UK Athletics innovation centre announced for Birmingham

Birmingham's redeveloped Alexander Stadium campus will have a new UK Athletics (UKA) performance innovation centre from next summer.

It would involve enhanced technology and analytics "not currently available to athletes in the UK", the governing body said.

The facility is designed for the primary use of UKA World Class Programme athletes and coaches.

Birmingham will host the European Athletics Championships in 2026.

The announcement over the event was made earlier in November, following the staging of the Commonwealth Games in the West Midlands this year.

UKA, the governing body, said it had confirmed the city would host the centre from the summer, after agreeing a partnership with the council for it to be on the stadium campus, helping "cement" the site's Games legacy.

Stephen Maguire, UKA technical director, said the initiative was "actually to give us a competition environment away from competition".

He added the site was "where we can create a culture and an environment where athletes will be able to train at a very high level and a high intensity level, which we'll be able to pick up and [we'll] work with their coaches on what's gonna make the critical differences".

Mr Maguire said: "So it's visual, it's physical, it could be mental, it could be recovery, all those type [of] things."

UKA CEO Jack Buckner stated for some time the governing body had "aspired to have an environment which adds value to the daily training of our Olympic and Paralympic athletes".

He said this was where "training and performance insight can be taken to the next level and rival international competitors".

Buckner, the former middle-distance runner who was a 5,000m European champion, added: "The creation of the performance innovation centre will help us to achieve this."

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