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Sport in Bloemfontein set for a major boost

───   MORGAN PIEK 13:42 Tue, 06 Nov 2018

Sport in Bloemfontein set for a major boost | News Article
Wayde van Niekerk - Llewellyn Lloyd

Professional sport in Bloemfontein has been under severe pressure these past few years.


With the city not receiving a Mzansi Super League cricket team, the Toyota Cheetahs not performing all that well and the uncertainty over the sale of the Premier Soccer League club, Bloemfontein Celtic, it has been none more so than now.

There is some good news on the sporting front in Bloemfontein, and this may change the city to the sports mecca of South Africa.

Department of Sport, Arts and Recreation will be investing heavily in the City of Roses, and that will be to develop the country’s elite in Bloemfontein.

The Department has acquired the piece of land at Cecilia Park, which is between Kimberley Road and Langenhoven Park, where they will be building a national training and Olympic preparatory centre.

This will be in order to better prepare and develop South Africa’s top athletes with a goal of better representation at the major sporting events such as the Olympics Games, Commonwealth Games and Africa Games.

The NTC, as it will be known, will be a national high-performance centre that will provide scientific support to and prepare athletes in various sporting codes to achieve optimal levels of sports performance and become more competitive at an elite level.

It is, however, not the first time that this idea has been on the table. It was meant to take place about a year or two ago and the investment in building the infrastructure was said to be to the tune of R65 million, but the funding was not available to go ahead.

This time the planning is in such an advanced stage that the Minister of Sport, Thokozile Xasa, will be in Bloemfontein on Saturday where she will be overseeing the signing for the land exchange agreement between the Central University of Technology (CUT) and Department, and this will also serve as the sod-turning ceremony, which will mark the first day of construction on the project.

This will also form part of the 2018 National Sports Week in Bloemfontein, which will include an outreach programme in Zastron on Thursday, a Ministerial Golf Day on Friday, and this will all be capped off with the South African Sports Awards which will be held on Sunday evening at the Sand du Plessis Theatre.

The department will elaborate on the NTC during Saturday’s sod-turning ceremony. The event will start at 11:00 and will be open to the public as well as to the various sporting federations in the Free State.


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