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By Glenn Pearson
Dame Kelly Holmes says she is trying to encourage the rest of the country to follow in the footsteps of the successful Kent School Games.
Kent’s double gold medallist attended the launch of the 2010 Kent School Games this week, which is intended to give more than 30,000 young people across the county a chance to compete in as many as 38 different sports.
The Games were launched at Hayesbrook Sports College in Tonbridge on Thursday with local heats set to start later this month, culminating in finals events in July next year.
Kent County Council leader Paul Carter, the man who came up with the idea for an event believed to be the biggest school sports event in Europe, talked of a continued decline of sport in schools over the last 10 years and how that needed to be rectified.
After the success of the inaugural Games in 2008, Holmes said there have been discussions with other counties and the ideal scenario would be for a national school games to coincide with London 2012.
“It’s a massive event,” she said. “There’s nothing like it in the UK and I’m pushing for this to be replicated in other counties so we can have a national final in a national school games.
“It’s at quite an early stage, but in the nearby counties such as Essex and Surrey, they are very keen on the model, because the model is very good. Hopefully we can replicate it, but obviously it takes quite a lot of people to get something like this going. If we can start getting other counties doing it by 2011 with a big final for 2012, that would be fantastic.”
POSTED: 04/10/2009 10:00:00