Sports
The most played and popular sport in Yerevan is football. Yerevan has many football clubs with five in the 2012 season of the Armenian Premier League: FC Ararat Yerevan, FC Banants, FC Mika, FC Pyunik, Ulisses FC
Yerevan has five association football stadiums: Banants Stadium, Mika Stadium, Republican Stadium and Hrazdan Stadium, and Nairi Stadium, with Hrazdan being the largest one.
The largest indoor arena in the city and the whole country is the Karen Demirchyan Sports and Concerts Complex, mostly used for hockey matches, figure skating shows and concerts. Dinamo, Kilikia and Mika sport halls are home to basketball, volleyball, handball and footsal domestic and international matches.
Armenia has always excelled in chess with its players being very often among the highest ranked and decorated. The headquarters of the Armenian Chess Federation; the Yerevan Chess House, is located in the Kentron of Yerevan. The city is home to a large number of chess clubs. In 1996, despite a severe economic crisis, Yerevan hosted the 32nd Chess Olympiad. In 2006, the four members from Yerevan of the Armenian chess team won the 37th Chess Olympiad in Turin and repeated the feat at the 38th Chess Olympiad in Dresden. Armenian won the chess Olympiad for the 3rd time in 2012 in Istanbul. The Yerevan-born leader of the chess national team; Levon Aronian, is one of the top chess players in the world.
Yerevan Velodrome; one of the newest sport structures in the city, is an international-standard outdoor track cycling venue opened in 2011. The city is also home to an equestrian complex named after Hovik Hayrapetyan, Orange Tennis courts and Ararat Golf Club.
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Famous quotes containing the word sports:
“Short of a wholesale reform of college athletics—a complete breakdown of the whole system that is now focused on money and power—the women’s programs are just as doomed as the men’s are to move further and further away from the academic mission of their colleges.... We have to decide if that’s the kind of success for women’s sports that we want.”
—Christine H. B. Grant, U.S. university athletic director. As quoted in the Chronicle of Higher Education, p. A42 (May 12, 1993)
“Sweet smiling village, loveliest of the lawn,
Thy sports are fled and all thy charms withdrawn;
Amidst thy bowers the tyrant’s hand is seen,
And desolation saddens all thy green;
One only master grasps the whole domain,
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—Oliver Goldsmith (1730?–1774)
“In the end, I think you really only get as far as you’re allowed to get.”
—Gayle Gardner, U.S. sports reporter. As quoted in Sports Illustrated, p. 87 (June 17, 1991)