UK athletics elite centre to be located at Alexander Stadium

Alexander Stadium, the home of the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games, is to be the site of UK Athletics’ new Performance Innovation Centre.

The facility will be located at the redeveloped Alexander Stadium campus from summer 2023 as part of the Commonwealth Games legacy programme. The centre is to be developed through an agreement between UKA, Birmingham City Council and other partners such as Sport England.

Designed for the primary use of UKA World Class Programme athletes and coaches, the facility is designed to enable world-leading capability to understand track and field performance through enhanced technology and analytics, which are not currently available to athletes in the UK.

UKA said athletes and coaches visiting the centre will be able to deep-dive into their performance through having access to diagnostic capabilities with specialist expertise, in an environment designed for problem solving and collaboration.

Jack Buckner, UKA’s chief executive, said: “For some time, UKA has aspired to have an environment which adds value to the daily training of our Olympic and Paralympic athletes, where training and performance insight can be taken to the next level and rival international competitors. The creation of the Performance Innovation Centre will help us to achieve this.”

UKA’s enhanced presence on site will complement a range of existing tenants such as Birchfield Harriers Athletics Club and Birmingham City University, which is set to establish a campus at the stadium for sports and exercise students.

Earlier this month it was announced that Alexander Stadium has been awarded hosting rights for the 2026 edition of the European Athletics Championships.

Meanwhile, Crystal Palace National Sports Centre has been temporarily closed after it was discovered that the pillars supporting the floodlights at the stadium are not safe.

It is not known when the community facility, which was a Grand Prix venue prior to London 2012, will reopen.

For years, the stadium, which had a 19,000 capacity, was a fixture on the international stage thanks to its link with British athletics. But when the London Olympics took place in 2012, athletic events moved away from Crystal Palace to be held at venues across England.