Sports
The city has a soccer team called Club de Deportes La Serena which plays in the First Division of the Chilean league of football. Their home games are played at the La Portada stadium, which has a capacity of approximately 18,000 seats. Their biggest rival is Coquimbo Unido. They are nicknamed "Los Papayeros", because of the papayas that are grown near La Serena in the Elqui Valley.
Since 2007, there is a tournament professional tennis, the Challenger de La Serena, in the fields of the Campus Trentino of the University of the Mar, in which the first champion was the Argentine tennis player Mariano Zabaleta. The above mentioned enclosure was the location for the series of the Davis Cup between Chile and Russia at the beginning of February 2007.
Read more about this topic: La Serena Song Festival
Famous quotes containing the word sports:
“Come, my Celia, let us prove
While we may the sports of love;
Time will not be ours forever,
He at length our good will sever.”
—Ben Jonson (1572–1637)
“In the past, it seemed to make sense for a sportswriter on sabbatical from the playpen to attend the quadrennial hawgkilling when Presidential candidates are chosen, to observe and report upon politicians at play. After all, national conventions are games of a sort, and sports offers few spectacles richer in low comedy.”
—Walter Wellesley (Red)
“Sweet smiling village, loveliest of the lawn,
Thy sports are fled and all thy charms withdrawn;
Amidst thy bowers the tyrant’s hand is seen,
And desolation saddens all thy green;
One only master grasps the whole domain,
And half a tillage stints thy smiling plain;”
—Oliver Goldsmith (1730?–1774)