Balfour Beaty London Youth Games report 2011
Team Richmond are the London Youth Games Champions 2011!
Team Richmond beat off stiff competition from the other 32 London boroughs to win the Jubilee trophy for the first time in the event's 34 year history. The Jubilee Trophy is awarded to the borough with the highest number of points at the end of the competition. We fought off tough competition from the other 32 London Boroughs to win by a tiny margin of 5 points. To see the overall results and those for each sport, please look on the London Youth Games website.
Read Richmond's press release.
Congratulations to all the teams and individuals who represented Team Richmond throughout this year's games.
Cycling Team Gold (Gold in both Juvenile and Junior events and Overall)
Girls Tag Rugby Team Silver
Canoe Sprint and Slalom Team. Canoe Sprint Gold and Overall Regatta Champions.
Mini Hockey Team Silver Medal
Team Richmond celebrate magical year
The squash team won a silver medal
After eight months of competition, involving 50 events, a team of young athletes representing Richmond have become the Balfour Beatty London Youth Games Champions for the first time in the events 34 year history. Along the way Team Richmond picked up six team gold medals, two team silver medals and three team bronze medals. We also secured 28 top ten placings, to view the final results for all sports please see the Team Richmond full results table.
The games involved all 32 Boroughs of London and the City of London competing against each other in 50 events. Over 400 young people living or attending school in the borough represented Team Richmond, organised by the Sports Development Team. The competition began back on a cold and wet day in November with Cross Country, where a 1st place finish from the team resulted in a notable start to Team Richmond’s 2011 campaign. Cricket was held in February with the girls and boys teams securing a 15th and 17th place respectively. The Games came to a close with the Mini Games on Thursday 30 June and main finals weekend at Crystal Palace on Saturday 2 and Sunday 3 July.
The success continued at the Regatta weekend held at London Docklands. For the third year in a row, the Rowing team and the Kayak Sprint teams retained their 1st place title. These results along with the 7th place from Sailing and 12th place from the Kayak Slalom teams helped Team Richmond to retain the Overall Thames Water Regatta Trophy for the third year in a row! A fantastic achievement!
Team Richmond continued their achievements from the preliminary stages of the games, finishing 7th in the Angling competition and the Girl’s Volleyball team qualified for the finals for the first time in a number of years. The Girl’s Hockey team and the Male Squash team, a new entry for us in a number of years, also qualified for the finals weekend. The Badminton team came a credible 9th place and there was a great 7th place finish for the Table Tennis Girl’s team, the first time Richmond had entered a girl’s team. The Fencing team finished in a respectable 9th place, improving on their placing from last year. Team Richmond’s Girl’s and Boy’s Gymnastics Teams finished in 5th and 7th place respectively.
Waldegrave School winners of the girls participation trophy
During this time our Mini Games teams were preparing to compete. Over 70 pupils from 25 Richmond primary schools took part on 30 June at Crystal Palace. Following on from last year’s success the mini teams claimed a gold medal in Netball for the second year in a row, and were runners up in Tag Rugby, Hockey and Football. Our Mini Gymnasts claimed a credible 8th place, Swimming team came 9th, our Athletics team were in 12th place and our Basketball Team were in 25th place, two places up from last year.
After the Mini Games triumphs, the finals weekend brought some outstanding performances. With bronze medals going to the Girl’s Volleyball, the Indoor Rowing and Adaptive Indoor Rowing teams and silver medals going to the Girl’s Tag Rugby, Girl’s Athletics and Squash teams. Further success went to the Aquathlon, Archery and the Cycling teams who all picked up team gold medals over the weekend.
The Sports Development Team would like to say a big thank you to all the participants, team managers, volunteers and parents for their contribution to this year’s games!
Reception Evening at The Stoop, home to Harlequins Rugby.
Richmond’s young sport stars celebrated their most successful year in the borough’s history at the London Youth Games Celebration evening at the home of their team sponsors Harlequins on Wednesday 13 July.
A healthy crowd of around 280 people, including young competitors, parents, coaches, team managers, Borough Council representatives and VIPs gathered at The Stoop in Twickenham to mark Richmond’s triumph in winning the Jubilee Trophy for the first time ever as overall champions of the 2011 Balfour Beatty London Youth Games.
The boroughs landmark year also saw them collect the Thames Water London Youth Games Regatta Trophy as overall water sport champions and trophies for winning the cycling, archery, aquathlon, rowing, kayak sprint and cross country competitions in what is Europe’s largest annual youth sports event.
Thames Water Regatta champions
Harlequins and All-Blacks player Nick Evans and two-times Olympic swimmer Ed Sinclair were on hand to present the prizes and lend their congratulations. As were last year’s Mayor of Richmond Cllr. David Marlow and Cllr. Pamela Fleming, Cabinet Member for Community, Business and Culture.
Cllr. Fleming said: “It is such an enormous achievement, there’s a real sense of pride in all our young people. The London Youth Games is a great event for our schools to participate in. It’s a great encouragement for them all year round. There is now a real sense of inspiration and determination to win it next year in the Olympic year.
“Now the trophy has come west - because I believe it usually goes east - we are not going to let go of it very easily. I think a lot of the schools and the clubs – having seen the success this year - will be really spurred to go for it in Olympic year.”
As well as the presentations to all the young people who participated in the boroughs success, there were several special awards given to other major contributors to the year.
Twickenham Cycling Club collected the Overall Contribution of the Year Award. Volunteer of the Year went to Mark Hughes of The Lensbury Club. Ruth Arnold of Sunbury Hockey Club collected the Mini Games Team Manager of the Year Award and Gemma Lloyd of Twickenham Rowing Club won the Main Games Team Manager of the Year Award.
The Balfour Beatty London Youth Games is Europe’s largest annual youth sports event and was first launched in 1977. Funded by Sport England National Lottery, with over 64,000 participants aged 7-18 from 33 London borough teams taking part in 60 competitions across 30 sports covering 26 event days.
The Aqualthlon Team won a gold medal
Download the 2011 Team Richmond 'report, results and pictures' booklet
(pdf, 627KB)