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Andrew Palmer
Group Editor
2:00 AM 13th August 2022
sports

Weekend Interview: Concept To Legacy Richard Caborn Ten Years On From The Olympics

 

Richard Caborn
Richard Caborn
Former Sports Minister, Richard Caborn, has written a tell all book. But not on a subject that has immediately sprung to your mind.

For this no nonsense, let’s get it done, former MP, his book, to be launched on 9 September exactly 10 years to the day since the close of the 2012 Olympics, is a message to the naysayers south of the Watford Gap, if they turn their sights to the north, there is one fantastic story to tell around creating a sporting legacy.

Ten years on, the story behind the legacy is one relevant today as Birmingham looks to create something similar on the back of the Commonwealth Games and we have seen the positive effects of investment in sport as demonstrated this summer with women’s football.

“I want to put the record straight; we have such a positive story to tell especially to those who believe there is no Olympic legacy.

“We picked up the 2012 Olympic baton and my book Concept to Legacy details our journey after winning the bid in 2005 and how myself along with Tessa Jowell and others put the legacy legislation onto the Statute Book. Something I think is especially important in terms of legacy,” Caborn tells me.

... is a message to the naysayers south of the Watford Gap, if they turn their sights to the north, there is one fantastic story to tell around creating a sporting legacy.
I have seen Caborn in action since my days as CBI’s director for Yorkshire & the Humber, his passion, commitment and enthusiasm for Yorkshire and sport is well-known.

He is a man that doesn’t just spout words, he likes to prove his point with evidence, and it is clear, as he chats about the achievements of the Sheffield Olympic Legacy Park, that the team responsible for the legacy creation have been levelling up well before the term became de rigueur. Whoever the new Prime Minister is on September 5th it may be worth putting Caborn’s book on their bedtime reading list.

“Did you know the Park is the UK’s only life sciences park dedicated to innovation in sport, health, and wellbeing?” he asks me.

Facts about the Park
Sheffield Olympic Legacy Park is a London 2012 Olympic Legacy for health and wellbeing collaborative research and learning.

The only Olympic Legacy Park outside a host city anywhere in the world, it is a unique place and a unique project delivering a better future for all through transformational health and wellbeing research, innovation, and applied technology.

Legacy Park Ltd was set up to deliver Sheffield Olympic Legacy Park. It comprises Sheffield City Council, Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield City Trust, Sheffield Children’s NHS Foundation Trust, South Yorkshire & Bassetlaw Integrated Care System and Yorkshire & Humber Academic Health Sciences Network and Darnall Well Being.

Sheffield Olympic Legacy Park is home to the English Institute of Sport Sheffield (EISS), Advanced Wellbeing Research Centre (AWRC), Oasis Academy Don Valley, UTC Sheffield Olympic Legacy Park, National Centre for Sport & Exercise Medicine, Sheffield (NCSEM Sheffield), Utilita Arena, Community Stadium including a 3G pitch and iceSheffield

Future developments include a new Community Arena, 850,000 sq ft of commercial space and a new National Centre for Child Health Technology.
I didn’t know and so Caborn tells me more.
“We became part of the 2012 legacy through our work with the National Centre for Sport and Exercise Medicine. Our bit of the national centre was to look at, along with London and Loughborough, how we could intervene and affect the wellbeing of the nation and work with universities and the teaching hospitals.

“The Centre was effectively the start of the legacy. We had a problem with the Don Valley Stadium, built in 1991 for the World Student Games, it had outlived its usefulness and needed a lot of investment as it was losing about three quarters of a million pounds a year.”

The then leader of Sheffield City Council, Julie Dore, asked Caborn to look at the possibilities of redeveloping the site around sport. And, for the enthusiastic Yorkshireman, it hit the spot.

Caborn tells me he has always had this great vision around how you tap into technology transfer and illustrates it by telling me that a F1 car today is a luxury car tomorrow and then the volume car market the day after. That principle of technology transfer can be applied to elite and professional sport. The Don Valley site was ideal with the base of the English Institute of Sport Sheffield at its heart.

