Debt from Sheffield hosting 1991 student games finally cleared

Council debts run up from a loan taken to host the World Student Games in Sheffield more than 30 years ago will finally be paid off next month.

Sheffield City Council spent millions building new venues for the 1991 event, but with interest and four rounds of re-financing the costs soared to £658m.

Council leader Tom Hunt said clearing the debt would free up money to invest in leisure facilities.

At the time, the games were the biggest sporting event to be held in the UK since the 1948 London Olympics, attracting 3,300 athletes from 101 countries.

Hosting the event was seen as a bold way to regenerate Sheffield's former industrial sites after the closure of the steelworks and mass redundancies of the 1980s.

Several new sporting venues, including Don Valley Stadium, Ponds Forge and Sheffield Arena, were built to host the events, but with no financial support from government the council footed the bill.

Sheffield South East MP Clive Betts, who was council leader at the time of the games, said the actual cost of hosting the event was £10m - less than 1% of the council's budget - which was paid off within two years.

He said it was the additional loans needed to build the various venues which lead to the debt and the perception the event had cost so much was wrong because the council had re-mortgaged the original loan to pay for other services over the years.

He said the games brought the city together and gave people "wonderful facilities" that had been used for more than 30 years.

The games have been largely forgotten outside Sheffield, but in the city's Town Hall they have been used as javelins to puncture Labour for years.

Every time councillors wrangle with budgets, opposition politicians and members of the public would summon the ghost of the 1991 sporting spectacle.

But supporters say the games led to world-class facilities, such as the National Centre for Sport and Exercise Medicine and the Advance Wellbeing Research Centre - which rose like a phoenix from the flames of the old Don Valley Stadium site after it was demolished in 2013.

Peter Price, 85, was one of the original councillors who approved the games. He's still their most passionate cheerleader and was disappointed when their 30th anniversary wasn't celebrated.

He told a Town Hall meeting back in 2021: "The objective was to act as a catalyst to regenerate our city."

As the final repayment is made, supporters will hope the games paid off enough for Sheffield to cement itself as the city of sport.

Mr Hunt said making the final repayment of the loan in March would be a "big milestone".

"This was an investment in the city's future made by the city to make sure we had world class leisure and entertainment facilities," he said.

"Thousands of people on a weekly basis are still enjoying those facilities.

"We're now looking to the future to think about how we can ensure we continue to have modern, accessible leisure facilities that mean we can compete on the national and international stage."

He said the authority planned to rebuild some of the city's "more tired facilities" such as the Springs Leisure Centre and Hillsborough Leisure Centre.