Tom Daley has been urged to step in to halt the “devastating” removal of diving boards at a council-run pool used by his flagship academy in north London.
Dozens of young divers may be forced to give up the sport when the facilities are stripped out of Barnet Copthall leisure centre under cost-saving measures later this year.
About 28 children, aged five to 11, who use the boards are members of the Tom Daley Diving Academy at the leisure centre and have won medals in national competitions.
Now, their parents have urged the Olympic star to block the removal of the boards and “keep Tom’s legacy alive”.
Wendy Kravetz, whose two daughters aged seven and nine are members of the academy, said: “Tom Daley’s initial view was to get more and more children into diving and that is live and ongoing at Barnet Copthall – but it could soon be gone and gone for ever.”
The 21-year-old diver, who together with Dan Goodfellow won bronze in the men’s synchronised 10m platform competition last week, launched the academy two years ago in a bid to discover Britain’s next Olympic diving champion.
Daley’s diving school started at the London Aquatics Centre in the Olympic park in east London and now puts on lessons across the capital. It has more than 500 divers in its London branch and last year expanded to Manchester.
Barnet council announced earlier this year that it was to remove diving facilities from the pool under cost-saving measures. The closure comes amid concern about the funding gap between grassroots sport and elite-level competition.
Parents of Barnet’s young divers have amassed more than 2,000 signatures in a petition against the closure, warning that potential Olympic stars of the future will have to give up the sport if the plans go ahead.
Kravetz, 43, said the youngsters would have to make round trips of at least two hours, three times a week, to get to their nearest diving centre 20 miles away at the Olympic park.
“It’s just not going to happen,” she said. “There are kids that dive now in the local area and their parents aren’t going to be able to take them. They won’t be able to pursue the sport and they could be the next Olympians.”
She added: “It’s devastating. We’ve got a Tom Daley squad that compete nationally in competitions and they’ve recently won gold, silver and bronze as a young diving team.
“We appreciate that it’s a specialist sport but when you look at the success of the Olympics team now there has got to be some diving pools available. These kids are really, really into it.”
She said the children had been inspired by the Rio Olympics and had been staying up late to watch it on television. Earlier this week the children handed in the petition to Barnet council.
Kravetz added: “They’re pretty devastated. They’ve been campaigning alongside us , doing posters, asking people to sign the petition – they’ve handed the petition to Barnet council. They understand as much as they can but as we drove away from Barnet council, they said, ‘So what’s their decision?’ We’ve still got a long way to go.”
The Barnet Copthall leisure centre currently has a three-metre platform, a three-metre board, three one-metre boards and a diving block. But the diving facilities are to be stripped out within the next 18 months under plans to refurbish the centre.
In a policy document published in December last year the council said including diving boards would add £676,000 to the cost of the refurbishment and “would have a negative impact on income and hence overall affordability”.
Barnet councillor Sachin Rajput said: “We recognise the importance of sport and physical activity in the borough which is why we are investing in two proposed state-of-the-art leisure centres by rebuilding Barnet Copthall and constructing a new facility to replace the Church Farm leisure centre.
“Extensive consultation was carried out to help determine the mix of facilities for both schemes before being approved in December last year. In deciding this mix we have taken into consideration people’s views while balancing the need to make sure the proposals are viable, and that the new centres provide the maximum benefit to the community.
“I understand that people feel strongly about this issue. We have received a petition which will be discussed at a council committee with the lead petitioner invited to present their views.”
