Ukrainian Trip Report

"You might have seen last night, on Granada TV the piece that Andy Burnham did in the studio about our recent trip to the Ukraine, which involved Andy, Peter Smith the Leader of the Council and myself trying to get Ukrainians to send their Olympic and Paralympic team to Leigh in 2012 for the three weeks prior to going down to the Olympic Camp in London.

Last night's television piece was as bubbly and positive as I have seen for a long while. The nice touch for me was that as we look forward to 2012, we remember that 1948 was the last time that Britain held the Olympics and it also marked the arrival of 100+ families of Ukrainian people who had lost everything, including their Statehood. Like the vast majority of people in Leigh, they have grafted, they have put up with some pretty tough times and they too are looking forward to a more positive future.

Andy and Peter were terrific in the Ukraine and really were great Ambassadors for our town and of course, with the Village now we are able to say, "Look, we already have a connection, come and make use of what we believe to be some of the best facilities in the country."

Our Ambassador out there, Tim Sparrow, was helped by his adviser Duncan Allen and the way they looked after us and organised a series of meetings was terrific. Our first meeting was with Valeriy Borzov who was standing in for the President of the Ukrainian Olympic Committee one Sergey Bubka who, as you probably know, is a multi-world champion in the sport of pole vaulting. He and others had been called in by the Prime Minister because Russia was likely to turn off the gas to Ukraine in the next 24 hours.

In spite of this crisis, Valeriy and his team saw us. Valeriy as you know is a double gold medallist in the 100 and 200 metres and is a full-blown member of the International Olympic Committee (there are only about 110 worldwide). The meeting with Valeriy was like all subsequent meetings and it was carried out in the presence of several Ministers and Assistants and lots and lots of cameramen, photographers and reporters.
As a democracy of only 16 years standing, they really believe in open and honest accountability.

Andy put the plan to Valeriy and of course, alluded to the fact that he was the fairly new Cabinet Minister for Culture, Media and Sport and also mentioned the forthcoming Ukrainian 2012 football championship.
Valeriy made some technical observations about ensuring that our facilities were up to the same standard as those in London, but we assured him that we have the enthusiastic and highly experienced support from Don Parker and others, who are based at the North West Development Agency and who are as keen as we are to bring a bit of the Olympics back to Leigh. (By the way, you might not know but the Ukraine is a pretty successful Olympic Team and they came 12th out of 201 national teams that competed in Athens in 2004 - they also have a Paralympian Team numbering some 84 people.)

Valeriy was very cordial and obviously quickly warmed to the idea but stated that it would have to be after the Beijing Olympics in August this year before a full evaluation could be made.

We then moved on to the second meeting involving an even larger group of people and media, which was headed by Yuriy Pavlenko, who is the Minister for Family, Youth and Sports. As you know Andy is only 38 but it was interesting that Yuriy was only 32 but obviously enjoyed the full confidence of his Prime Minister and his Government.

Yuriy, after listening and carefully studying the very high quality brochures and background material that we had taken with us, which had been prepared by Simon Toon the Chief Exec of LSV Co., became quite enthusiastic about the whole thing. Within minutes Andy and he had started working towards producing a Memorandum of Understanding between our two countries, not only for the Olympics but possibly for the football championship in 2012. Yuriy suggested that the LSV might host some kind of cultural exchange / tournament that could take place in
2009 and suggested to this end that perhaps a small delegation could come to Leigh just after the Beijing Olympics to try and put the meat on the bone.

Everybody was really positive and could see the benefit of exploring our heritage and the future in a balanced manner. It was acknowledge by our guests that some Ukrainian people back home would have found it difficult to trace relatives and they offered to open up some new avenues that could help in this regard.

It was just great to be there and see the germ of an idea growing in front of your eyes and being very skilfully handled by Andy and Peter for the benefit of our community, our town, our region and our country.

In the evening we had dinner with an executive from a national newspaper group, Politicians from the Government and the Opposition and in a far-reaching discussion it was interesting to see the differences between a democracy that was centuries old and one that had been 16 years only in the making.

That day there had been a pretty volatile moment in the Ukrainian Parliament when some speakers were physically blocked from addressing their colleagues. Andy pointed out that in our own House of Commons there is a line that goes down between the Government and the Opposition, which must not be crossed and which is exactly two sword lengths in distance - obviously designed to keep warring factions in the past apart!

We never think about democracy and probably won't unless we are in danger of losing it.

The next morning we had a press conference, which lasted an hour at which there were four TV cameras and about 12 journalists. They were very respectful and polite, in fact they didn't seem like journalists at all!

Afterwards we went to the Ukrainian House of Football, which is in the shadows of their national stadium and is a very new and obviously very expensive building. We met their first Vice President, Oleksandr Bandurko and it was not lost on him the advantages of making full use of Andy's department and his personal love of football in light of the forthcoming European Football Championship.

We eventually got on the plane later that day and I personally got home about 11.00 on Tuesday night, having travelled to London on Sunday. It was a really fast-moving two days and in some way it seemed a little surreal that, after nine years of trying to make LSV a reality, we were actually giving an emerging nation the opportunity to use the facility, taking into account the four generations of Ukrainians within our own community.

Lastly, I was warned about taking advantage of the Ukrainian's fulsome hospitality and strange to report I never had one shot of vodka while I was there! Space does not allow me to discuss the red wine and the
brandy!

Yours in sport,

Trevor.

 

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