“We had a huge amount of knowledge and information which flows around developing elite athletes who have been phenomenally successful, the likes of Jessica Ennis, Anthony Joshua, Nicola Adams, we knew how we could take that knowledge and knowhow and turn it into the development of the health and wellbeing agenda.
“That’s the concept which drives this project; we brought the universities, teaching hospitals, local authority and private sector together to see if we could deliver this project.”

Caborn’s infectious enthusiasm and appetite was mirrored by two guys who were also motivated to join Caborn’s vision: Steve Haake a professor at Hallam University and Yuri Matischen who was at the Sheffield Chamber of Commerce and ran Sheffield Sharks professional basketball team. Those two along with Richard and the team, developed the whole concept of an Olympic Legacy Park and how to build on 2012.

“Bit by bit we engaged all the major stakeholders to get what you see today. It’s unique in the way we brought seven public sector bodies together all around the health and wellbeing agenda, of course they all have a vested interest in developing this agenda for their own organisation. In bringing them together we’ve created a critical mass of research and development facilities through Sheffield Hallam University’s Advanced Wellbeing Research Centre and National Centre of Excellence for Food Engineering, together with Sheffield Children’s NHS Foundation Trust’s imminent National Centre for Child Health Technology.

"We can then transfer this knowledge and information through technology transfer into wealth creation and jobs, and this is effectively what we have been doing for the last six to seven years at Sheffield Olympic Legacy Park.

We have lifted the aspirations of many people in the east end of Sheffield, particularly at the Oasis Academy on the Park...
"One of the successes has been the endorsement of the private sector. Canon has now invested £15m into a world class screening centre for AI and diagnostic imaging which will become one of its main international centres of development over the next period. In 2020 Scarborough Group International became the development partner for the Park, and will deliver the next phase of development which includes 850,000 sq ft of commercial space accommodating up to 5,600 jobs.

National Centre for Child Health Technology
National Centre for Child Health Technology
“It is because we have the Advanced Wellbeing
Research Centre, the National Centre of Excellence for Food Engineering and the National Centre for Child Health Technology. We’re home to Olympic and Paralympic elite athletes and professional sport including ice hockey, basketball, and rugby league. There is significant activity around professional sport but there’s also a major development around elite sport. We still train up to 100 elite athletes for the Olympics and Paralympics - all of that coming together is unique in the UK.”

Caborn has a wealth of anecdotes to exemplify his points and for all those with glasses half empty they would be wise to look at the Sheffield legacy.
The education front is impressive too with investment in amateur sport, and through the UTC (University Technical College), Sheffield Hallam University, schools and soon the further education sector, the legacy is developing and delivering the workforce of the future for the health service.

Caborn is animated. “What is really interesting,” he says, “look at Sheffield’s education system. Its provision over the years has moved from east to west, but we have arrested the trend and nudged it back. In the middle of what was one of the most deprived areas in the city we have created an education system where a significant number of young people are getting qualified. The UTC is ranked as one of the best in the country. We are looking at the national delivery of the health and wellbeing and innovative technology agenda. This is social mobility in action. Three thousand young people are benefiting.”

“We have lifted the aspirations of many people in the east end of Sheffield, particularly at the Oasis Academy on the Park, benefitting from the environment they are being taught in and where they spend their daily lives.”
Another aspect of the legacy is the creation of four business accelerators. These cover the R&D capacity on Sheffield Olympic Legacy Park there are around 24 companies in each accelerator, all of which can apply for a small grant, and they have access to research and development knowledge and accelerate their business whatever the idea is. Two of the companies on the site have taken on young people and are offering training, and, to make his point, Caborn tells me, “There you go that is demonstrating how we are effectively developing the workforce of the future.”

It is obviously a model that can be developed in various parts of the country and, according to Caborn, any of the elements can be transplanted and used, especially as the big cry now is around how we train young people for the caring services.

Caborn has a wealth of anecdotes to exemplify his points and for all those with glasses half empty they would be wise to look at the Sheffield legacy.
I enquire what Birmingham can learn from Sheffield and Caborn, acknowledging already its success, “the challenge is how to deliver that legacy now. My view would be around developing this concept bringing all the different elements together to create an ecosystem around the health and wellbeing agenda. That is the big issue facing our Health and Community Services but is also one that developed countries we must address and move to a prevention rather than cure solution.”

