Would you class Coventry as a sporting city? We have A decent (ish) Football team, A Womans Premier league football team, A Speedway team with great history, though struggling a bit of late. A succesfull American Football team in the Jets, who have won top honours, Rugby team with good history, though not for a while. One of the top Ice Hockey teams in the country. We also have a newly formed Rugby League team - The Bears, who will become semi-proffessional in 2013. I love looking at all the results for all Coventry sides makes me proud to be a Coventry Kid.
I don't think I would class it as a sporting City though. Participating in Sports is not common around the general population. It's mainly because we have so many top sports teams that people spectate more than do.
Loughborough has many successful athletes/sportspeople that attend the Uni is that a sporting city/town?
Used to have good cross-country runners, schools gymnastics and also Godiva Harriers have produced a few stars - Marlon Devonish and David Moorcroft spring to mind.
There is certainly a want for success in the city and lots of sports played but we are not a well supported city, you see that by the football, ice hockeynand speedway.they have all been successfulat some stage but still relatively poorly backed.
Think you've hit the nail on the head there, Covstu. It's the lack of support that makes the difference. Must admit, I haven't been physically supportive to a lot of sports myself.
i follow the city and like to see the other teams like the bees and blaze do well but havent been up there to see them. Sadly due to costs you cannot support all three!
Would you class Liverpool as a sporting city for instance on the basis that they have two successful football clubs but not a lot else? Is success the definitive characteristic or is it support? Or is it people actually partaking etc.?
how do you define a place as sporting? that's the important question. as per rich 's post above, Loughborough was mentioned as a sporting town. Ok we have a big sports uni here, and the ecb is based here, but in termsof sporting teams, there it's nothing of note.
we had a top flight football team many years ago, but it went bust and disappeared.
one of the biggest towns in the country, the top sporting uni in the country and all the facilities that go with it, and the football team is I think in about the tenth tier of the football pyramid and play in a field on the outskirts of town with barely any facilities.
I know it's a town rather than a city but that strikes me as a massive under achievement, and makes ccfc and the city looka little better in comparison.
Contrast it with our West Midland neighbours and you could argue we back a wider range of sports than they do. You get the feeling though that as a region there's an acceptance for being 'alright' in a given sport, so long as we're not terrible. In other parts of the country (arguably except the South West) there seems to be more of a 'can do' mentality that drives success that bit further and results are usually better.