City of Lisburn

Salto National Gymnastics Centre

City of Lisburn Salto is the official Olympic holding Camp for the 2012 Chinese Women’s and Men’s Artistic Gymnastics Team. The team will be training at Salto NGC in July prior to the London 2012 Olympics.

City of Lisburn Salto is the first National Gymnastics Centre of Excellence to be built in Northern Ireland/Ireland. City of Lisburn Salto currently offers classes for Parent and Toddlers, Kindergym, Fundamental, Recreation, Young Adult, Adult class, Women’s Artistic, Men’s Artistic, Acrobatics, Special Needs and Gym Fusion . We have just started a satellite club in Lisburn Central Primary School on a Saturday morning called ‘Salto Central’ to alleviate our waiting list.

Salto Gymnastics Club was the first gymnastics club to be awarded the Junior Gold Club Mark Status and we are currently working towards the New Gym Mark Scheme with Sport NI and British Gymnastics. We were awarded Club of the Year in the 2011 Lisburn Sports Personality of the Year Awards.

At a cost of nearly £1.5m the all new purpose built gymnastics training facility opened in January 2007. It has been the dream of Director Tony Byrne who started the Salto Gymnastics Club over 20 years ago who summed up the journey:

"It has been a long journey to get this far, but a first class facility alone does not make a champion a system does. We now have all the pieces of this system eventually coming together world class coaches, time, an excellent facility and of course the talented individuals. We have given fun and enjoyment to many children and produced many great gymnasts the future is bright and I extend our thanks to Sports Council Northern Ireland and Lisburn City Council."

Tony has great plans for improving significantly the level of gymnastics competance throughout Ireland and the new gym is just the start. The new state of the art facility is jointly funded by Salto, Sports Council NI and the City of Lisburn. It is the biggest and most well equipped gymnastics academy in Ireland with coaches of the highest quality and calibre