Estadio Olímpico Universitario

Estadio Olímpico Universitario
View from a floodlight pole into the stadium
Data
place	Av. Insurgentes Sur No. 000 Mexico City , Mexico
Coordinates	19 ° 19 ′ 55 ″  N , 99 ° 11 ′ 32 ″  W Coordinates: 19 ° 19 ′ 55 ″  N , 99 ° 11 ′ 32 ″  W
start of building	August 7, 1950
opening	November 29, 1952
Renovations	1968, 1986
surface	Natural grass
architect	Augusto Pérez Palacios Raúl Salinas Moro Jorge Bravo Jiménez
capacity	63,186 seats
playing area	105 × 68 m
Societies)
UNAM Pumas (soccer) Pumas Doradas UNAM (American Football)
Events
1968 Summer Olympics Soccer World Cup 1986 Central American and Caribbean Games 1954, 1990 Pan American Games 1955 Pan American Games 1975 Summer Universiade 1979 Games of the UNAM Pumas Games of the Pumas Doradas UNAM

The Estadio Olímpico Universitario is a football stadium with an athletics facility in the Mexican capital, Mexico City . Among other things, it hosted the 1968 Summer Olympics and the 1986 World Cup .

history

The Estadio Olímpico Universitario was designed in the early 1950s by architects Augusto Pérez Palacios , Raúl Salinas Moro and Jorge Bravo Jiménez and built between 1950 and 1952. The facility was inaugurated on November 29, 1952. At that time it was the largest stadium in Mexico with around 70,000 seats . The stadium wall around the stadium, which was built in the style of a volcanic crater, was to be decorated with a mosaic by Diego Rivera . However, this work could only be completed to a fraction. The Mexican soccer club UNAM Pumas and the American football team Pumas Dorados UNAM play their home games in the stadium located on the grounds of the National University ( UNAM , Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México ).

In 2007, the stadium and other buildings on the campus of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) were added to the list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites . The stadium currently has a capacity of 63,186 spectators. The 61,000 normal seats include 1,494 VIP seats and 692 business seats.

1968 Summer Olympics

In 1968 the Summer Olympics took place in Mexico City. The Estadio Olímpico Universitario was used for the opening and closing ceremonies as well as the athletics and football competitions , as well as the goal of the marathon . The stadium area was expanded to 83,700 seats for the major event. In the run-up to the Olympic Games, riots broke out in Mexico, as in other countries such as Czechoslovakia, with the so-called Prague Spring . Mexico's President Gustavo Díaz Ordaz had the unrest in Mexico City brutally suppressed in the Plaza de Tlatelolco with tanks and secret police. Another movement in the 1960s was the civil rights movement in which African Americans fought for equality in the United States. The civil rights activist Malcolm X brought the Black Power movement into being in the mid-1960s , which, combined with the previously non-existent successes of the civil rights movement under the principles of Martin Luther King, spread a kind of Afro-American nationalism. The symbol of Black Power was a hand held in the air, clenched in a fist, with a black glove. After the two African American sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos won the 200 meter race with a double victory for the United States, they celebrated that ritual at the award ceremony. The International Olympic Committee presented the American federation with the decision to either withdraw the two athletes from the Olympics or to exempt the entire American team from all competitions, whereupon the federation decided in favor of the former.

At the 1968 Olympics, the United States team was the most represented team in the medal table. Second was the "class enemy" Soviet Union. For the first time at the Olympic Games in 1968, African nations also attracted particular attention. Kenya provided three Olympic champions with Kipchoge Keino , Naftali Temu and Amos Biwott , Ethiopia with Mamo Wolde and Tunisia with Mohamed Gammoudi each one winner of the respective competition. This time, the two German states did not compete as an all-German team like 1956 and 1964 , but started separately. The number of gold medals for the GDR with nine was greater than that for the FRG with five. Another feature of the Mexico Games was the first time a tartan track was used to host the running competitions.

The outstanding achievement of these games was the "leap into the 21st century" by Bob Beamon , who set a new world record in the long jump with 8.90 m, which meant an improvement of the old world record by 55 cm. Due to the fact that this distance was favored by the altitude and the associated lower air resistance and an approaching distance was not achieved for years, it was assumed that this record would last forever. Only Mike Powell exceeded this record with 8.95 meters on August 30, 1991 in the long jump final at the 1991 World Championships in Tokyo.

Even more sustainable for the further development of a sport was a new jumping technique in high jump, which was presented to a larger public for the first time in this stadium: Dick Fosbury revolutionized the high jump with the Fosbury flop he created , which gradually replaced the straddle style practiced at the time .

gallery

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  Construction of the stadium

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  Entrance area

• 

  The stadium from above

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  The Olympic Stadium at dusk

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  Mosaic on the stadium wall

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  Entrance to tunnel 29

See also

• List of the largest football stadiums in the world
• List of the largest stadiums in the world

Web links

Commons : Estadio Olímpico Universitario  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• pumas.mx: Stadium on the website of the UNAM Pumas (Spanish)
• stadionwelt.de: picture gallery

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c} stadiumdb.com: Estadio Olímpico Universitario (English)