Six Far Northern sports will be targeted as potential hosts of national and international events as part of the region's new focus on sports tourism. Drawing on the success of last year’s AFL match in Cairns, Tourism Tropical North Queensland business events director Rosie Douglas said sport would play a major part in aiding the region’s recovery.
"We developed a regional events strategy three years ago and sports tourism was identified as needing more attention, especially now we’re having to realign after the Japanese industry fell away," she said. “Sport was identified as one of the major areas we needed to look at. It’s broken into two areas – the high-profile events like AFL and also Challenge Cairns where a
lot of major athletes take part, and the high participation sports like Masters Games and junior competitions."
Challenge Cairns doubled expectations to yield an economic boost of $7.5 million for the region and Ms Douglas hoped other sports would follow suit. Among the targeted sports are AFL, cycling, mountain biking, cricket, judo and futsal. Major events this year are Queensland Reds v ACT Brumbies (February 11, Barlow Park), Challenge Cairns Triathlon (June 3) and Richmond Tigers v Gold Coast Suns (Cazalys, July 14).
AFL will come to Cairns for the second time with Richmond-Gold Coast Suns game as part of a three-year deal with AFL Cairns. The Queensland Reds are here in less than a month for their pre-season trial against the ACT Brumbies.
Ms Douglas said TTNQ was also close to securing a major masters event which could bring up to 3000 competitors to the Far North.
"We’re looking at a masters event which would be held every two years," she said. "It’s not confirmed so I can’t say too much about it, but we’re a fair way down the track with it and there are several sports who are interested in taking part."
TTNQ has created a sports co-ordinator position through funding from Sports and Recreation which will focus on upskilling local sporting bodies to enable them to host high level events.
Read more at http://www.cairns.com.au/article/2012/01/11/200271_local-news.html
Courtesy of The Cairns Post.
Last Modified on 11/01/2012 15:28