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METROPOLIS OF SPORT AND RECREATION
Fans of sport and active leisure find the Bay of Gdańsk Metropolitan Area absolutely
exceptional. The sports and recreational infrastructure in place enables them to indulge
in almost any discipline of individual sports and team games.
The infrastructure base serving team games is steadily expanded. A Performance and
Sports Hall for 15 thousand spectators is now in construction on the border between
Gdańsk and Sopot. Gdynia has already launched a Sports Hall taking an audience of
4.5 thousand in (2008). Gdańsk, a host city of the EURO 2012 Championship football
finals, is building a football stadium capable of accommodating 44 thousand spectators.
The two existing club football stadiums in Gdańsk and Gdynia have been thoroughly
modernised in the recent years, several sports halls designated for training and entertainment
purposes and offered for hire to the residents for sports and recreation have
been erected and/or modernised. Similar projects are taken all across the Metropolitan
Area where the existing sports facilities are being revamped or entirely new sports and
recreational sites erected for the inhabitants and tourists.
The Metropolitan Area offers several score sports facilities fit for such sports disciplines
as squash or tennis. Out of the latter, the most widely known are the courts of the Sopot
Tennis Club, host to the ATP Series international competitions. Many courts are also
available in the winter season.
The Metropolis is also known for its decades’ long horse-riding traditions. Owing
to the EU funds, the Sopot hippodrome in the very heart of the Metropolitan Area, once
The performance and sports hall in construction in the centre of the metropolis will enable organisation
of mass events for as many as 15 thousand participants.
Drawing: archives of the City Hall of Gdańsk
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famous for the horse races and horse-riding competitions it used to organise, will be
modernised.
Intense effort is taken all across the Metropolitan Area to develop and expand the infrastructure
for all kinds of water sports. Windsurfing and kite surfing clubs have located
their campuses along the beach. The best known are the Sopot Sailing Club and the National
Sailing Centre. The competitors training here have a record of victorious European
and World Championships in sailing and windsurfing.
In the summer, a number of sites right on the beach, and water sports centres offer light
watercraft for hire: kayaks, water bicycles, rowing boats, motorboats, and sailing boats.
Sailing clubs and the newly built marinas take in seafaring sailing and motor yachts,
and offer boats for hire. Expansion of network of the sailboat ports and harbours along
the shores of the Bay of Gdańsk, the Vistula Delta, and the Vistula Lagoon, under the
programme of revitalisation of inland watercourses, stands high on the priority lists
of the local governments who aim at enhancing the attractiveness of the metropolis
and region to tourists. In effect, excellent conditions for mooring, garaging, and repairing
boats have been created in the yachting ports and marinas of Gdynia and Gdańsk.
Sopot also intends to join the exclusive group of the world’s sailing ports planning
to build a marina on the shoulder of the world’s longest wooden pier.
The Metropolitan Area has an odd dozen swimming pools to choose from, headed by
the Sopot aqua park complex of pools. Other sites of the kind are planned e.g. in Gdańsk
and Reda. There are three golf courses located in the immediate neighbourhood of the
metropolis: the Sierra Golf Club in Piętkowice near Wejherowo, the Postołowo Golf Club
in Postołowo, and the Tokary Golf Club in Tokary.
The consequently developed sports infrastructure serves as the arena for professional
team contests. The league games held on stadiums and in sports halls gather tens of
thousands of fans every year. The Metropolitan Area takes pride in its two teams playing
in the football Premier League: Lechia Gdańsk and Arka Gdynia. High in the men’s
basketball tables is the Assecco Prokom Sopot team, and their women’s counterpart:
Lotos PKO BP Gdynia. Fans of volleyball gather to watch matches played by the first
and second league men’s teams of Trefl Gdańsk and GTS Gdańsk, and women’s teams
of Energa Gedania II Gdańsk, and EC Wybrzeże TPS Rumia. Handball is also well represented
in the Area in terms of both the players, and match events held. Two women’s
teams: KS Łączpol Gdynia and Dablex AZS AWFiS Gdańsk, and a men’s team of KS AZS-
AWFiS Gdańsk are ranked in the handball prime league. The Metropolis is a strong national
centre of rugby. The top positions in the national tables in the discipline belong to:
Lechia Gdańsk, Arka Gdynia, and Ogniwa Sopot. High level of mastery can also be found
in cinder-track motor racing represented by the club team of GKŻ Wybrzeże, and hockey
with the prime league team of GKS Stoczniowiec Gdańsk.
All in all, fans cheering their clubs on the way to the highest trophies cannot complain
of shortage of exciting sports events. The league teams and their players are sponsored
by large regional companies which in this way turn the idea of corporate social responsibility
into flesh.
Atlas of the Gdańsk Metropolitan Area