With Gateshead’s English Institute of Sport under threat and Sport England funding diverted from the North-East, the development of our future elite athletes appears bleak. But a scheme linking the region’s five universities is reason for optimism, says former Olympian Steve Cram.

Simon Rushworth reports.p IN the autumn of 2006, Sports Minister Richard Caborn hosted a lavish Westminster ceremony celebrating the launch of an ambitious partnership hatched in the North-East and lauded nationwide.

Sport Universities North East England (Sunee) brought together the universities of Durham, Newcastle, Northumbria, Sunderland and Teesside with the aim of encouraging exercise, participation, professional development and elite success.

And even in its infancy, this unlikely alliance of traditional rivals caught the eye of Mr Caborn and his Labour colleagues, such was its impact on local communities and performance athletes.

Two-and-a-half years down the line and the potential value of Sunee has taken on far greater significance.

At the organisation’s inaugural conference, staged at Newcastle University last week, Mr Caborn and fellow keynote speaker Steve Cram stressed the growing importance of university sport in the build-up to London 2012 and beyond.

And with last month’s revelation that Gateshead’s English Institute of Sport faced closure, there has never been a greater reliance on the region’s higher education institutions to bridge the gap between school and club sport and elite competition.

“I think all our universities have a key role to play as we move forward,” says Cram, a silver medallist at the 1984 Olympics, and the new Chancellor of Sunderland University. “They’re uniquely placed within the region’s sporting set-up.

“If you look back maybe 25 or 30 years, the way sport was always developed was through the clubs and a volunteer system. Somehow, if you became good enough, then one day you’d represent your country. At universities in the UK, sport was always something the students did for a bit of fun.

“That’s gradually changed. And in the last 15 years we’ve realised that those places are ideally placed to be the glue that pulls sport together in terms of linking the development and the high performance end of things.

“All sport universities are about that, but it then fans out and you can see what they can do through sport for the rest of the university and, indeed, for the rest of the community.”

As Cram suggests, Sunee is as much about offering the marginalised groups within the region an opportunity to progress through sport.

One of its key targets is to work with hard-toreach groups, including drug users, excluded young people and vulnerable women.

Last year, a Sunee-led project involving student rugby coaches from Northumbria University and inmates at Northumberland’s Acklington Prison won national acclaim and led to the establishment of a long-term partnership.

Other aims include offering students professional development opportunities, increasing volunteer numbers to meet the needs of London 2012, introducing healthy eating initiatives and encouraging participation at every level.

However, there is no doubt that Sunee can provide a platform for future Olympians and Cram feels the North-East’s universities are perfectly placed to develop that elite potential.

“What has to happen is that universities need to work together to maximise their resources,”

he says. “That’s why Sunee is a great example of what should be happening in the rest of the country. It is a great example of a group of universities which, within a region, can see a bigger picture.

“That’s the more difficult message to get across because universities are, by their very nature, competitive and they are about generating and developing business.

“It’s very difficult to be competitive within the UK if you’re just Sunderland or Newcastle or Durham, and you’re out there on your own.

We have to sell the region as a place that, whether it’s industry or higher education, people want to come to and invest in.”

In the next 12 months, both Sunderland and Northumbria universities will open indoor sports facilities, and earlier this year, Northumbria completed the purchase of Newcastle Falcons’ Kingston Park home.

Durham University’s Maiden Castle complex has long been viewed as one of the jewels in the region’s sporting crown and, by pooling its resources, Sunee can become a centre of excellence provider for years to come.

“We have a lot going on here sports-wise,”

says Cram. “The North-East has become a much better place in which to play, coach and watch sport.

“But if you have kids starting to develop as elite athletes in this region and they get a trip down to Loughborough, then obviously they’re going to head there.

“I’m not saying we should stop our best athletes moving to the place which can best develop their chosen sport, but we have to offer something in the North-East which gives them the option of staying. We want our young people studying in the region and taking part in high-class sport right here.”