In October 2006 Kev Smith, representing the
GYM uk Ltd, approached Sandie Webb (chairman of Chippenham
Town Football Club) and proposed an idea that Chippenham
could, with current resources host an Olympic team to train
prior to moving to London to the Olympic village to compete.
From this idea a consortium of local businesses was spawned
with meetings held monthly initially. The Olympic web site
asked for electronic applications by the end of Jan 07. This
tight deadline was met with the consortium being made up
of The GYM uk, Stanley Park, The Olympiad, The Wiltshire
School of Gymnastics and Lackham Equine College.
On 20 Apr 07 the consortium hosted a visit by Team South West, (a department of the London Organizing Committee Olympic Games (LOCOG)), to ascertain how credible our application was and filter applications in the South West prior to the main filter board in London later in the year.
The visit went well and our bid was very credible. At the end of the visit we were told we may approach Countries direct, so long as Team South West was kept in the loop. We then looked at the sports we could host and aligned them against the last Olympic Games list of countries, this gave us 18 prospective countries to aim our bid at. We then wrote a Generic letter outlining our facilities and sent it to all 18 countries. Armenia was the first to acknowledge receipt followed by interest from North Korea which has gained National media interest.
The timeline since then, has been thus:
07 June 07 - Gazette and Herald story about the interest Korea have shown into coming to Chippenham in 2012
08 June 07 - Story picked up by Western Daily
Press who run a full page North Korean reporter asking questions
at the Town Hall
09 June 07 - Guardian picked up the story and did a full page
09 June 07 - PM on Radio 4 run an interview
09 June 07 - Five Live run an interview
12 June 07 - World Service run an interview
12 June 07 - BBC Points West pick it up and film in Chippenham with Laurie Brown, Japan TV have also expressed an interest in filming if anyone from North Korea comes to Chippenham. Contact at the Japanese embassy has asked to be kept informed
19 June 07 - Phone call from Glynn Ford, MEP from Gloucester who said that he has strong links with North Korea and had a big part in the bid from Manchester for North Korea to stay at another games. He went to North Korea on Friday and was meeting the Chairman of the NPRNK Olympic Committee to promote our interest! He was also filmed on the Town Hall steps by HTV.
By the end of the year we will know if our bid was successful with LOCOG. They will then publish the booklet to go to the Beijing games in 2008, this booklet lists all the training facilities available in the UK for the 2012 games. After this countries will approach consortiums and visit to decide whether or not their facilities match their requirements. Only then will we know if countries want to train in Chippenham.
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