Sport
Seville is the hometown of two rival association football teams: Sevilla Fútbol Club and Real Betis Balompié, both in Spain's highest division, the Liga BBVA. Both teams have only won the league once each: Betis in 1935 and Sevilla in 1946. Only Sevilla has won European competitions, winning consecutive UEFA Cup finals in 2006 and 2007. Sevilla's stadium, the Ramón Sánchez Pizjuán, was a venue during the 1982 FIFA World Cup and four years later hosted the 1986 European Cup Final. Seville's Olympic Stadium on the Isla de La Cartuja was the venue for the 2003 UEFA Cup Final.
Seville housed the tennis Davis Cup final in 2004 and 2011, and the 7th Athletics World Championships. The city unsuccessfully bid for the 2004 and 2008 Summer Olympics, for which the 60,000-seat Estadio de La Cartuja was designed to stage. Seville has one important basketball club, the CB Sevilla, that plays in ACB League. Seville's Guadalquivir river is one of only three FISA approved international training centres and the only one in Spain.
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Famous quotes containing the word sport:
“Americans living in Latin American countries are often more snobbish than the Latins themselves. The typical American has quite a bit of money by Latin American standards, and he rarely sees a countryman who doesn’t. An American businessman who would think nothing of being seen in a sport shirt on the streets of his home town will be shocked and offended at a suggestion that he appear in Rio de Janeiro, for instance, in anything but a coat and tie.”
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“For generations, a wide range of shooting in Northern Ireland has provided all sections of the population with a pastime which ... has occupied a great deal of leisure time. Unlike many other countries, the outstanding characteristic of the sport has been that it was not confined to any one class.”
—Northern Irish Tourist Board. quoted in New Statesman (London, Aug. 29, 1969)