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:
“It was so hard to pry this door open, and if I mess up I know the people behind me are going to have it that much harder. Because then there’s living proof. They can sit around and say, “See? It doesn’t work.” I don’t want to be their living proof.”
—Gayle Gardner, U.S. sports reporter. As quoted in Sports Illustrated, p. 87 (June 17, 1991)
“I looked so much like a guy you couldn’t tell if I was a boy or a girl. I had no hair, I wore guys’ clothes, I walked like a guy ... [ellipsis in source] I didn’t do anything right except sports. I was a social dropout, but sports was a way I could be acceptable to other kids and to my family.”
—Karen Logan (b. 1949)
“The whole idea of image is so confused. On the one hand, Madison Avenue is worried about the image of the players in a tennis tour. On the other hand, sports events are often sponsored by the makers of junk food, beer, and cigarettes. What’s the message when an athlete who works at keeping her body fit is sponsored by a sugar-filled snack that does more harm than good?”
—Martina Navratilova (b. 1956)