Sports Calendar

A similar story emerges in the United States, where 6,000 parks and open spaces have public-access exercise equipment, while in Australia more than 50 per cent of parks have ultra-modern, weather-proof exercise equipment.

Previously Delaney was the London regional director of Sport England and he is now head of sporting legacy for the Greenwich 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. He estimates that fewer than one in four of the UK’s 2,700 public parks has outdoor equipment for adults.

“What there is seems to consist of roughly-hewn wooden poles which rot and splinter, and are often vandalised,” he says. The company now has a commitment to install a number of other outdoor gyms around London, including a public-access gym at Mitcham and Tooting Football Club and another at the London Fields Lido in Hackney. “By 2012 we’re hoping that each local authority around the country will have ten similar outdoor exercise facilities,” says Delaney.

Designed by co-director Georgie Tarrant, a former communications manager at Sport England, the University of East London (UEL) set-up appears much like a regular gym transferred outdoors — complete with garishly coloured all-weather powder coating.

“I took the Chinese example and worked with personal trainers, architects, and installation and safety experts to make sure that all the equipment was in line with European safety standards and easy to use,” she says.

Users are presented with resistance and cardiovascular machines, including cross-trainers, running machines, and exercise bikes all of which require no electricity supply and work using wind resistance, rollers and body weight.

The question, as always, comes back to funding. “We can only roll out this concept nationally with the financial support of a number of partners from the National Lottery, government departments, local authorities, primary care trusts and the private sector,” Tarrant says.

“But with the positive feedback we have had from the UEL site, the support of former Olympians such as the javelin champions Steve Backley and Tessa Sanderson, and the push ahead of the London Olympics, things are looking decidedly rosy.”

Fiona Milley, the head of sports development at Newham Borough Council, confirms that the UEL site has been a success. “We wanted to take sport to the people in the borough,” she says. “It is part of a wider strategy of providing young people with sporting activities, from fencing demonstrations outside train stations to inter-estate football tournaments.”

One other company also hoping to make inroads into the largely untapped UK market is the Australian firm Fitness Trails, which has installed more than 500 of its “Exersites” Down Under, as well as more than 100 other sites across the Far East and the West Coast of the US. “Almost every public space and college in Australia has some outdoor exercise equipment, and the argument that you don’t have the weather for it in the UK is rubbish,” says the chief executive Neil Gray.

Exersites has been so successful, he says, because it is so functional. It comes in pre-fabricated kits that can be assembled by anyone, take up just 11 square metres, cater for every fitness level and are made from 100 per cent recycled plastic.

“They require absolutely no maintenance, they’re weather and vandal-proof and can be manufactured much more cheaply than old-style outdoor equipment,” Gray says. The kits cost £16,000 including installation, up to a third cheaper than conventional playground equipment, he says.

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