Hosting International Events
The rivalry also extends outside of team sports to international events. Both cities have hosted numerous national and international championships and other tournaments. Both cities have hosted extremely large world-class events.
Calgary hosted the 1988 Winter Olympics, the 1996 International Rotarian Convention, and the 1997 World Police and Fire Games as well as the World Skills competition in 2009. Calgary is also an annual stop for many winter sport organizations, including ISU (speed skating), FIBT (bobsled and skeleton), FIL (luge), and some FIS (skiing) events. Calgary is also home to the world-famous Calgary Stampede rodeo.
Edmonton hosted the 1978 Commonwealth Games, the 1983 World University Games (Universiade), the 2001 World Championships in Athletics, and the 2005 World Master Games. Edmonton also had a circuit on the IndyCar Series, the Edmonton Indy. Edmonton annually hosts North America's largest fringe festival, the Edmonton International Fringe Festival every August, as well as the Canadian Finals Rodeo in November. The city also plays host to K-Days every July. Edmonton was designated as one of the host cities of the 2015 FIFA Women's World Cup.
The constant one-upmanship of the two cities in this field has receded in recent years, and they cooperated in successful joint bid to host the 2012 World Junior Ice Hockey Championships. Previously, the province hosted the event in 1995. In that year, the city of Red Deer, which is exactly half-way between Edmonton and Calgary, was the primary venue. Edmonton and Calgary each hosted a few games as well.
In 2007, Edmonton started assessing the viability of hosting Expo 2017. The Edmonton City Council approved the building of a bid on April 15, 2009. Later in April, Calgary announced its coming bid to host Expo 2017, though it had not expressed any interest beforehand. In July of the same year, a disagreement occurred when Edmonton received provincial funding for its bid, while Calgary did not, since then Calgary has pulled its bid to host Expo 2017.
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Famous quotes containing the word events:
“That’s the great danger of sectarian opinions, they always accept the formulas of past events as useful for the measurement of future events and they never are, if you have high standards of accuracy.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)