Training camp at university home away from home for athletes

For dozens of South Korean athletes and coaches training and staying at Brunel University here, their base camp for the upcoming London Olympics has been a home away from home.

To a man, they praised training environments on campus, located in the charming little town of Uxbridge in the northwestern part of London. The Korean Olympic Committee (KOC), for the first time for an Olympics on foreign soil, set up a separate training base for the country's athletes. Brunel hosts some 200 athletes in 10 sports ahead of the July 27-Aug. 12 Olympics.

The school has offered training facilities on campus and put up athletes and coaches at its dormitories. But the best part of their experience at Brunel, said the athletes, has been the home cooking.

The KOC brought along nine chefs from the National Training Center in Seoul, the country's largest training ground for Olympians. They're here to serve mostly Korean meals to athletes, who officials say tend to miss Korean food even more when they're overseas for competitions.

Cha Dong-min, competing in the men's over-80-kilogram division in taekwondo, said he was "pleasantly surprised" by how similar the conditions were on campus to Seoul.

"If the meals aren't quite on par with ones we had in Seoul, they're very close," Cha said with a smile. "Things have been set up to resemble the national center back home, and I could tell the KOC really put a lot into this."

Hwang Kyung-seon, Cha's teammate fighting in the women's under-67kg division, said she enjoys having a bedroom to herself without a roommate, which gives the reticent athlete some privacy.

"We've still got some time before our competition, and it's important to maintain some degree of tension and intensity in the buildup," Hwang said. Her event is set for on Aug. 10. "And life outside our gym has been just fine around these parts."

Kim Sei-hyeok, the taekwondo delegation's head coach, said the Brunel camp has given his athletes "flexibility" to prepare for the Olympics.

"It's like we've moved the National Training Center from Seoul to London," Kim said. "And we can use our gym as we please. So we can hold practices in the morning hours to get ready for early morning bouts, and then have late night drills for gold medal matches, which are held around 10 p.m. We also have flexible schedules for weight training."

There have been other concrete benefits, too. Kang Jae-won, head coach of the women's handball team, said his team's practice gym has been fitted with the same type of surface that will be used during the Olympics. Though the gym is smaller than the actual court, Kang said preparing at Brunel "has been very useful."

The KOC has also allowed sparring partners for sports like taekwondo and boxing to travel with the athletes to London. For these athletes, it's important to prepare by training with athletes of similar stature, rather than taking on teammates in different weight classes.

The non-Olympians don't have the necessary accreditation to enter Olympic facilities. But here at the school they can help enhance preparations.

According to the KOC, there are 45 training partners on hand at Brunel. They won't be able to join the Olympians at the athletes' village, though, and will leave London in the coming days.

Jung Hoon, head coach of the men's judo team, said teaming up Olympians with partners has done wonders for his charges.

"I've never imagined we'd be able to have such partners for the Olympics," Jung said. "The KOC really went out of their way to do this. It almost feels like we're still training in Korea." (Yonhap News)