Category Archives: Sport

Library awarded grant for People’s Record London Olympics project

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The Library has been awarded a further People’s Record grant award. The People’s Record aims to create a collective record of the public’s response to hosting the 2012 Games.

 

The work will be done jointly with the Centre for Olympic Studies & Research and will produce videos exploring the experiences of Loughborough University students who have volunteered for helping with the London 2012 Olympic Games. These videos will be published on the People’s Record website www.peoplesrecord.org.uk. Videos from two previous Library’s People’s Record projects are already available there. If you would like more information about the project please contact Dr Graham Walton (j.g.walton@lboro.ac.uk)

Image  produced by Prab Bhatia and available via Creative Commons licence on FlickR

Kicking Off the New Season

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Wolverhampton Wanderers' Molineux Stadium, photographed by Tony Evans, taken from Flickr, used under cc licence

The English Barclay’s Premier League kicks off its opening fixtures of the 2011-12 football season this Saturday, with the promise of another exciting year of top calibre football.
 
As usual, pundits remain divided as to who will lift the title next May, currently held by the ever-green Sir Alex Ferguson’s Manchester United. But they face stiff competition from big-spending neighbours Manchester City, as well as the strong London contingient of Chelsea, Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur, plus a resurgent Liverpool side under the steady guidance of their Kop hero, Kenny Dalglish.
 
But football isn’t just about the Premier League. The League Championship and Non-League football seasons have already begun, and way down in the Midland Football Alliance (some nine steps from the Premier League!!) our own Loughborough University football team has already made an excellent start to their campaign, winning their first two matches. Last season they finished a very creditable fourth in the league against a strong contingient of Midland semi-professional sides.
 
And on September 3rd, the team prepare to launch themselves at the first hurdle towards Wembley glory, with a home FA Cup preliminary round tie against Yaxley or Godmanchester Rovers.  The team will also be competing in the FA Vase, the British Universities and Colleges Sport Competition (BUCS) and the Midlands Universities League.
 
You can follow the team’s fortunes via their homepage here, and can find a comprehensive list of the division’s fixtures here. Why not pop along and cheer them on!
 
And if you’re interested in football – either as a fan or a sports science student – don’t forget that the Library has a comprehensive range of sports databases, including SPORTDiscus and and the Physical Education Index, as well as a wealth of football-related books on our shelves.

University Library’s London Olympics projects

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The Library has been working with the University’s Centre for Olympic Studies & Research on 3 projects about the London 2012 Olympics. These projects were funded by the UK’s Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA).  The results of these projects are available to all:

  1. The first one was in 2009 and gathered views from Loughborough people about previous Olympics, the Beijing Games and the forthcoming London 2012 Games
  2. In 2010, videos were produced of elite Loughborough University athletes talking about the Olympics, their aspirations and what their sport means to them
  3. Further videos were produced for the next project in 2011 exploring with various groups the perceptions of the impact and value of the Paralympics Games.

These are part of the Peoples Record project (managed by the MLA) which is the first co-ordinated record by a host nation of the public’s reaction to the Games. If you would like to know more about the Library’s contribution, contact Dr Graham Walton (j.g.walton@lboro.ac.uk).

Image  produced by familymwr and available via Creative Commons licence on FlickR

2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games People’s web site now available

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The fast approaching London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games have created much excitement and debate. The People’s Record web site has been developed to collect stories and experiences about the Olympics. It will create a record of the impact of Games on people across the nation. The People’s Record will be the first co-ordinated record by a host nation of the public’s reaction to the Games.

Creative Commons Licence - photographer Matsimpsk

The People’s Record web site is now available. Loughborough University Library and the Centre for Olympic Studies and Research have been collaborating on projects to be included on the People’s Record. Have a look at what individuals in the UK are saying about their sport, the Olympics and themselves.

Information is available about previous Loughborough University People’s Record projects and the current project.

Photo available thru Creative Commons Licence – photographer is matsimpsk

Energy and Football – Worthwhile Goals!

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E.ON, one of the UK’s leading energy companies, is at the forefront of a campaign to help amateur football teams up and down the land reduce their costs, after a report which reveals that UK amateur football, as a whole, is likely to be using around a staggering £43m worth of energy in pursuing its activities, with £7m of that total spent by those 2,000 semi-pro or amateur clubs with their own grounds.

According to E.ON, the amateur football sector as a whole could save up to 30% of its total energy bill by installing more modern, efficient and intelligent equipment, such as LED floodlights, timers and occupancy sensors, and by applying better controls, usage patterns and good maintenance.

