The London Olympic Marathon is 26.1
miles – that’s the same as running around the perimeter of Llangors Lake more
than five times!
Pen y Fan is the tallest mountain in
the Bannau Brycheiniog and South Wales standing at 886 metres above sea level –
that’s an incredible 370 times higher than the current Olympic High Jump record
of 2.39 metres set by American Charlie Austin in the Atlanta 1996 games.
Before winning a gold medal in the
Women’s Road Race at the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, Great Britain cyclist
Nicole Cooke used the winding roads of the Bannau Brycheiniog as her green gym to
prepare for the event.
The black-listed Grwyne Fawr Reservoir
cycle route through the Black Mountains is the most difficult mountain bike
challenge in South Wales – and is even longer than the Olympic 50km Race Walk.
Welsh hurdler Colin Jackson, who
scooped a silver medal in the 110m Hurdles at the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, was
once a member of Brecon Athletics Club based in the Bannau Brycheiniog.
The River Taff, which rises in the
Bannau Brycheiniog, runs into Cardiff alongside the Millennium Stadium, the site of
the first event of the 2012 Olympic Games – Women’s Football.
Foxhunter, the champion show jumping
horse that secured Great Britain’s only gold medal at the 1952 Olympics in
Helsinki, is buried on the Blorenge mountain near Abergavenny in the south east
corner of the Bannau Brycheiniog National Park.
The London 2012 Olympic torch relay
will pass through the Bannau Brycheiniog National Park between Abergavenny and
Brynmawr on Friday, May 25.
Bannau Brycheiniog National Park is home
to two dedicated visitor centres run by the National Park Authority, one in
Libanus outside of Brecon, the other in Waterfall County in Pontneddfechan.
Walking the 25.7 miles between these two points would be equal to completing
the Men’s 20km Race Walk twice.
The volume of one of the biggest reservoirs in the
Bannau Brycheiniog National Park, the Usk Reservoir, is equivalent to 4,920 Olympic
swimming pools.