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Sports Minister visits Olympic park
22/10/2009
Sports Minister Shona Robison visited London's Olympic Village today to see Glasgow-based construction firm Barr begin work on the basketball arena which will be used in the 2012 Games.
The stadium will play a key role during the Olympics, with 12,000 seats for the basketball preliminaries and quarter-finals, as well as the handball semi-finals and finals.
During the Paralympic Games it will have a capacity of 10,000 seats for wheelchair basketball and wheelchair rugby.
The Minister's visit came as Arts Council England and London 2012 announced that Scotland based artist Craig Coulthard has been selected as the winner of a £460,000 (Lottery funded) commission for Artists taking the lead, one of the major projects for the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad.
During her visit to the site Ms Robison said:
"I congratulate Barr on winning the contract to build the main structure of the basketball arena and I'm pleased to see work beginning on site.
"The Scottish Government has been quite clear that we want to see Scottish companies get their fair share of the range of contracts from London 2012.
"The experience of bidding and hopefully winning more London 2012 contracts can only benefit companies as they prepare for the range of contracts on offer for Glasgow 2014."