Sport in the United Kingdom fans to sit behind an athletics track. This means that athletics stadiums have to be separately financed and this can only be done with public funds, which have not been forthcoming on a large scale. The largest athletics stadium built in the United Kingdom between Second World War and the 2010s, the 38,000-capacity City of Manchester Stadium built for the 2002 Commonwealth Games, was reconfigured for football-only use after that event. For many years, the largest existing stadium was the 25,000 seat Don Valley Stadium in Sheffield, and London's largest athletics venue was Crystal Palace, which has just 15,500 permanent
Don Valley Parkway is now part of the Charles Sauriol Conservation Reserve, which extends from the Forks of the Don, along the East Don to Milne Hollow at Lawrence Avenue, visible from the parkway. By contrast, Metro chairman Gardiner had an opposite opinion of the Don Valley and was quoted "I'll tell you what the Don Valley was. It was a place to murder little boys, that's what it was." The design of the project was contracted to the engineering consortium of Fenco-Harris, which completed the plans in the fall of 1955. The project included extending Bayview Avenue south along the Lower Don