Manchester 2002 has two new chairmen and a new chief executive

Charles Allen, chief executive of the Granada Group and one of the UK’s most successful business leaders is chairman with international and national responsibilities. Mr Allen has held financial and management positions in several major companies before taking over the Granada Group. Accepting the appointment he said: “The Commonwealth Games is an international event that will be superb for the whole nation. I am delighted and excited to become chairman and look forward to working with the Government, Manchester 2002, the City Council and with everyone who will share in this vibrant experience.”

Rodger Pannone is Senior Partner of one of the country’s leading law firms, which has its headquarters in Manchester. His role will be to ensure the whole of the region is involved in the Games and will benefit from a lasting legacy from hosting the event. Mr Pannone was president of the Law Society in 1993-4 and adviser to the Lord Chancellor on the Civil Justice Review.

Frances Done, formerly chief executive and treasurer of Rochdale Council, is the new chief executive for the Games. She previously worked as an accountant for KPMG and was chair of Manchester

City Council’s Finance Committee in the 1980′s. Speaking about the appointment Frances Done said: “This is a once-in-a lifetime opportunity and I am delighted to be taking it on. Manchester is known throughout the world for Manchester United, but I think the games will build on that and help put us and the North West on the global sports map. It will also leave a legacy of some excellent sports venues.”

Manchester 2002 team up with United Utilities

United Utilities, one of the North West’s leading companies, has given the Games a massive seal of approval after agreeing to back the 2002 event. As part of the sponsorship deal, which was signed at the Manchester Evening News Arena in January, United Utilities has bought 10,000 tickets for Games events. These will be given away to community groups to enable people across the region to experience this once-in-a-lifetime sporting festival.

John Roberts, chief executive of Warrington based United Utilities, the parent company of North West Water and Norweb, said: “This will be the biggest ever sporting event in the UK and the biggest in the world in 2002.

“It is fantastic that it is being held in the North West and our support falls neatly into line with the company’s policy of supporting local communities. I’m sure other North West and national businesses will follow suit in giving their support to an event that involves the whole country.”

The sponsorship deal also brings a range of other benefits to the Games organisers including the hosting of a major exhibition of sporting photography, the running of a series of information seminars for regional businesses and funding towards the Games Legacy Programme.

The Rt. Hon Ian McCartney has also brought the welcome news that the Government will provide substantial financial backing to underwrite the Opening and Closing Ceremonies in 2002. This will ensure Manchester can put on a show worthy of a global television audience, one that will demonstrate the very best of British creativity and style. Mr McCartney also confirmed that the Games will be the centrepiece of national celebrations for HM The Queen’s Golden Jubilee Year, which falls in 2002.

Progress on the venues

Prime Minister Tony Blair unveiled the foundation stone for the City of Manchester Stadium at Eastlands in December.

Groundworks on the site are now complete and piling works are underway. Laing is due to start above ground construction work on the 38,000-seat stadium shortly.

Detailed design work is currently being carried out on the Sports Institute, a critical component of the Sport City development, with a planning application due to be submitted later in the year. The Institute will include the Indoor Tennis Centre, the National Squash Centre and a permanent outdoor athletics track. Work is also progressing on the associated commercial and leisure developments planned on adjacent land.

The Manchester 50 Pools on Oxford Road, close to the University, is set to be completed this summer. The £32.2 million complex will be the venue for swimming, synchronised swimming and diving events during the Games. Manchester 50 Pools have been designed to be one of the country’s most comprehensive swimming facilities. There will be two 50-metre pools; one with eight lanes for competition and one with four lanes for training, a diving pool and a leisure pool with flumes, water slides and bubble pools. Permanent seating for 1,500 will be boosted to around 2,500 in 2002.

Planning permission has been granted for the creation of four flat bowling greens at Heaton Park, which will provide the venue for the Lawn Bowling event. Work is due to start on these at the end of May, with the turf to be laid in September. The greens should be available for use from July 2001.

On the starting blocks

Manchester 2002 has developed an innovative sporting programme, in close consultation with sport’s governing bodies, to optimise the success of the Games. Setting a new precedent, athletics will begin the programme, ensuring public attention is secured immediately with a very strong first weekend of sport. The pace will continue with a constant series of finals on a daily basis, the climax to the Games being the hugely popular Rugby Sevens competition. More than a million tickets in all will be available for events in the Games programme.

The Games will take on special significance falling as they do in the Queen’s Golden Jubilee year, and this will form a key element of the celebrations marking the event.

Running for ten days from Friday 26th July to Sunday 4th August, the action will be focused on fifteen venues, four of which will be within the Sportcity complex at Eastlands.

