Surrey School Sports Torch Relay 2011

Surrey schools get into Olympic spirit

With London 2012 now less than a year away, school children from around Surrey have been taking part in the School Torch Relay, trying to carry an 'Olympic torch' the route from the original Olympics in Athens 1896, all the way to London 2012 via each host city from previous years. This gave the schools a target of 123,190 miles to complete by any means necessary, be it running, cycling, walking, rowing etc.

The relay took place during the Lloyds TSB National School Sports week (27 June - 1 July) and although the targeted mileage was not achieved, it has firmly laid the groundwork for the event to be an even bigger success next year. Throughout the week the children and their teachers were coming up with new and exciting ways of completing their mileage, such as the use of kangoo boots by Therfield School. Through all of this a respectable 30,986.09 miles were completed. This now gives the schools a year to plan how they are going to make sure that the full distance is covered in time for the games in 2012.

The project was coordinated by Active Surrey, Surrey County Council and school sports partnership staff, and everyone involved made sure that as well as getting exercise the children taking part were having fun doing it. Therfield turned out to be the largest contributors overall, completing 11,328.65 miles, amounting to over a third of the total miles completed. Of the non-sports partnership schools taking part Thamesmead did the best with 2392 miles completed. The week managed to get children from over 100 schools across Surrey into the Olympic spirit and set everything up for next years relay to be an even greater success and the full 123,190 miles to be completed.

For more information about this exciting event, please get in touch.