Sport in Berlin
[1] Berlin has established a high-profile reputation as a host city of international sporting events.
[2] The city was host to the 1936 Summer Olympics, the 2006 FIFA World Cup Final and is the venue for several professional sports clubs in Germany's top leagues.
At Berlin's Hasenheide Friedrich Ludwig Jahn opened the first German gymnastics field ('Turnplatz'), or open-air gymnasium, in spring 1811.
Particularly by his main writing "Die Deutsche Turnkunst" (1816) the apparatus gymnastics developed to an independent kind of sport, and so the gym activities were not only limited to simple physical exercises, which he quoted as following: "Going, running, jumping, throwing, carrying are free exercises, everywhere applicable, as free as fresh air."
With the national gymnastics festivals in Coburg in 1860, in Berlin in 1861 and in Leipzig in 1863, the memory of Jahn's ideas returned into the people's consciousness.
The inscription at the gable of his house "Frisch, Frei, Fröhlich, Fromm", translated as 'fresh, free, happy, good", which originated in Jahn's time, became the basic idea of the German gymnastics movement.
The FIVB World Tour has chosen an inner-city site to present a beach volleyball Grand Slam several times after 2000.
The city is also home to ASV Berlin, as well as the now-dissolved LSV Spandau, which won one German Championship in 1939.
Before reunification the team played as part of sports club SC Dynamo Berlin and won the East German ice hockey championship 15 times.
The most marathon world records for men and women have been set at the Berlin course, which is known for its flat profile and even surface.
[16] In 1921, Germany's first motorsport track, the Automobil-Verkehrs- und Übungsstraße ('Automobile traffic and training road'), short AVUS, was built in the south-west of Berlin.
A special anti-clockwise track was built for the race next to the terminal building of the closed airport Tempelhof, including 17 turns over a distance of 2.469 km (1.534 mi).
Both venues form a sports complex built in the course of the application of Berlin, for the 2000 Summer Olympics.
The 1936 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XI Olympiad, was an international multi-sport event that was held in 1936 in Berlin, Germany.
[20] Berlin won the bid to host the Games over Barcelona, Spain, on 26 April 1931, at the 29th IOC Session.
They also installed a closed-circuit television system and radio network that reached 41 countries, with many other forms of expensive high-tech electronic equipment.
The site, which was 30 kilometres (19 mi) from the centre of the city, consisted of one to two-floor dormitories, dining areas, a swimming pool, and training facilities.
France's Zinedine Zidane was sent off in his last-ever match, for headbutting Italy's Marco Materazzi's chest in retaliation to verbal insults.