Preparatory work at the site has been underway since the beginning of the year and the beginning of 2000 will see the start of substructure development.

At the heart of the complex is the new City of Manchester Stadium, the framework of which will start to rise above the Eastlands site in spring. It looks set to transform the skyline of East Manchester.

The 38,000 seater stadium will have a cantilevered, cable-stayed roof with a dozen 57-metre masts supported by huge towers, dwarfing the ones at Wembley. A suspended rim will both shelter seated spectators and provide a high-tech sound board to amplify the roar of the crowd.

From 2003, the stadium will become home to Manchester City Football Club once the specialised running track has been removed. The two ends will be built out at the same time to increase seating capacity to 48,000.

Alongside the stadium there will be a new squash centre and an athletics arena with an additional outdoor warm-up track. A £3.5m indoor tennis initiative, complete with outdoor courts will be located on land to the north of the Ashton Canal.

Already within the Sportcity complex is the Manchester Velodrome – the National Cycling Centre. Developed as a joint venture between the English Sports Council, Manchester City Council and the British Cycling Federation, the centre is one of only two sports facilities in the country to have been awarded British Olympic Association Accreditation – the other one being Lilleshall in Staffordshire.

A commercial belt of restaurants, leisure attractions and a mix of shops will complete the complex.

Assisting at Sportcity and the other venues to ensure the Games run smoothly will be a 15,000 strong army of volunteers. A recruitment programme is due to start at the beginning of 2001

Coverage

BBC Television has won the rights to be host broadcaster of the Games following agreement with the Manchester 2002 Organising Committee. The announcement was made in Fiji during Manchester 2002′s presentation to the Commonwealth Games Federation General Assembly.

Mike Miller, controller of TV Sport for the BBC said: “The scale of the Commonwealth Games is second only to the Olympics and is one of the most popular multicultural events on British television. Only the BBC has the resources to partner the Organising Committee and we are looking forward to another landmark event for BBC Sport.

“We will be pulling out all the technological stops for this event which will introduce many people in this country to the huge benefits of digital and interactive television and radio.”

The projected cumulative global television audience is more than one billion people. As host broadcaster the BBC will transmit pictures around the world and also provide facilities for other broadcasters who wish to carry their own additional coverage and commentary

The Sports and Venues

Opening and Closing Ceremonies: City of Manchester Stadium, Sportcity

Aquatics: Manchester Swimming Pool Complex

Athletics: City of Manchester Stadium, Sportcity

Badminton: Bolton Arena, Bolton

Bowls: Heaton Park

Boxing: Preliminaries – Wythenshawe Forum

Finals: – Manchester Evening News Arena

Cycling: National Cycling Centre, Sportcity

Gymnastics (Artistic): G-MEX Centre

Judo: G-MEX Centre

Shooting: National Shooting Centre, Bisley

Squash: National Squash Centre, Sportcity

Table tennis: Indoor Tennis Initiative, Sportcity

Triathlon: Salford Quays

Weight-lifting: Royal Northern College of Music

Wrestling: G-MEX Centre

Team Sports

Hockey: To be confirmed

Netball: Manchester Evening News Arena

Rugby: 7′s Stadium, Sportcity

The 48,000 seater stadium will be the centrepiece of Sportcity, which will become one of, if not the most, significant sports facility complexes in the country. The key focus for the Sportcity development will be the sports facilities which will serve to stimulate the regeneration of the Eastlands site and wider East Manchester area. The other sports facilities will comprise the UK Sports Institute, which will be the hub of the UKSI North West and an ITI Tennis Centre. The Velodrome completes the range of sports facilities within Sportcity.

The provisional programme for the Games, which will be held over ten days from July 25 to August 4 2002, has now been proposed by the organising committee, ready for approval by the General Assembly of the Commonwealth Games Federation in October.

Three team sports and 14 individual events are planned as follows
Team events – netball, rugby sevens and hockey. Individual events
Aquatics, Gymnastics, Table tennis, Athletics, Judo, Triathlon, Badminton, Bowls, Weightlifting, Boxing, Shooting, Wrestling, Cycling, Squash

Manchester has also decided to include sports for disabled athletes, honouring the spirit of the decision made by the CGF to include events for disabled athletes from 2006. Eight events will be selected from a list of 12 recently agreed with the International Paralympic Committee for disabled athletes.

