City of sports Duisburg

“Sport” is not just organised and performed in Duisburg, Duisburg lives its sports. There couldn’t be a better explanation as to why almost a fifth of Duisburger, about 100,000 people, belongs to at least one of the over 500 sports clubs.

The city’s most well-known clubs in the country are the MSV Duisburg of Bundesliga football and the FCR Duisburg, the women’s team. In 1998, both clubs provided for a true novelty in German football history- for the first time, both the women’s and the men’s teams, both based in the same city, both reached the finals of the DFB Cup in Berlin in the same year. The Löwinnen took home the trophy; and then the Zebras fell in a close defeat.

It is no wonder, then, that Duisburg is located on the German Football Route of North Rhine-Westphalia. Just like in other Bundesliga cities, football fans can also visit 11 cult football locations in Duisburg - from “Die Schallplatte” record store, where “Der Zebrawist,” the official club anthem, was first introduced in 1964, to the MSV training grounds on the Westender Straße in Meiderich. Each location is designated by a plaque.

In the past few years, the EV Duisburg has significantly gained in importance. Die Füchse were promoted to the DEL, the highest German ice hockey league, and are striving to take root there.

With its geographical location at the confluence of the Rhine and Ruhr rivers, and surrounded by many small and larger lakes, Duisburg offers plenty of options for doing all kinds of water sports.

One first-class competition venue having worldwide acclaim is the regatta course at the Sportpark Duisburg. Here, the best athletes in the world match up against each other in international canoe and rowing regattas. Duisburg has played host four times to the world’s best canoeists. 1979, 89, 95 and 2007. The 2007 World Championships has set new standards. It is considered the best Canoe World Championships of all time, enthralling the participating athletes as well as the spectators and the international media. The Duisburg regatta course is justifiably deemed not only as the most stunning but also the best natural course amongst the national and international competition venues. As an added bonus, its stands are filled with a truly sport enthusiastic crowd.

Due to the many other opportunities at the Sportpark Duisburg, 20 sports associations, such as football, canoe, swimming, water polo, dance sport, judo, basketball, hockey, bowling, squash, roller and inline sports, have established their national and/or regional training centres here. The Sportpark is also the headquarters for handicapped sporting in North Rhine-Westphalia.

Immediately after Berlin, Duisburg can boast the second-highest density of water skiing facilities for an urban area.
The facilities at the Sportpark Duisburg is the training and competition site for high-performance and recreational athletes. The water skiing facilities, on the west side of Duisburg, at the Toepper Lake in Rheinhausen, are nationally and internationally acclaimed. The open and German championships in different age groups in trick skiing, slalom and jumping were held here in July 2006.

Unusual sporting sites are also located in old industrial facilities, as in the former Meiderich smelting works, today the Duisburg-Nord Country Park. There, you can deep-dive in an old gasometre. With enormous dedication, the Taucher Diving Club in the Nordpark has built a training centre for diving. Created was an artificial underwater world including an artificial reef, a shipwrecked motor yacht, the skeleton of an automobile and other stage props. 

You can also go up in the air in the Country Park -  the Duisburg branch of the German Alps Association has re-developed the former coke and iron ore bunker into a one-of-a-kind climbing garden. The variously steep walls and the towers that still remain are ideally suitable for climbing and, according to which ascent, offers a spectacular lookout over the surrounding grounds. There is also an alpine climb which is now 150 metres long and will be extended shortly to a length of about 300 metres.

For those who would like to go even higher, the high-wire parcours is for you; iron and steel construction, flickering lights, abysses, swaying bridges and adventurous wire constructions provide magnificent and bizarre impressions which you will not easily forget.

The many extraordinary options available result in the holding of many major sporting events in Duisburg. Along with the world championships in canoe racing, the German championships in body building and in water skiing, the biggest sporting event of 2005 took place here, the World Games 2005. More than a half a million people visited this competition of non-Olympic sports. And Duisburg proved itself to be the perfect host – and not only in terms of sports. The opening and closing celebrations and the World Games Plaza also earned international kudos for Duisburg.

Duisburg presented itself as the perfect host during the Football World Cup 2006. The Italian national team made this city its quarters. They trained in the Schauinsland-Reisen-Arena and on the MSV training ground in Meiderich. As we discovered after the World Cup, these were superb conditions for the Italians, who took the title for the fourth time.