Sport
Main article: Sport in ManchesterManchester is well known for being a city of sport. Two Premier League football clubs bear the city's name, Manchester City and Manchester United, the 2012 Premier League champions and 2011 Premier League champions respectively. Manchester City's ground is the City of Manchester Stadium (also known as the Etihad Stadium for sponsorship purposes); its former ground, Maine Road was demolished. The City of Manchester Stadium was built for the 2002 Commonwealth Games. After the games, a temporary stand at the northern end of the stadium was dismantled and a permanent structure matching the rest of the stadium was developed. Manchester United's Old Trafford ground, the largest club football ground in the United Kingdom, with a capacity of 76,000,. Manchester has hosted every domestic and international football competition including the FIFA World Cup (1966), UEFA European Football Championship (1996), Olympic Football (2012), UEFA Champions League Final (2003), UEFA Cup Final (2008), a FA Cup Final (1893, 1911, 1915, 1970) and League Cup Finals (1978, 1984).
First class sporting facilities were built for the 2002 Commonwealth Games, including the City of Manchester Stadium, the National Squash Centre and the Manchester Aquatics Centre. Manchester has competed twice to host the Olympic Games, beaten by Atlanta for 1996 and Sydney for 2000. The Manchester Velodrome was built as a part of the bid for the 2000 games and has become a catalyst for British success in cycling. The velodrome is home to British Cycling, UCI ProTeam Team Sky and Sky Track Cycling and it hosted the UCI Track Cycling World Championships for a record third time in 2008. The Manchester Arena hosted the FINA World Swimming Championships in 2008. The National Indoor BMX Arena (2,000 capacity) adjacent to the velodrome opened in 2011. Manchester Cricket Club evolved into Lancashire County Cricket Club, and like Old Trafford football stadium, the club now play at Old Trafford Cricket Ground just outside of the city borough. Manchester also hosted the World Squash Championships in 2008, and also hosted the 2010 World Lacrosse Championship in July 2010. Future sporting events to be hosted in Manchester include Ashes 2013 cricket, 2013 Rugby League World Cup and 2015 Rugby World Cup.
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Famous quotes containing the word sport:
“Sweet Auburn, loveliest village of the plain,
Where health and plenty cheered the labouring swain,
Where smiling spring its earliest visit paid,
And parting summer’s lingering blooms delayed,
Dear lovely bowers of innocence and ease,
Seats of my youth, when every sport could please,
How often have I loitered o’er the green,
Where humble happiness endeared each scene.”
—Oliver Goldsmith (1730?–1774)
“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)
“If a walker is indeed an individualist there is nowhere he can’t go at dawn and not many places he can’t go at noon. But just as it demeans life to live alongside a great river you can no longer swim in or drink from, to be crowded into safer areas and hours takes much of the gloss off walking—one sport you shouldn’t have to reserve a time and a court for.”
—Edward Hoagland (b. 1932)