Sport
The Hull area has available a wide range of both spectator and participatory sporting clubs and organisations. These are as various as professional football, rugby league, golf, darts, athletics and pigeon racing.
The city's professional football club, Hull City A.F.C. (The Tigers), play in the Championship, the second tier of the English football league system after relegation from the Premier League in season 2009–10. The team play at the KC Stadium.
Hull is also a rugby league hub, having two clubs who play in the engage Super League competition. Hull F.C., alongside the city's football club Hull City, play at the KC Stadium while Hull Kingston Rovers play at Craven Park in East Hull. There are also several lower league teams in the city, such as East Hull, West Hull, Hull Dockers and Hull Isberg, who all play in the National Conference League. Rugby union is catered for by Hull Ionians who play at Brantingham Park. and Hull RUFC who are based in the city.
The city has two athletics clubs based at the Costello Stadium in the west of the city – Kingston upon Hull Athletics Club and Hull Achilies Athletics Club.
Cycling wise the city is home to Hull Cycle Speedway Club situated at the Hessle raceway near the Humber bridge. The side race in the sports Northern league and won both the league titles in 2008. Other cycling clubs also operate throughout the city including Hull Thursday, the areas road racing group.
The city also has Hull Arena, a large ice rink and concert venue, which is home to the Hull Stingrays ice hockey team who play in the Elite Ice Hockey League. It is also home to the Kingston Kestrels sledge hockey team. In August 2010, Hull Daily Mail reported that Hull Stingrays was facing closure, following a financial crisis. The club was subsequently saved from closure following a takeover by Coventry Blaze.
The Hull Hornets American Football (existed from 2005 until 2011) The Club which acquired full member status of the British American Football League on 5 November 2006 and played in the BAFL Division 2 Central league for 5 years. Greyhound racing returned to the city on 25 October 2007 when The Boulevard stadium re-opened as a venue for the sport. In mid-2006 Hull was home to the professional wrestling company One Pro Wrestling, which held the Devils Due event on 27 July in the Gemtec Arena. From 16 May 2008, Hull gained its own homegrown wrestling company based at the Eastmount Recreation Centre-—New Generation Wrestling—-that have featured the likes of El Ligero, Kris Travis, Martin Kirby and Alex Shane.
Hull Lacrosse Club was formed in 2008 and currently plays in the Premier 3 division of the North of England Men's Lacrosse Association.
The city played host to the Clipper Round the World Yacht Race, a tough 35,000 miles (56,000 km) race around the globe, for the 2009–10 race which started on 13 September 2009 and finished on 17 July 2010. The locally named yacht, Hull and Humber, captained by Danny Watson, achieved second place in the 2007–2008 race.
The city will host The British Open Squash Championships at the KC Stadium in 2013 and 2014.
Read more about this topic: Kingston Upon Hull
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)
“Rabelais, for instance, is intolerable; one chapter is better than a volume,—it may be sport to him, but it is death to us. A mere humorist, indeed, is a most unhappy man; and his readers are most unhappy also.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)