INA8

Sport

Whenever there's a football to be kicked or a bike saddle to be ridden on, when flooded meadows freeze over in winter and invite them to execute bold figures on skates, Bremen residents are eager to take part. Unless, that is, they're out on the water, sailing in their own ships towards the North Sea or messing about on the numerous watercourses in the city and its surrounding area.

Bremen residents are sports fans. More than 160,000 citizens are members of over 130 clubs - and that's not counting the pub football teams, the informal "kick-abouts", subscribers to sport and fitness clubs and a vast army of joggers. Sport is in - not only in its active form, but equally as a spectator pastime, enjoyed by fans at outstanding sporting events. Bremen's chock-full sporting calendar, crammed with top-class events, gives abundant opportunity for watching sport.

Every two weeks, for example, the Weser Stadium, with capacity for 40,000 fans, is the venue for battles for the top position in Germany's Federal Football League. In SV Werder, Bremen has a top European team. Werder has twice won the German league championship, twice won the national cup, and was also crowned the king of European soccer in 1992 when the team won the European Cup. That is the most successful record of any German football club over the last 10 years. And it makes the journey to the stadium of this football stronghold worthwhile.

If Bremen is a soccer stronghold, it's also a bastion of handball. Credit for sporting achievement in this discipline goes to the TuS Walle women's handball team. With a series of championship titles and cup triumphs under their belts, they have advanced to become the number one in Germany and - nationally almost unbeatable - have now established themselves as one of the best women's handball teams in the world. These "power women" know how to thrill sports fans.

So do powerful male calves. The leg muscles referred to here belong to the top international cycling professionals who annually descend on Bremen at new year to compete in the world's biggest six-day cycle race. For people in Bremen, this spectacular event is just as much, if not more, a Volksfest as it is a top-class sporting occasion. In fact, it is sometimes claimed that the fast and furious race is only an excuse for meeting friends for a few beers - something hundreds of thousands of people do during the six-day classic race.

Yet sport in Bremen is not always accompanied by noisy, boozy enthusiasm. The surroundings and applause at the top-class equestrian events which also put Bremen on an international level, are far more refined. Elite show jumpers are guests in Bremen twice a year - at the International Bremen Horse Show in February, and at the German Classics, which take place every October and offer the highest prize money in international show jumping. Meanwhile, at the race course, thoroughbreds whose talent is expressed in speed rather than jumping ability hold court 12 times a year, in contests that include important preliminary heats for the Derby. This, by the way, is the home course of "Fahrhof", Germany's leading stud farm, which is owned by the Jacobs family.

And Bremen can even go one better than the aesthetic attraction of riding - with ballroom dancing in its most perfect form. In World and European championships, the formation dancers of TSG Bremerhaven have shown 16 times that they are the world's best interpreters of Latin American music. And every new season brings further proof that they will be maintaining that position for a while yet. Anyone who sees them dance in Bremen is sure to become a permanent fan of their captivating skill.

(C) 1996 Senatskanzlei (Bremen Werbung).

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Copyright © 1998, most recent revision 29. August 1998
Tania Hildebrand-Habel (hiha@micropal.uni-bremen.de)