Sports
Minneapolis is home to five professional sports teams. In recent years, the
Minnesota Lynx have been the most successful sports team in the city and a dominant force in the
WNBA, reaching the WNBA Finals in
2011,
2012,
2013,
2015, and
2016 and winning in 2011, 2013, and 2015.
[172][173][174][175] The
Minnesota Timberwolves brought NBA basketball back to Minneapolis in 1989, followed by the Lynx in 1999. Both basketball teams play in the
Target Center, but the Lynx will play the 2017 season at the
Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul during remodeling at Target Center.
[176]
The
Minnesota Vikings and the
Minnesota Twins have played in the state since 1961. The Vikings were an
NFL expansion team, and the Twins were formed when the
Washington Senators
relocated to Minnesota. The Twins have won 10 division titles (1969,
1970, 1987, 1991, 2002–04, 2006, 2009, and 2010), 3 American League
Pennants (1965, 1987 and 1991) and the
World Series in
1987 and
1991. The Twins have played at
Target Field since 2010. The Vikings have played in the
Super Bowl following the 1969, 1973, 1974, and 1976 seasons (
Super Bowl IV,
Super Bowl VIII,
Super Bowl IX, and
Super Bowl XI, respectively), losing all four games.
The
Minnesota Wild of the
NHL play in
St. Paul at the
Xcel Energy Center.
[177] The professional
soccer team
Minnesota United FC of the
NASL played in suburban
Blaine at the
National Sports Center through 2016.
[178] In 2017, the team joined the
MLS and play the 2017 season in the University of Minnesota's
TCF Bank Stadium, and then will relocate to St. Paul the following year when their new stadium has been built there.
[179]
Other professional teams have played in Minneapolis in the past. First playing in 1884, the
Minneapolis Millers baseball team produced the best won-lost record in their league at the time and contributed fifteen players to the
Baseball Hall of Fame. During the 1920s, Minneapolis was home to the
NFL team the
Minneapolis Marines, later known as the
Minneapolis Red Jackets.
[180] During the 1940s and 1950s the
Minneapolis Lakers
basketball team, the city's first in the major leagues in any sport,
won six basketball championships in three leagues to become the
NBA's first dynasty before moving to Los Angeles.
[181] The
American Wrestling Association, formerly the
NWA Minneapolis Boxing & Wrestling Club, operated in Minneapolis from 1960 until the 1990s.
[182]
The 1,750,000-square-foot (163,000 m
2)
U.S. Bank Stadium was built for the Vikings for about $1.122 billion, over half financed by Vikings owner
Zygi Wilf
and private investment. Called "Minnesota's biggest-ever public works
project," the stadium opened in 2016 with 66,000 seats, expandable to
70,000 for the 2018 Super Bowl.
[183] Two thousand
high-definition televisions are dominated by two
scoreboards, the league's 10th largest, that together measure 12,560 square feet (1,167 m
2) and are each larger than a city house lot.
[183] Thanks to a state of the art
Wi-Fi network, fans can order food and drink and have them delivered to their seats or ready for pickup.
[184]
A Vikings' vice president thought that the Vikings' Longhouse bar and
concessions area and The Commons park could be attractions to those
without football tickets.
[185] Season tickets sold out before the football season began.
[186] U.S. Bank Stadium will also feature rollerblading nights and will host concerts and events.
[183]
The downtown
Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome, demolished beginning in January 2014, was the largest sports stadium in Minnesota from 1982 to 2013.
[187] Major sporting events hosted by the city include the
1985 and
2014 Major League Baseball All-Star Games, the
1987 and
1991 World Series,
Super Bowl XXVI in 1992, the
1992 NCAA Men's Division I Final Four, the
2001 NCAA Men's Division 1 Final Four and the 1998
World Figure Skating Championships.
[188][189][190]
Minneapolis has made it to the international round finals to host the
Summer Olympic Games three times, being beaten by London in 1948,
Helsinki in 1952 (when the city finished in second place), and
Melbourne in 1956. In May 2014, the NFL announced that Minneapolis will host
Super Bowl LII in 2018.
[191]
Since the 1930s, the
Golden Gophers
have won national championships in baseball, boxing, football, golf,
gymnastics, ice hockey, indoor and outdoor track, swimming, and
wrestling.
[192] The
Gophers women's ice hockey team is a six-time
NCAA champion and seven-time national champion.
[193][194]
Minneapolis stadiums at the University of Minnesota[195] |
|
Baseline Tennis Center
Tennis
|
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Jane Sage Cowles Stadium
Softball
|
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Jean K. Freeman Aquatic Center
Diving, Swimming
|
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Minnesota Fieldhouse
Track
|
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Parks and recreation
The Minneapolis park system has been called the best-designed, best-financed, and best-maintained in America.
[198] Foresight, donations and effort by community leaders enabled
Horace Cleveland to create his finest
landscape architecture, preserving geographical landmarks and linking them with
boulevards and
parkways.
[199] The city's
Chain of Lakes,
consisting of seven lakes and Minnehaha Creek, is connected by bike,
running, and walking paths and used for swimming, fishing, picnics,
boating, and ice skating. A
parkway for cars, a
bikeway for riders, and a walkway for pedestrians runs parallel along the 52 miles (84 km) route of the
Grand Rounds National Scenic Byway.
[200]
Theodore Wirth is credited with the development of the parks system.
[201] Today, 16.6% of the city is parks and there are 770 square feet (72 m
2) of parkland for each resident, ranked in 2008 as the most parkland per resident within cities of similar population densities.
[202][203] In its 2013 ParkScore ranking,
The Trust for Public Land reported that Minneapolis had the best park system among the 50 most populous U.S. cities.
[204][205]
Parks are interlinked in many places and the
Mississippi National River and Recreation Area
connects regional parks and visitor centers. The country's oldest
public wildflower garden, the Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden and Bird
Sanctuary, is located within
Theodore Wirth Park. Wirth Park is shared with
Golden Valley and is about 60% the size of Central Park in New York City.
[206] Site of the 53-foot (16 m)
Minnehaha Falls, Minnehaha Park is one of the city's oldest and most popular parks, receiving over 500,000 visitors each year.
[197] Henry Wadsworth Longfellow named Hiawatha's wife Minnehaha for the Minneapolis waterfall in
The Song of Hiawatha, a bestselling and often-parodied 19th century poem.
[207]
Runner's World ranks the Twin Cities as America's sixth best city for runners.
[208] Team Ortho sponsors the
Minneapolis Marathon, Half Marathon and 5K which began in 2009 with more than 1,500 starters.
[209][210] The
Twin Cities Marathon run in Minneapolis and Saint Paul every October draws 250,000 spectators. The 26.2-mile (42.2 km) race is a
Boston and
USA Olympic Trials qualifier. The organizers sponsor three more races: a Kids Marathon, a 1-mile (1.6 km), and a 10-mile (16 km).
[211]
The
American College of Sports Medicine
ranked Minneapolis and its metropolitan area the nation's first,
second, or third "fittest city" every year from 2008 to 2016, ranking it
first from 2011 to 2013.
[212] In other sports, five
golf courses are located within the city, with the nationally ranked
Hazeltine National Golf Club and
Interlachen Country Club in nearby suburbs.
[213] Minneapolis is home to more
golfers per capita than any other major U.S. city.
[214] The state of Minnesota has the nation's highest number of
bicyclists,
sport fishermen, and
snow skiers per capita. Hennepin County has the second-highest number of
horses per capita in the U.S.
[117] While living in Minneapolis, Scott and Brennan Olson founded (and later sold)
Rollerblade, the company that popularized the sport of
inline skating.
[215]