History
When Nagai Stadium initially opened in 1964, its capacity was 23,000, and its opening event was a football match during the 1964 Summer Olympics. The stadium's seating capacity was expanded to 50,000 in 1996 for the 52nd National Sports Festival of Japan in 1997.
The stadium hosted three matches in the 2002 FIFA World Cup.
- First round
- June 12: Nigeria 0 - 0 England
- June 14: Tunisia 0 - 2 Japan
- Quarter-final
- June 22: Senegal 0 - 1 Turkey (after extra time)
Nagai Stadium has been used many times for athletic competitions; it played host to the Athletics at the 2001 East Asian Games and the 2007 World Championships in Athletics. It was also the venue for the annual Osaka Grand Prix athletics meeting which took place every May from 1996 to 2010, and it is still the starting and finishing point for the Osaka International Ladies Marathon, held annually in late January-early February.
Read more about this topic: Nagai Stadium
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The principal office of history I take to be this: to prevent virtuous actions from being forgotten, and that evil words and deeds should fear an infamous reputation with posterity.”
—Tacitus (c. 55–c. 120)
“The thing that struck me forcefully was the feeling of great age about the place. Standing on that old parade ground, which is now a cricket field, I could feel the dead generations crowding me. Here was the oldest settlement of freedmen in the Western world, no doubt. Men who had thrown off the bands of slavery by their own courage and ingenuity. The courage and daring of the Maroons strike like a purple beam across the history of Jamaica.”
—Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960)
“What would we not give for some great poem to read now, which would be in harmony with the scenery,—for if men read aright, methinks they would never read anything but poems. No history nor philosophy can supply their place.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)