Sheffield handed pounds 12.5m

Sports funding

Sheffield's emergence as a major sporting city gathered further pace yesterday with the news it is to receive pounds 12.5m from the Lottery Sports Fund for a new ice arena.

The provisional award will mean facilities for a regional ice-training arena with two Olympic-size ice rinks, changing accommodation, a gymnasium, administrative and drug-testing facilities and fitness studios. The total cost of the project is likely to be in excess of pounds 16m.

Sheffield has recently staged the World Student Games and several important swimming and athletics meetings, thanks to the building of the Ponds Forge and Hillsborough swimming centres, the Don Valley Stadium and the Sheffield Arena.

Awards totalling pounds 23m were announced yesterday, with Yorkshire and Humberside getting the lion's share of pounds 17m, including pounds 4.5m to Doncaster Borough Council towards a new multi-sport Dearne Valley Leisure Centre.

At the Royal Albert Dock in east London, pounds 8.9m (54 per cent of the total cost) has been awarded for an international standard 2,000-metre seven- lane course for rowers, canoeists and dragon-boat racers, while Lancashire will be handed half of the pounds 1.2m they need for a new indoor five-lane community cricket centre at their Manchester ground.