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The
Berlin Olympic Stadium has hosted its fair share of momentous,
epoch-making events, but 9 July 2006 is destined to eclipse
everything that has gone before. A global audience of well
over a billion is set to follow the 2006 FIFA World Cup Final
live on TV.
American sprinter Jesse Owens won four gold medals here
at the 1936 Olympic Games. Today, one of the avenues leading
to the ground and a VIP lounge bear the great runner's name.
The stadium has staged the German Cup Final since 1985.
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Reconstruction at a cost of €242m began in the summer
of 2000. A spectacular gala opening ceremony including an
appearance by world-renowned star P!NK took place on 31 July
2004. Hertha BSC Berlin contested the first match at the facelifted
arena against Besiktas Istanbul on 1 August. The following
month, FIFA World Cup holders Brazil met Germany in the inaugural
international.
Reconstruction had to be carried out with the greatest of
care due to the listed status of the structure, originally
designed by architect Werner March and built between 1934-36
for around 42 million Reichsmark.
The new stadium incorporates VIP and Sky executive boxes,
Business Seats, a Hertha BSC megastore, underground warm-up
facility (including a 110m running track and long-jump pit)
and an underground car park. The rebuilding project was primarily
aimed at optimising functionality and spectator comfort. For
example, practically all the 74,200 seats are covered, whereas
previously only 27,000 seats were protected from the elements.
5,000 dimmable fluorescent lamps, an ultra-modern PA system
and dazzle-free floodlighting provided by a single brilliant
band along the front edge of the roof permit a wide variety
of exciting atmospheric effects.
The new roof, a vast oval interrupted as before by the listed
Marathon Gate, provides a delicate contrast to the robust
muscularity of the historic tectonics. The lightweight cantilever
construction is borne by an intricate web of 20 beam supports
ranging over the gallery, and 132 steel pillars. The roof
is literally the crowning glory of a harmonious solution incorporating
past, present and future.
The city became the political centre of Brandenburg, Prussia
and the German Reich. After the foundation of the German Reich
in 1871, the city progressed quickly to become Germany’s
largest industrial and cultural centre. The Second World War
(1939-1945) triggered by the National Socialists, the Nazis,
had a devastating effect on Berlin and led to the destruction
of large parts of the city. Subsequent political developments
divided the country and its capital: The building of the Wall
in 1961 drastically and brutally completed this separation.
The Wall did not come down again until 1989, when the people
from West and East Berlin were finally reunited. Berlin, the
country’s largest city, has once again become the capital
of a united Germany, the Brandenburg Gate symbolising this
re-unification. Berlin is not only the seat of the government
and cultural capital, but also Germany’s sports city.
More than 525,000 male and female athletes are registered
in about 1,900 clubs; 160 teams from Berlin compete in the
top leagues in most differing sports – including football,
of course.
From basketball to cycling, gymnastics, ice hockey, judo,
swimming to volleyball and water polo. The Olympic Training
Centre Berlin is the largest in Germany. It is not just by
chance that Berlin, proportionate to its size and inhabitants,
is very well represented in German Olympic squads. At the
1998 Olympic Winter Games in Nagano ten per cent of the German
athletes came from Berlin.
Berlin has a tradition as a sports city. Not only because
the first public exercise site was inaugurated as early as
1811, but also because many sporting highlights are staged
here year by year.
For instance the Berlin Marathon, the international athletics
event ISTAF, the women’s international tennis championships,
the CHI equestrian event and the Six Days in the newly built
»temple« of cycling, the Velodrom. The city’s
currently most successful football clubs are Hertha BSC, which
plays in the Bundesliga, and Tennis Borussia Berlin in the
Zweite Bundesliga.
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