Olympic star believes new sports arena for Inverness could create future world cycling champion
Register for free to read more of the latest local news. It's easy and will only take a moment.
THIS is the first glimpse of the proposed new city sports arena which it is hoped will put Inverness on the sporting map and even create a future world cycling champion.
Organisers are calling on cycling fans to help them build the new £15 million multi-use Highland arena on a site at the Inverness Campus and hope to open it by 2021/22.
With velodrome facilities at the heart of the project, a prediction of world-class cycling success was made at a meeting in Inverness on Wednesday by Olympic gold medallist and multiple world track cycle champion Katie Archibald, who spoke to the scheme’s supporters in person for the first time.
Ms Archibald, a long-time supporter of the plan for the Highland capital to get its own velodrome facilities, said if the project was built in Inverness it would produce a future world champion or Olympic medallist.
Having trained herself at the Meadowbank facility in Edinburgh – along with Sir Chris Hoy – she said where there was a velodrome, success inevitably followed.
As someone who started her own journey to success as a teenager, she said: “Sport does that, it opens its arms to anybody and says ‘come and learn’. It was falling into that community that allowed me to find something that I was good at.
“What the people at Meadowbank gave to me was opportunity. It gave the same opportunity to riders like Chris Hoy and Craig MacLean.”
HiVelo, the charity behind the long-held dream of a multi-sports venue centred on an indoor cycling track, had hoped to submit a planning application for the scheme by last month, but this week admitted it was still waiting on several technical studies to be completed.
It is still hopeful that an application will be lodged before the end of the year.
HiVelo had previously aimed to build a facility at Bught Park with support from Highland Council at a cost of £23 million.
After the local authority confirmed it would not be providing funding for the scheme plans were revised, with possible alternative sites at Torvean and Tornagrain also examined and dropped along the way.
The aim is now to produce a slightly smaller facility at a cost of £15 million.
This will see the creation of a smaller track – 200 metres compared with the previously planned 250-metre Olympic standard track.
However HiVelo secretary Mike Greaves pointed out this was the same specification as the track at the headquarters of the World Cycling Authority in Switzerland.
He told Wednesday’s meeting that, if planning permission was successful, a contractor could be appointed by September next year, with the aim of seeing the facility opened in 2021 or 2022.
A number of different funding avenues are being considered to secure the £15 million needed, including offering Highlanders a chance to buy their own community shares in the facility.
Substantial public sector funding is also being sought from organisations including Sport Scotland.
“I’d expect quite a substantial capital grant from them,” Mr Greaves said.
As well as the velodrome the arena would include facilities such as a sports hall and multi-use courts and 4G pitches.
Mr Greaves said the project had been fully costed to the 2021/22 deadline but every year the project was delayed would add £500,000 to the overall budget.
