AND they’re off!
Winners of the Examiner’s National Lottery Olympic Park Run competition are heading to London.
Tomorrow the 10 Huddersfield runners will be among the first to cross the Olympic Stadium finish line.
They will run five miles around the Olympic and Paralympic Village, the Velodrome, the Water Polo Stadium and eventually finish in the new Olympic Stadium.
In January, the Examiner selected 10 winners who had correctly answered which Huddersfield Olympian ran the first ever four-minute mile?
The answer was Derek Ibbotson.
Now, after two months of training, our team of runners are excited about the chance to hit the track.
The oldest member of the team, Grahame Nasey, organised a run near Huddersfield YMCA Rugby Club, where he has been a member for 35 years.
The Brighouse man said: “We all enjoyed it and are really looking forward to the actual run in London.
“We did about three miles going from the rugby club and down through Old Lindley.
“It is quite a hilly course and our theory is since we always have to run up and down hills in Huddersfield and the Olympic Park must be flatter it should all work to our advantage on the day.”
Other winners include Jane Lees, of Almondbury, Christopher Boosey, of Cowlersley, Lee Hamilton of Greetland, Alex Brown, of Fartown, Colin Hodgkinson, of Crosland Moor, Jag Bhullar, of Marsh, Nick Allan-Smith, of Lower Cumberworth, Martin Huddleston of Almondbury and Max Fitzgibbon, of Lindley.
Examiner reporter Katie Earlam will also be joining the team.
In total, 5,000 people will be running in the National Lottery Olympic Park run.
The group is made up of celebrities, former and current athletes, randomly chosen ballot entries and competition winners.
Each runner has been allocated two tickets so they can take along their biggest supporters and there will be 12,000 spectators in total.
Four start times have been allocated to runners depending on the expected finish time.
Olympic, World, European and Commonwealth medal-winning athlete Iwan Thomas and ITV presenter Holly Willoughby will be presenting the event.
Her Royal Highness Princess Beatrice, who was memorably the first member of the Royal Family to tackle the London Marathon, will also join runners.
A National Lottery spokesperson said: “As a celebration of the £2.2bn that National Lottery players will contribute towards the staging of London 2012, we have secured the chance for people with all abilities to be the first to grab a piece of the Olympic Games action.
“This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to run on the track that the world’s elite athletes will compete on, against a stunning backdrop of venues which lottery players have part-funded.”
See Monday’s Examiner for a full report.
