With 421 days to go until the Olympic and Paralympic Games in Tokyo, members of the Great Britain Cycling Team have now been given access to the HSBC UK National Cycling Centre to resume individual training in line with the Government’s “5 Steps To Resumption Of Elite Sport – UK” framework.
Twelve riders returned to individual training yesterday, spread out across the velodrome, gym and BMX track, following extensive risk assessments, thorough checks and new protocols designed to mitigate any risk of infection.
Performance Director Stephen Park said: “As with everything we do, our performance planning for return to training was focused on the welfare of our riders and staff and we worked incredibly hard to ensure we were excellently prepared for a safe return.
[Music] it’s great coming back here to the HSBC National Cycling Center in to the velodrome BMX track working with our partners at GL our Manchester City Council to be able to get the facility open again but there have been a huge number of alterations we’ve had to make to the facility to be able to ensure that we are putting the welfare and health of all of our riders and staff right at the forefront of our thinking when you walk through the front door you met by one of our medics is going to scan you scan your temperature ask you one or two questions a little bit of a medical check check that year they’re happy for you to proceed into the into the facility you then follow a one-way system that’s now initiated all the way around the building and then of course when you then get into the the training environment itself here into into the velodrome then we’ve set up the hall of our traffic sensor which we have because there’s no no public access at the moment we’ve actually be able to set out a pen for each individual Rider there are then markings around the floor that show people what the two meter the 2 meter distances from each of the different individual rollers and different pens in the gym itself again a one-way system around the gym we’re only using about 50% of the gym equipment at the moment because we’re specifically focusing here or an activity that cannot be conducted at all and so that so in the gym that’s primarily the heavier weights activities so pretty much alternate stations available we have two holding areas for athletes and that come in were limited to the number of people only seven people in the gym at any one time and it’s pretty much the same story again over in the BMX hop individual pants for each of the riders warm-up areas and then then just generic social distancing when they then go get into track one at time on track so it’s it’s all fairly logical but just a little bit different a little bit more regimented everyone’s just really keen that we we typical a we’re progressive in what we do and make sure we can do everything we possibly can from a staff perspective to really give those athletes the opportunity to get back into training [Music]