Canada is known as the hockey capital in the world. No other country that has audience with this much excitement and craze over the game hockey. Toronto’s famous hockey team is the Toronto Maple Leaf, although the Leafs has not won the Stanley Cup but the city is known as the hockey town in Canada.
Toronto has other teams for other major professional sports such as the Toronto Blue Jays for the Major League Baseball, the Toronto Argonauts for the Canadian Football League, the Toronto Raptors for the National Basketball Association and the Toronto Rock for the National Lacrosse League. The Rogers Center is the residence of the Blue jays and Argonauts while the Air Canada Center is for the Leafs, Raptors and Rock. Toronto was the host country of some parts of the World Cup of Hockey in 2004, FIFA U-20 World Cup and the Grey Cup in 2007.
Major sports that are being played here in Canada are hockey, baseball, basketball and football. Football in Canada is the oldest professional football association in North America; the team was founded by the Argonauts Rowing Club in 1873. The team is also called the double blue because of the team’s colors Oxford blue and Cambridge blue. In basketball the team Raptors has joined the National Basketball Association in the 1995 – 1996 seasons and there is also the Vancouver Grizzlies who plays at the National Basketball Association.
Many immigrants brought their sports and have influenced the country. There’s soccer, lacrosse, Australian football or Rugby, auto racing, tennis and horse racing. Soccer is not that popular in Toronto, ironically the Toronto FC is known worldwide due to the popularity of the sport itself. Toronto Rock of the National Lacrosse League was formerly called Ontario Raiders in Hamilton before moving to the city of Toronto. They won five of the seven seasons of the championship league.
In the sport, Rugby or the Australian football, Toronto has four Australian football teams namely Etobicoke Kangaroos, Lakeshore Rebels, Toronto Downtown Dingos and the Toronto Eagles. Annually, there is a tennis tournament in Canada, called the Rogers Cup. ATP Masters Series event is the men’s competition while the Tier 1 event is the women’s competition. The competitions are held in separate weeks between the periods of July to August. In horse racing, Woodbine Tracks is the only horseracing track that is competent of staging purebred and standard bred horse racing events in North America.
The city already has histories of sports club such as the Royal Canadian Yacht Club, the Toronto Cricket Skating and Curling Club, the Argonaut Rowing Club, Toronto Argonauts football club, the Toronto Lawn Tennis Club, and the Badminton and Racquet Club. With intense love of the sports, Toronto has rivalries at the Great Lakes, namely in the National Hockey League, the Montreal is its rival and in the Canadian Football League it’s the Hamilton. |
