News

Swedish tennis team chose us for their Olympic training

Published 19 March 2012

The University of Brighton will be playing its part in the Olympics this summer when the Swedish tennis team gets match ready for the Games at its hi-tech sports facilities. The Swedish team is based in Eastbourne at the Devonshire Park international tennis centre. The team will have access to the university's Eastbourne campus sports facilities, including £1m worth of specialist physiology and biomechanics equipment based at the university's Chelsea School of Sport.

As well as training at the university’s state-of-the-art gym, the Swedish Olympic team, which includes two times French Open finalist Robin Söderling, will also be able to get advice from its sports and exercise experts.

The team will include women's singles players Johanna Larsson and Sofia Arvidsson with their captain Maria Tomsvik Strandlund as well as top-ranking doubles player Robert Lindstedt and Söderling, accompanied by their captain Thomas Enqvist. Enqvist was ranked number 4 in the world in the 1990s and helped Sweden to reach the final of the Davis Cup four times.

Among the facilities at the Chelsea School of Sport are a 25-metre swimming pool, fitness rooms, two gyms, a performance fitness centre, a climbing wall and an indoor synthetic turf pitch. The physiology and biomechanics equipment includes an environmental chamber, ice baths, a motion analysis system to analyse sporting technique, force platforms embedded in a 30-metre running track, a range of treadmills and ergometers to assess exercise performance and a biochemistry laboratory with facilities for analysis of human blood and tissue samples. There is also a physiotherapy clinic on site.

Head of the Chelsea School of Sport, Professor Jo Doust said: "I am delighted that the Swedish tennis team has chosen to train at the University of Brighton and will benefit from our world-leading facilities and services. This adds to the university's already extensive involvement in the Olympic and Paralympic games through our coaching, medical, and scientific experts."

Find out more about Chelsea School of Sport at www.brighton.ac.uk/chelsea.