Cardiff Central Youth Club is an excellent gymnastics centre, catering for gymnasts of all ages and abilities. It has unrivalled facilities within Cardiff and the surrounding area, including full women’s and men’s apparatus and a floor-level foam pit. The club offers a wide range of gymnastics tuition, and is currently able to provide a class for anyone wishing to learn gymnastics, regardness of gender, age or ability. Furthermore, the club is regularly used as a training venue for other sports such as martial arts, cheerleading and freerunning. In addition to its significant contribution to sport in the local community, Cardiff Central Youth Club is also a centre for elite gymnastics. The club has enjoyed significant success in the past, having trained gymnasts that have competed in the Commonwealth Games and Youth Olympic Games. The club is hoping to build on these successes and looks set for a very exciting future, with three current gymnasts likely to be selected for the 2012 Olympic Games. The council plans to move the facilities to Eastern leisure centre, but it is highly unlikely that a leisure centre could not house the facilities that are currently provided by the club. Firstly, the facilities on Ocean Way include a large floor-level foam fit, enabling gymnastics to learn new skills whilst minimising the risk of injury. Such a facility is vital for any gymnastics facility hoping to produce gymnasts of national standard and could not be incorporated into Eastern Leisure Centre without considerable building work and hence a large expenditure. Secondly, it is unlikely that the Eastern Leisure Centre will have sufficient space to store all of the equipment currently housed in Ocean Way. Much of the current equipment will therefore have to be sold, marking a substantial loss to those hoping to partake in gymnastics in Cardiff whilst not raising any significant capital due to the used nature of the equipment. Furthermore, it should be noted that all other gymnastics classes currently provided by Cardiff City Council are held in leisure centres. These classes only cater for children and do not offer full men's apparatus, thereby discriminating against boys wishing to partake in the sport. The equipment must also be set up and dismantled before and after every training session, which is time consuming and potentially dangerous given the large and heavy nature of gymnastics apparatus. Cardiff Central is the only specialist gymnastics centre run by Cardiff City Council that has permanent high quality facilities and the ability to cater for anyone wishing to learn gymnastics. The closure of Cardiff Central Youth Club would therefore represent a significant setback to gymnastics in Cardiff. This petition will be mailed to Cardiff City Council and the Welsh Assembly on February 21st 2011. If you support our efforts to keep Cardiff Central Youth Club open, please add your signature below.

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