Use After The Olympic Games
The stadium hosted several international matches of the Dutch national football team, the first one being the game against Uruguay (0–2) during the Summer Olympics on 30 May 1928. The last one was a friendly on 6 September 1989 against Denmark (0–2).
After the Olympics, the stadium was used regularly for various sporting events, including athletics, speedway, field hockey and cycling. The 1954 Tour de France, for example, started outside the stadium. However, it was football that remained the most popular. It was both the home ground of Blauw Wit FC and BVC Amsterdam (later merged into FC Amsterdam), while AFC Ajax used the stadium for games in which the crowd was expected to exceed the capacity of its own De Meer Stadion, or for midweek games which required the use of floodlights, with which the De Meer was not initially suited. Ajax continued this arrangement until the completion of the Amsterdam ArenA in 1996.
The Amsterdam Admirals played their inaugural season in the World League of American Football in 1995, and the 1996 season, at the stadium, prior to moving to the Amsterdam ArenA.
The stadium will host the 2016 European Athletics Championships. Because of this, an athletics track was added to the plan for the nearby Park Schinkeleilanden at the last moment. The athletics track in that nearby park, which could be a warming up track when using the main track in the Olympic Stadium for racing, was opened in 2008. The stadium also serves as the start and finish of the Amsterdam Marathon, held every October.
The stadium is also a tourist attraction. Tourists especially come from the Netherlands, Germany, Greece, Belgium, and Canada, and tours are available in Dutch, German, Greek, English and French.
Read more about this topic: Olympic Stadium (Amsterdam)
Famous quotes containing the words olympic and/or games:
“Like Olympic medals and tennis trophies, all they signified was that the owner had done something of no benefit to anyone more capably than everyone else.”
—Joseph Heller (b. 1923)
“As long as lightly all their livelong sessions,
Like a yardful of schoolboys out at recess
Before their plays and games were organized,
They yelling mix tag, hide-and-seek, hopscotch,
And leapfrog in each other’s way all’s well.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)