ASPIRING athletes from West Cheshire College are gearing up for an Olympic challenge.
Last year, when Dame Kelly Holmes paid a visit to the college to present the annual awards, the double Olympic champion set a challenge for the students to beat her GB record of running 1,000 metres in 2 minutes 32.55 seconds around the college rotunda.
It comes as part of the college’s year-long celebrations to mark the Olympics, aiming to get more people active and to encourage them to have fun and enjoy doing sports.
The events include visits from Olympians such as Ben Challenger, as well as taster sessions in a variety of sports including handball, volleyball, table tennis and fencing.
The challenge is to take place on Monday at the college’s Ellesmere Port campus from 4-5pm, and members of the public are invited to go and show their support.
College spokeswoman Suzie Hobson said: “We’re all delighted that Kelly Holmes set us the challenge and our sports students have been training hard.
“Originally the plan was to run both up and down the rotunda which is nearly 1,000m, however, we’ve adapted the challenge slightly – so now students are running 500m up the rotunda to beat half of Kelly’s time which is 1 minute 16.27 seconds.”
For further information, call the college on 01244 656 555 or visit www.west-cheshire.ac.uk.