As sponsor of the FA Cup since 2006, E.ON is no stranger to worthwhile football campaigns that make a positive difference to people’s lives. In the 2007/2008 season its Carbon Footyprint was the game’s first ever green campaign, helping to reduce the environmental impact of the FA Cup by encouraging fans to make simple energy pledges like leaving the car at home or gathering their mates together to watch matches on a single TV.

The Library has access to a wide variety of information about football, the environment, the effect sport has on the environment and its part in helping protect it via our many databases on Metalib, particularly SPORTDiscus and the databases in the Environment section.

To find out more about the campaign, E.ON have set up a Facebook page all about it here.

Happy Friday the 13th!

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What does the date Friday the 13th conjour up in your mind? Ill omen and misfortune? Superstition? Or maniacs in hockey masks pursuing hapless teenagers (and I’m not just referring to the Loughborough Students Hockey team during Freshers Week).

Friday the 13th has long held an infamous quality in western society, even before the advent of that series of dreadful horror movies with the aforementioned maniac. Folklore is full of allusions to dreadful things happening on this day. Indeed, so rooted is it some people’s psyche that it has a profound effect on their day-to-day routine; people are known to avoid taking long trips on planes or trains in case some dreadful accident befalls the journey. Some even take the entire day off and spend it in bed so as to avoid any misfortune (which sounds like a good idea most days anyway).

This phobia of anything connected with the so-called ‘unlucky 13′ can be traced as far back as Norse mythology (the evil Norse god Loki apparently turned up at a shindig arranged by the other 12 gods and, true to form, embarked on massacring them like our friend with the hockey mask), and other instances such as Judas arriving as the 13th guest at the Last Supper, and of course astronaut Tom Hanks having all those problems with that rocket in Apollo 13.

Of course, we in the Pilkington Library have no such truck with such base superstitions, proudly belonging, as we do, to the cutting edge of 21st century technology, with which absolutely nothing can ever go even remotely wronggGGGGGGGHJKFDRERLXxxxxUIOOOP.

 

Football Legends

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Though England’s bid for glory during this summer’s World Cup in South Africa ended as something of a national debacle, there’s still plenty to be proud about of our ‘National Game’! And to reflect this, the BBC Archives have recently released a classic series of radio interviews detailing the lives and careers of some of Britain’s greatest footballers.

Jimmy Armfield, a former England captain himself and now one of BBC Sports’ Radio’s most respected and revered pundits, hosts these trips down football’s memory lane, and includes interviews with such icons as Stanley Matthews, Geoff Hurst, Bobby Charlton and Kevin Keegan, and should prove vastly entertaining and enlightening to football fans of all generations and nationalities. They’re available to listen to through the BBC Archives website here.

Needless to say, as the series focusses on players of legendary status, none of the current England football squad are represented!

The UK’s biggest building site…

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What has:

* 14 Bus Stops

* 5km of temporary roads

* a radio network

* and 11 canteens?

No, not Loughborough University campus, but the developing 2012 Olympic Park, currently “the UK’s biggest building site”.  Read the latest issue of Building magazine for a 15-page spread on the building of the Olympic stadia.  If you don’t get to the digital edition fast enough, try the print at Serials 690/BUI.

 

 

 

  • each serving between 80 and 350 people a day

 

Wimbledon Epic!

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The 2010 Wimbledon Tennis Championships got underway this week, and already has produced a match of epic proportions, with John Isner and Nicolas Mahut setting a new world record for the longest match ever played during their mens’ singles match.

Currently locked at 59-59, the game began at just after 2PM yesterday afternoon and the players were still going when forced off for bad light at just after 9pm.

The previous longest match was at the French Open in 2004, when Fabrice Santoro beat Arnaud Clement after six hours and 35 minutes. The longest at Wimbledon had been  between Pancho Gonzales and Charlie Pasarell in 1969, which took five hours 12 minutes and ultimately finished Gonzales’ favour.

You can keep up to date with the latest scores via the tournament’s official website and the BBC Sport site, and among the library’s electronic resources you will find a wealth of information about the Wimbledon championships and tennis in general on such databases as Nexis UK and SPORT Discus.

The dream is over

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David Beckhams dreams of starring in a fourth World Cup are in tatters after tearing his achilles heel. He had high hopes of becoming the first UK footballer to play in 4 World Cups.

The worst thing that can happen to any footballer is a serious injury and unfortuantely he has suffered the one that all players dread.  Achilles injuries are one of the worst that a footballer can suffer, although the operation is relatively simple, the rehabilitation is arduous, so David can expect to spend up to two months with the heel imbolised before starting a programme of intense physiotherapy. 

It is expected to be three months at the very earliest before he can run, and double that before he has a chance of playing again.  More likely he will be out for the remainder of 2010 which raises inevitable questions about him ever playing a competitive match again.

To find out more about sporting injuries go to our databases in the Sport & exercise sciences