Participants in the Games will be housed at an athletes village at Manchester University’s Fallowfield campus. It has a capacity of 4,850, although there may be potential to include additional accommodation nearby for officials . A second village for participants in the shooting competition at Bisley will hold approximately 400 competitors and officials, bringing the total to 5,250. This compares with 5,065 at the Kuala Lumpur Games in 1998.

Sir Rodney Walker has accepted the post of chairman of Manchester 2002 Ltd, the subsidiary company charged with delivering the Games. He will also be vice chairman of Manchester Commonwealth Games Ltd. The former Rugby League forward and Yorkshire shot-put champion is chairman of the UK Sports Council and since October 1998 has chaired the Financial and Business Review Committee for the Games

During the closing ceremony, watched by a TV audience of around 500 million, the ‘Friendly Games’ were passed on to the people of Manchester. The focal point of the 17th Commonwealth Games will be Sportcity, the biggest sporting development in British history. Central to Sportcity, located in Eastlands in east Manchester, will be the 48,000-capacity Millennium Stadium. Just a mile from the City Centre, the £90 million stadium will transform the City’s landscape with its distinctive circular form and 75 metre-high masts.

The Sports Council has contributed £77 million of the £90 million needed to build the stadium with the outstanding £13 million provided by the City Council. The stadium will be built in two phases: 21,000 covered seats will be ready for the Commonwealth Games athletics events in 2002, and the second phase will involve the expansion of the stadium to a seated capacity of 48,000.

Manchester City Football Club will take over the stadium when the Games have finished if shareholders and fans agree to the move. Sportcity will also include a new £3.5 million Indoor Tennis Initiative, the existing Velodrome and a Sports Academy dedicated to nurturing young sporting talent throughout the North West.

The Academy will be a world class venue, boasting a range of facilities including:
- A large sports hall which can be sub- divided into four stand-alone sports halls.
- A Gymnastics High Performance Centre.
- A Sports Injury and Sports Medicine facility.
- A floodlit all-weather athletics track with indoor athletic facilities.
- A floodlit all-weather sports pitch.
- Accommodation and training facilities for the nation’s elite sports squads.
- A resource centre for local clubs/leagues and regional governing bodies.

Sportcity will be one of numerous Commonwealth Games venues throughout the City. The City Centre will be home to boxing, gymnastics and netball, which will be shared between the G-Mex Centre and Europe’s largest indoor area, the Manchester Evening News Arena. Weightlifting events will be held in the Royal Northern College of Music. A new state-of-the-art aquatics centre, one of the most comprehensive swimming facilities in Europe, being built on Oxford Road, will host the watersport competitions.

Manchester’s accessibility and high quality public transport system were key factors in its successful bid to host the Games. Most visitors will arrive in the city via Manchester airport, which will have a second operational runway by 2002 and will be handling more than 25 million passengers a year. Once in the city people can move easily between all venues using public transport, including the Metrolink tram system.

The Manchester 2002 Commonwealth Games will be more than just a sporting event, it will ensure the longterm regeneration and sustainability of East Manchester and enhance Manchester’s international standing and profile

Due to previous developments, the site at Eastlands presents difficult ground conditions. The enabling work involves remediation of the site, service diversions and bulk earthworks and will have to be carried out before construction of the stadium can start in the autumn. With a 1,000-day delivery plan, completion of the stadium should be achieved by December 2001. Eastlands, which already houses the National Cycling Centre, will also become home to the North West regional sports institute, retail, hotel and commercial facilities, served by an extension to the Metrolink.

Held over ten days, from July 25 to August 4 2002, the Games will be the largest sporting event ever held in Britain, attracting up to 5,250 competitors and officials. It is vitally important for the Commonwealth Games Movement and the future reputation of Manchester and the UK as a venue for major international events that the City hosts the best possible Games.

The Games are growing: the number of participating athletes increased in Kuala Lumpur and will increase again in 2002. Funding for the Games will come from a variety of sources, including sponsorship, broadcasting rights and ticket sales. A final decision over the sports to be included is to be resolved by the summer, ready for approval by the Commonwealth Games Federation in October. To further the wider regeneration of east Manchester the City Council has now been afforded Pathfinder Status in the New Deal for Communities Programme for a bid centred around the Beswick and Openshaw area and a bid to the Government’s Single Regeneration Budget Round 5 has also been encouraged in East Manchester.

These and other initiatives, such as the existing Eastside regeneration activity, a proposed Education Action Zone bid for East Manchester, and associated private sector investment, could see a total investment plan of well over £400 million for east Manchester over the next four years. These regeneration plans to transform the area will be overseen by the East Manchester Regeneration Agency – a task force comprising The Regional Development Agency, Manchester City Council and English Partnerships.