Athletics: Grassroots to the world stage ... via South Leeds

Despite their official home being at South Leeds Stadium, athletes at Leeds City Athletics Club certainly do get around a lot.
Leeds City Athletics Club enjoys team success as well as individual successes. PIC: Leeds City Athletics ClubLeeds City Athletics Club enjoys team success as well as individual successes. PIC: Leeds City Athletics Club
Leeds City Athletics Club enjoys team success as well as individual successes. PIC: Leeds City Athletics Club

A training night sees a huge mixture of runners, throwers, jumpers and wheelchair racers all filling up the track, yet it still barely does justice to the sheer depth of athletes at the club.

Leeds boasts a tremendous array of athletes who have competed at the very-top level, from wheelchair racing stars such as five-time Paralympic gold medallist Hannah Cockroft and Olympic triathlete Gordon Benson, to cross country and mountain running internationals such as Claire Duck and Emma Clayton.

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The club is certainly amongst England’s athletics elite, but it is not just this that gives chairman Ian Cooke a great sense of pride about his role.

Hannah Cockroft. PIC: Leeds City Athletics ClubHannah Cockroft. PIC: Leeds City Athletics Club
Hannah Cockroft. PIC: Leeds City Athletics Club

“What keeps me going at this club is being able to provide a service like this for young people across the area and specifically in South Leeds,” said Cooke. “It gives them an interest, it gives them an identity and clearly it keeps them off the streets and gives them a sense of pride in what they do and who they are. You just can’t put a price on that.”

He added: “So, I think it gives us great exposure at an elite level, but also what’s really important is it brings the next generation through. Within sport, I also I think it’s particularly important for young girls to have really good, strong role models to aspire to.

“At the moment some of our best-performing athletes are women, right across the board. Our female team won gold in all the National Road Relay Championships. Claire Duck captained Great Britain at the World Cross Country Championships in Kampala last year and Hannah Cockroft, of course, is out there smashing it on the world stage time and time again.”

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Supported by a large group of volunteers, which Cooke attests are the “lifeblood” of the club, Leeds has a perfect pyramid of athletes, with the amateur athletes being able to mix with those who regularly compete for national and international titles for the club.

Wheelchair athletes. PIC: Leeds City Athletics ClubWheelchair athletes. PIC: Leeds City Athletics Club
Wheelchair athletes. PIC: Leeds City Athletics Club

This however, also owes a lot to the overall structure of athletics in general, which almost takes the best factors of both team sports and individual sports to combine them together into one.

The individual aspect, as well as the reliance on times and distances as measurements for victory, gives athletes full responsibility for their own performances, while the huge amount of separate distances in the sport, ensures that athletes competing in leagues can get fully immersed in the sport’s unique team atmosphere.

“I think there’s always a place for everyone in athletics,” stressed Cooke.

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“You’ve got this dynamic with all the different disciplines that allows all sorts of people to get a chance and that means they won’t just sit on the bench a lot like in some more team-oriented sports like rugby and football.

“There’s a place for people that are strong and can throw, people who have pace, ones who have good endurance and also plenty of different Paralympic disciplines as well. So there’s absolute inclusivity, which I think is just a natural part of the broad spectrum of pastimes in the sport that brings all these different backgrounds.”

For over 50 years now, Leeds have continued to thrive as one of the country’s top athletics clubs.

And with some young and exciting talent coming through, such as Great Britain number one and 1,500m champion Ethan Hussey and British Universities 5,000m champion Emile Cairess, it looks likely to remain that way.

However the one crucial aspect for this is that the many fantastic dedicated volunteers remain as committed as they have been throughout their many years of service.

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