The famous Don Valley Stadium in Sheffield is to be demolished as part of cost cutting measures by the City Council. The stadium is where Olympic Heptathlon champion Jessica Ennis was first discovered and where she has trained regularly ever since.
The venue cost £29m and opened in 1990, becoming the first completely new national sporting venue built outdoors in Great Britain since Wembley in the early 1920s. It has been running at a loss in recent years though and the council spent £700,000 on the arena in 2012-13, which was unsustainable going forward and it has been announced it will shut in September 2013.
Sports minister Hugh Robertson had hoped the stadium would not close while Ennis said it was a “huge shame”. The 27-year-old, and her coach Tony Minichello, have both criticised the ruling. The pair had chosen to remain in Sheffield and train at the stadium in the run up to the Olympics, rather than linking up with the rest of Team GB in Loughborough as encouraged. An angry Minichello told BBC Radio 5 Live that “athletics is pretty close to being dead in Sheffield because of this decision. We ‘re going to be all right for this coming season because it ‘s open, but any sort of move towards the next Olympic games and retaining Jess ‘s title has been dealt a hefty, hefty blow. “
Head of the London Olympic Organising Committee Lord Sebastian Coe has said that he understands the decision for closure and that it should not be viewed as a blow to building a positive legacy from the games last summer.
The new plans may see the smaller Woodburn Road Athletics Stadium refurbished and reopened, but in the meantime it will mean that athletes in Sheffield will no longer have a 400m track to train on. The nearest major athletics stadium will now be the John Charles Centre for Sport in Leeds, some 35 miles away.
Don Valley hosted its first major athletics event in July 1991, the World Student Games for which the stadium was primerily built. Great Britain won two gold, four silver and three bronze medals at those games with the likes of Steve Backley, John Mayock and Curtis Robb all making names for themselves. Mayock took gold in the Mens 5000 meters, while Backley won the Mens Javelin. Several other big names, including future world and Olympic relay champion Jon Drummond, future Olympic 400m champion Derrick Adkins and Sonia O ‘Sullivan who went on to win World Championship gold for Ireland, were also succesful.
Two Universiade records set in that meeting remain in place to this day, Backley ‘s 87.42m throw in the javelin and American Hollis Conway ‘s 2.37m in the Mens High Jump. But perhaps the most infamous record set at Don Valley was that of Czech javelin star Jan Zelezny who set a then world record of 95.66m in 1993. The throw will rememberd by many for almost hitting the TV commenators who were interviewing close to the start/finish line.
As well as being a famous athletics venue, Don Valley Stadium is also home to Rugby League side Sheffield Eagles, and Rotherham United Football club played there for four seasons from 2008 to 2012 while their new stadium was being built. It has hosted several high-profile gigs by the likes of Michael Jackson, The Rolling Stones, Def Leppard, U2 and the Spice Girls too. Prior the games being awarded to Manchester, Don Valley had been short-listed as the host venue of the 2002 Commonwealth Games.
