Sports
Sports in Barranquilla are promoted at the governmental level by the Ministry of Sports and Deportes de la Alcaldía Distrital. Since the early twentieth century, the most important sports have been football, baseball and boxing. Also practiced are basketball, athletics, swimming, chess, cycling, skating, bowling, tennis, golf, shooting, karate, taekwondo, paragliding, BMX, go-karts, motor sports, fishing, squash, surfing, weightlifting, softball and bowling.
Barranquilla has hosted the Colombia national football team during World Cup qualifiers for Italy (1990), USA (1994), France (1998) and Germany (2006). It was home of the XIV National Games in 1992, co-host of the Central American and Caribbean Games in 2006; host of the 5th Central American and Caribbean Games in 1946, home of the Bolivarian Games IV in 1961 and hosted the games in Group A in the Copa América 2001. In 2011 it host the opening match of the U20 World Cup to be held in Colombia from July 29 to August 20.
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Famous quotes containing the word sports:
“The whole idea of image is so confused. On the one hand, Madison Avenue is worried about the image of the players in a tennis tour. On the other hand, sports events are often sponsored by the makers of junk food, beer, and cigarettes. What’s the message when an athlete who works at keeping her body fit is sponsored by a sugar-filled snack that does more harm than good?”
—Martina Navratilova (b. 1956)
“...I didn’t come to this with any particular cachet. I was just a person who grew up in the United States. And when I looked around at the people who were sportscasters, I thought they were just people who grew up in the United States, too. So I thought, Why can’t a woman do it? I just assumed everyone else would think it was a swell idea.”
—Gayle Gardner, U.S. sports reporter. As quoted in Sports Illustrated, p. 85 (June 17, 1991)
“Even from their infancy we frame them to the sports of love: their instruction, behaviour, attire, grace, learning and all their words aimeth only at love, respects only affection. Their nurses and their keepers imprint no other thing in them.”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)