Sport and the Arts
Unrivalled sporting achievement
Loughborough is the UK’s premier university for sport and has perhaps the best integrated sports development environment in the world. The campus is home to some of the country’s leading coaches, sports scientists and support staff. It also has the country’s largest concentration of high quality sports training facilities, equipment and support resources in the world.
Loughborough University has made a unique contribution to the world of sport for over sixty years, bringing together exceptional athletes, facilities, coaching and research expertise, and extensive partnerships with major sports organisations.
Some of the most celebrated names in sport – including world record breaking athletes Sebastian Coe, Paula Radcliffe, David Moorcroft and Steve Backley; probably the greatest-ever Paralympian Tanni Grey-Thompson; England cricketer Monty Panesar; and World Cup winning England rugby coach Clive Woodward – have all studied at the University.
Today more than 250 international level athletes, many of whom will be household names in the future, are current Loughborough students. The University’s sports scholarship programme – the largest in the UK – enables the finest young athletes to excel in both their academic and sporting achievements. As well as supporting elite athletes the University also provides sporting opportunities for enthusiasts of all levels and abilities and has the country’s largest intramural hall sport programme.
In competition Loughborough boasts an unparalleled record of sporting success, having dominated the British Universities and Colleges Sport (BUCS) championships for more than thirty years. At the Beijing Olympics Loughborough’s largest ever international contingent was in action – a staggering 56 past and present students and University-based athletes represented their country at the Olympics and Paralympics. Loughborough collected silver and bronze at the Games.
Beijing was the latest in a long line of major sporting events involving Loughborough University athletes. Its students have been in action at every summer Olympics since the last London Games in 1948, and at the 2006 Commonwealth Games Loughborough athletes won 30 medals overall, including eight golds, which would have placed the University eighth in the medal table.
It is not just on the field that Loughborough excels. The University’s headline-hitting performance is crucially underpinned by internationally renowned teaching and research in sports science and engineering. In the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise (RAE), the research of Loughborough’s School of Sport and Exercise Sciences was assessed as the best in the country, and in 2007 the University opened a new £15 million state-of-the-art Sports Technology Institute to develop cutting-edge technology for the sport and leisure sector.
