EvalCom 2015 WU in Granada – Day 2

At the second day of their inspection visit in Granada and Sierra Nevada, the FISU Evaluation Committee members Leonz Eder, Hassan Chikh, Marian Dymalski, Oleg Matytsin and Roger Roth learned more about the candidature of Granada. The candidate city created the slogan “One City, One University, One Mountain”. The candidature is mainly supported and carried by four institutions, namely the Granada City Council, the Autonomous Government of Andalusia, the Regional Government of Granada and the University of Granada.

“This project will help the achievement of the upgrading venues and sporting infrastructure in the City of Granada”, Francisco Barranco del Cuerpo, member of the Candidature Committee said. After the presentation of the Granada venue facilities, the FISU delegates visited the Abades Nevada Palace (FISU Hotel), the Football Stadium with a seating capacity of 15,000 spectators, which is foreseen for the open air Opening Ceremony, the Sport Palace and the Athletes’ Village land. As one of the legacies of the Granada bid, this new Campus will be used in the future as additional housing capacities for the University students of Granada. With six ice rinks needed, most of them to be built for permanent use, the OC plans to concentrate the ice sports in the south part of Granada.

After a 45 minutes’ transfer to the Sierra Nevada Ski Resort, Francisco Cuenca, Vice-President of the Company Cetursa and delegate from the ‘Junta de Andalucia’ for innovation, science and business, and Eduardo Valenzuela, director of the Sierra Nevada station (responsible for the slopes, the artificial snow and the environment) presented the concept of the Snow sports in Sierra Nevada. This famous ski resort which hosted not only successfully the Alpine Skiing World Championships in 1996, but also 76 regional and national races every winter, offers a great service capacity.

“The 2015 Winter Universiade will help us to make our ski resort one of the best in the world”, Francisco Cuenca said. The Sierra Nevada is willing to invest 48 Million € in order to modernize the infrastructure including the adaptation of some of the slopes.

“Granada 2015 is a unique opportunity for Sierra Nevada to speed up the permission process for building new facilities and will give a long term meaning to the Sierra Nevada competition program”, Eduardo Valenzuela said.

Sierra Nevada – the famous ski resort for all snow sports except Cross Country Skiing and Biathlon

On this land the new Universiade village with a capacity of 2,500 beds will be erected

The Palacio de los Deportes will be used for Figure Skating