The Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport met several Olympic and Paralympic Champions at their University of Bath training base during a recent visit.
Lucy Frazer MP meeting Kate French and Joe Choong | Photo © DCMS
Lucy Frazer MP was accompanied on the tour of the Team Bath Sports Training Village (STV) by Dame Katherine Grainger, Chair of UK Sport, and spoke to a number of athletes and coaches.
The pair met double Tokyo 2020 swimming gold-medallist Tom Dean, reigning modern pentathlon Olympic champions Joe Choong and Kate French, and Paralympic wheelchair fencing champion Piers Gilliver.
All are working towards representing their country in Paris this summer, with the visit coinciding with the six-month countdown to the Olympic Games which begins on Friday 26th July.
The Paralympic Games then get underway on Wednesday 28th August.
The Secretary of State also met Professor Ian White, Vice-Chancellor and President of the University of Bath, and viewed the STV’s world-class training facilities including the Olympic-standard 50m swimming pool, Pentathlon Hall and the Wheelchair Fencing National Training Centre which opened 13 months ago to help the British squad build on their Tokyo medal success.
The University of Bath is one of the first of just eight institutions nationwide to be awarded the status of UK Sport-accredited Elite Training Centre, a title that celebrates its role in helping Team GB and ParalympicsGB athletes achieve their full performance potential.
University-based athletes have brought home 59 medals from the Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games since Atlanta 1996, 16 of which are gold including 11 from the rescheduled Tokyo Games in 2021.
