The recent Sussex Parallel Youth Games, held at Olympos Burgess Hill, were also the setting for the presentation of this year's GLL Sport Foundation Awards.

These financial and training grants for talented athletes, provided by the GLL Sport Foundation, total over £400,000 and this year 19 young athletes in the Crawley area were presented with awards to help towards furthering their sporting achievements.

Freedom Leisure, which runs K2 Crawley in partnership with GLL, will be supporting these young individuals, who have shown exceptional potential and long-term commitment to succeeding at an international a level in their chosen sport. The young athletes using K2 Crawley's state-of-the-art facilities represent a broad range of Olympic disciplines, ranging from athletics to swimming, basketball to cricket and hockey to gymnastics. All these sponsored athletes will benefit from up to £1,250 to be spent of training, travel and equipment during the next 12 months.

Councillor Lenny Walker, Cabinet member for Leisure and Culture, said: "I was delighted to attend the GLL Awards and meet our sporting stars of the future. I hope the grants they receive help them to achieve their goals in the coming months and, who knows - maybe we'll see them at London 2012 or a future Olympics."

Peter Bundey GLL Sport Foundation Chair said; "The aim of the Foundation is to provide practical and tangible support for talented young athletes. After the first two years of these awards, it has become clear that the support given to these young athletes is having a tremendous impact. The success of the scheme has already surpassed our expectations and we have been able to promote these young people as role models within their communities. This is very important to us and we will continue to positively support this message."

On behalf of Freedom Leisure, Crawley Borough Council and the GLL Sport Foundation we would like to thank two of these talented athletes, Seb Rodger and Chris Scott who attended the event to promote the awards and inspire other young people."

This is an extremely exciting opportunity for each of these young athletes and the team at K2 Crawley will continue to provide support, encouragement and motivation to help them all achieve the sporting ambitions over the coming years.