Oppenheimer Stadium is a football (soccer) stadium in Orkney, South Africa. It currently has a capacity of 23,000, but that will be increased to 40,000 for the 2010 Football World Cup.
The existing earth embankments around the stadium will be enlarged by creating a new reinforced concrete structure at the rear and building upwards.
The size of the arena will be further increased by the removal of the athletics track, enabling in front of the first row of seats and creating girth for further rows to be installed.
Then, the existing roof of the main stand will be removed and replaced by a new roof covering the extended main stand.
It was named after Harry Oppenheimer, son of Ernest Oppenheimer and former chairman of De Beers.
On the 13 January 1991, during a pre-season "friendly" football match between Kaizer Chiefs and Orlando Pirates, there was a stampede with 42 deaths, the Oppenheimer Stadium Disaster, the second worst sporting incident in South Africa.
Coordinates: 26°56′49″S 26°42′40″E / 26.947°S 26.711°E / -26.947; 26.711
Famous quotes containing the words oppenheimer and/or stadium:
“In some sort of crude sense, which no vulgarity, no humor, no overstatement can quite extinguish, the physicists have known sin; and this is a knowledge which they cannot lose.”
—J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904–1967)
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