Sports
As well as having a number of local sports teams, Quebec City has hosted a number of sporting events. The Special Olympics Canada National Winter Games was held in the city from February 26 to March 1, 2008. Quebec City co-hosted with Halifax, Nova Scotia, the 2008 IIHF World Championship. Regular sporting events held in the city, include the Challenge Bell, a Women's Tennis Association tournament; Crashed Ice, an extreme downhill skating race; Quebec City International Pee-Wee Tournament, a minor hockey tournament; and the Tour de Québec International cycling stage race.
In December 2011, Quebec City hosted the ISU Grand Prix of Figure Skating Final at the Pavillon de la Jeunesse at ExpoCité.
The city has a professional baseball team, the Capitales de Québec which plays in the Canadian American Association of Professional Baseball. The team was established in 1999, and originally played in the Northern League. The team has three league titles, won in 2006, 2009 and 2010. The team's stadium is the Stade Municipal.
Other teams include the local football team, the Rouge & Or of the Université Laval; the basketball team, the Quebec Kebs of the National Basketball League of Canada; the junior hockey team, Quebec Remparts of the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League; the Canadian football teams, Quebec City Monarks and Quebec City Rebelles of the Ligue de football majeur du Québec; the women's hockey team Quebec Phoenix of the Canadian Women's Hockey League; and soccer club Quebec Arsenal of the W-League.
The city had a hockey team, the Quebec Nordiques, which played in the World Hockey Association (WHA) from 1972 to 1979 and then in the National Hockey League (NHL) from 1979 to 1995, maintaining a strong rivalry with the Montreal Canadiens. Due to a disadvantageous exchange rate with respect to the US Dollar, the team moved to Denver, Colorado in 1995, becoming the Colorado Avalanche.
The New Quebec City Amphitheatre is being built with the hope of getting an NHL franchise (relocation or expansion) in Quebec City. The project is being funded regardless of whether an NHL team arrives in Quebec City. It is also hoped that the arena can help Quebec City win a future Winter Olympics games bid. It will replace Colisée Pepsi as the main arena in Quebec City.
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Famous quotes containing the word sports:
“It is usual for a Man who loves Country Sports to preserve the Game in his own Grounds, and divert himself upon those that belong to his Neighbour.”
—Joseph Addison (1672–1719)
“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)
“Come, my Celia, let us prove
While we may the sports of love;
Time will not be ours forever,
He at length our good will sever.”
—Ben Jonson (1572–1637)