Sport
The city has a strong sporting tradition. Football club Newcastle United has been based at St James' Park since the club was established in 1892, although any traces of the original structure are now long gone as the stadium now holds more than 52,000 seated spectators. The city also has non-League football clubs, Newcastle Benfield, West Allotment Celtic and Team Northumbria. As for rugby, the Newcastle Falcons are the only team in north-east England to play in the Aviva Premiership rugby union. They play at Kingston Park Stadium in the northern suburb of Kingston Park. 1996 Pilkington Shield winners Medicals RFC are also based in Newcastle.
There is a women's football team, Newcastle United Women's Football Club, founded in 1989. Newcastle United W.F.C. currently has 40 ladies aged between 16-29 years signed or associated with the club, and plays in the FA Women’s Premier League (North).
Newcastle has a horse racing course at Gosforth Park. The city is also home to the Newcastle Eagles basketball team who play their home games at the new Sports Central complex at Northumbria University. The city's speedway team Newcastle Diamonds are based at Brough Park in Byker, a venue that is also home to greyhound racing. Newcastle also hosts the start of the annual Great North Run, the world's largest half-marathon in which participants race over the Tyne Bridge into Gateshead and then towards the finish line 13.1 miles (21.1 km) away on the coast at South Shields. Another famous athletic event is the 5.9-mile (9.5 km) Blaydon Race (a road race from Newcastle to Blaydon), which has taken place on 9 June annually since 1981, to commemorate the celebrated Blaydon Races horse racing.
The 2012 London Olympic committee selected Newcastle as one of the UK host venue cities. With the stadium St James’ Park hosting 9 matches in both the men’s and women's football.
The Newcastle warriors were a professional ice hockey team that played the 1995–96 season in the British Hockey League.
Read more about this topic: Newcastle Upon Tyne
Famous quotes containing the word sport:
“I wish glib and indiscriminate critics of industrialists had some conception of the problems that have to be met by factory management.... General condemnation of employers is a favorite indoor sport of the uninformed intelligentsia who assume the role of lance- bearers for labor.”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)
“What sport shall we devise here in this garden
To drive away the heavy thought of care?”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“Every American travelling in England gets his own individual sport out of the toy passenger and freight trains and the tiny locomotives, with their faint, indignant, tiny whistle. Especially in western England one wonders how the business of a nation can possibly be carried on by means so insufficient.”
—Willa Cather (1876–1947)