manage to get to the starting blocks."

Yesterday, Sport NI Chief Executive Eamonn McCartan said that NI's image was one of the reasons why teams competing in the 2012 Olympics have so far not chosen it as a training base.

"It wasn't that long ago that we had two young soldiers killed, we had a policeman killed and recently there was a report identifying the number of dissident issues that have occurred within the last year," he said.

(BMcC/GK)