“We have to get to a position making sure people need to be having a quality of life that is commensurate with healthy living that is what we are trying to do.”

The next phase of development
Sheffield Olympic Legacy Park has recently undergone a brand refresh to reflect its mission to capture the spirit of the Olympics by inspiring action and expressing ambition, and its belief that sharing knowledge and expertise across a carefully-curated environment is the key to creating a stronger, healthier, and more active future for everyone.

The Park has retained its signature green, alongside a more powerful and diverse colour palette, and has introduced a dynamic ‘S’ ring symbol as its logo, which represents the symbiosis between science and sport and is also a nod to its location in the Steel City.
There’s another point that the new PM might be interested in reading. The work of the Advanced Wellbeing Research Centre around cancer both pre and post operations and getting patients physically fit and rehabilitated, coupled with the work on long covid is impressive.

Three NHS centres were collocated into sports and leisure facilities across Sheffield and pre covid they were delivering 100,000 clinical appointments a year and numbers are beginning to creep up once again. They were appointments made as referrals from doctors and discharges from hospitals where the health practitioners thought there could be benefits from a change in lifestyle, “great for the patients and for the health service too as it was a saving.”

As we bring our conversation to an end, Caborn throws in a fascinating fact about the data that is collected to show how interventions can work. For example, all the parkrun data from across the world is collected every week. We can tell you the impact parkrun is having anywhere across the globe from the data and that also informs the types of developments that are being put in place.”

“It will have a significant impact on the lifestyles of many people.”

Dare anyone say there has been no Olympic legacy because if it is in earshot of Richard Caborn, he will set the record straight on how the four strands: Sport, Community, Environment and Economy were promised to the International Olympic Committee and more importantly, delivered.


A celebratory dinner to mark the 10th anniversary of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games will be a major fundraiser for Sheffield Children’s Hospital Charity’s helipad appeal.

Up to a thousand guests – including Olympians and Paralympians from 2012, 2016 and 2020 made and trained in Sheffield – are expected to attend the celebratory event at Sheffield Olympic Legacy Park on Friday, September 9.

The gala dinner is supporting The Children’s Hospital Charity’s £6m Helipad Appeal for Sheffield Children’s Hospital. It will feature a live auction sponsored by Westfield Health and hosted by well-known Sheffield auctioneer Lucy Crapper, director of Residential Sales at ASG Estates.

The gala dinner will take place in the centre of the indoor athletics arena at the English Institute of Sport on the Park. Sporting stars attending include British taekwondo athlete Sarah Stevenson MBE, who read the Olympic oath at the London Games opening ceremony in 2012.

Sheffield’s Britain’s Got Talent 2022 finalist and Maxwell Thorpe will sing at the event which will celebrate the London 2012 Olympic legacy being delivered in the city through transformational economic, health, sporting, and environmental change

That change is being driven and delivered by Sheffield Olympic Legacy Park, spearheaded by Legacy Park Ltd Chair and former Sports Minister Richard Caborn, who was a key figure in the London 2012 bid.

Richard said: “After the closing ceremony of the Paralympics on 9 September 2012, Sheffield picked up the baton to become the world’s only Olympic legacy site outside a host city anywhere in the world.

“A strong public-private sector partnership has delivered the first £100m development phase, creating an unrivalled cluster of life sciences assets, uniquely delivering a levelling-up legacy to the whole population.

“And as we mark the 10th anniversary of London 2012, we have embarked on the next £200m-plus development phase which will ensure a real sporting, educational, health, economic, education and skills legacy for generations to come.”

That next phase of the park is being delivered by development partner Scarborough Group International (SGI), who is also the dinner's headline sponsor.
Alongside renowned sporting names from the last decade, some of the key names behind the successful London 2012 bid are expected to attend the dinner. These include Sir Keith Mills, Chair of the Bid Team, and Lord Seb Coe, Chair of the London Organising Committee for the Games, and current President of World Athletics.


Tables of 10 cost £1,500 + VAT for a Standard table and £2,500 + VAT for a Legacy table, which includes a contribution to the 10th Anniversary Legacy Fund – a grant fund being launched later this year to support the health and wellbeing of the local community.
Make your reservation by emailing info@olympiclegacypark.co.uk or calling 0114 261 9604.