Our good news is spreading far and wide. (Taken from the Times on Saturday) Rory Smith discovers how billionaire found the inspiration to transform the city’s sporting landscape The idea came to Steve Lansdown at the Nou Camp. He was wandering through Barcelona’s museum, its walls lined with glistening silverware. It was not their number that struck him so much as what they were for, the sheer number of disciplines represented. “You expect it to be just football, but it’s everything,” he says. That made his mind up. What’s good enough for Barcelona, he thought, is good enough for Bristol. Lansdown is the sort of man who can make his ideas become reality. Forbes estimate his personal wealth at about £1.3 billion. This year, his football team, Bristol City, have already been promoted to the Sky Bet Championship. His rugby side, Bristol Rugby, are in pole position to follow suit and return, after six years away, to the Aviva Premiership. His basketball franchise, Bristol Flyers, will finish their first season in the British Basketball League safely in mid-table. The women’s football team, Bristol Academy, made the quarter-finals of the Champions League. Dino Zamparelli, one of two drivers racing under his banner, is preparing for his first Porsche Carrera Cup. That may just be the start of it: the 62-year-old does not rule out other sports falling under his Bristol Sport umbrella in the future. Very rich people do not do anything without thinking it through. Lansdown’s multisport plan was no flight of fancy. He knew, like everyone in Bristol, that the football team needed a better stadium; he had, after all, been trying to persuade the council to allow them to build a new one for more than a decade. When that reached a dead end, he opted for the next best thing. Ashton Gate, their home for more than a century, is in the middle of a drastic redesign that will lift its capacity to 27,000 come the end of next season. There was, then, a commercial logic behind drawing the rugby team into the fold. They moved into Ashton Gate last year. “Stadiums are very expensive things,” Lansdown says. “It is sensible if you can pull together sports that can generate footfall: you need as many people coming in as often as possible to get a return on your investment.” And there was a sporting rationale too: Lansdown speaks enthusiastically about the football and rugby teams being able to share ideas on training, recovery, sports science. Andy Robinson, the director of rugby, and Steve Cotterill, the football’s team’s manager, have already met on a couple of occasions to see how they can learn from each other. Results this year hint that it is working. There was a more ambitious plan, though, too. Bristol, rightly or wrongly, has never been considered a football city. To some extent, it is not even seen as a sporting city. It is the home of Banksy and Brunel; it is the sweeping grandeur of Clifton and the nose rings and defiant individuality of Stokes Croft. Lansdown wanted to change that. “We wanted to get people thinking of the city and sport in the same breath,” he says. As impressive as the professionals’ results have been, the work done by the clubs in the community is even more encouraging. City’s community trust now employs 40 people; It was scratching by on six just a few years ago. Its budget next year will be £1 million. It is rated as one of the most effective of its kind in the country. The city is responding to the effort. Bristolians do feel as though something is stirring. “I’ve never been to the rugby before,” says Rob Nicholas, a season ticket-holder at City forf 18 years, while nursing his lunch in the Red and White Café, near the ground. It is packed with men in high-visibility vests. Business has been booming since the work started. “Friends of mine who aren’t football fans have been to see City. What’s happening at the stadium shows they’re making an effort,” he adds. “People respond to that.” This afternoon, City are at home to Coventry City. At the Three Lions, just up the hill from the ground, they are expecting up to a thousand people to celebrate promotion. It will be so busy that the police will be forced to close the road. That, though, is not the only big game in Bristol this weekend. A couple of miles away, round the corner from Brunel’s suspension bridge, Don Stone and Bill Arthur are sitting in a café on Clifton Downs. There is a match here this afternoon that will draw a crowd as well. Sneyd Park and Bristol St Vincent’s are due to play each other in the Downs League. They are both in contention for the title. They have both been around for more than a century. So, too, has the league: it was formed in 1905. There are four divisions now. Their clubhouse has 38 changing rooms. There are 34 pitches. “There would be hundreds of people playing here every Saturday afternoon,” Stone, the president, says. “There is a real sense of community,” Arthur, the chairman, says. “Teams come from around Bristol to play. There is a friendly atmosphere: you have to see the same people every week. That fosters a type of camaraderie.” The success of the Downs’ league, in the face of intense competition — there are half a dozen more operating in the city, as well as rugby and cricket tournaments — rather diminishes the idea that this is not a place where sport can thrive. It is just, as Allan Dunn, who ran a team on the Downs for several years, points out, that it is a city “where people participate rather than watch.” Lansdown’s hope to turn Bristol into a place of sporting excellence is falling on fertile ground.
Don't get me started on that, it's still a sore subject all these years later. The runners up medals are still gathering dust in a dark corner somewhere.
"What’s good enough for Barcelona, he thought, is good enough for Bristol!" The two models are very different. FC Barcelona has a co-operative members owned structure. Bristol Sport doesn't and is essentially owned by one individual. The two are incompatible.
