THE trophies to be awarded at the finals of the European Wheelchair Basketball Championships in Worcester's University Arena on Sunday haven't had far to travel. Because they were made a couple of miles across the city by local firm Lesk Engineers.

The company on Perrywood Trading Park in Wylds Lane has just celebrated 50 years of manufacturing parts for the aerospace and machine tools industry, but this is the first time it has made sports trophies.

Managing director Pete Brown explained: "Our chairman Jim McBride is a former president of Herefordshire and Worcestershire Chamber of Commerce and when it was announced the Wheelchair Basketball Championships were coming to Worcester he offered to support the event.

"We have made 14 trophies to be presented on Sunday. They were made from anodised aluminium and finished in black and blue. We machined the trophies to the designs provided using our CNC machines and three of our specialists worked on the production of them. It is a privilege for us to support this event being held in Worcester."

The Championships, which began last Friday, are proving great news for Worcestershire’s tourism industry, attracting visitors from the UK and all over the world and being watched by thousands of viewers online. In the first forty eight hours the live stream channel received 77,758 views from 26,016 unique visitors, only twenty seven per cent of this traffic being from the UK. The EuroWBChamps2015 Facebook Page, established specifically for the event was also viewed by many, receiving 76,657 page views in the opening weekend.

Chamber of Commerce chief executive Mike Ashton said: "We thought that this event would be good for the city and the county. In fact it has been great."