Don Valley Stadium as the centre-piece of a £147 million construction programme needed to provide the necessary sports and cultural facilities to enable the city to host the 1991 Summer Universiade. Jan Železný threw in the javelin on 29 August 1993 (which was a world record at the time) and infamously nearly hit the TV commentators who were interviewing close to the start/finish line. There were plans to use the stadium in a Sheffield bid for the 2002 Commonwealth Games (which eventually went to Manchester) and also to use it as a potential joint ground for the city's two football teams. In both
Don Valley Parkway north along the river valleys had been lumbered and farmed, such as at Milne Hollow, but several natural areas remained by the 1950s. The forests of the Don valley had been where Canadian naturalist Ernest Thompson Seton spent much of his youth in the 1870s studying animal life. The Don Valley Parkway was not the first highway planned through the valley. In the 1930s, a "speedway" through the lower valley was promoted as possible depression relief. Unlike today's parkway, this road would have curved northwest near the Don Valley Brick Works and connected to Mount Pleasant at Davisville. The city