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Blogvent Day 7 – Monaco tops sport’s seven wonders

Sport

The tight and twisty streets of Monaco were voted the world’s most iconic sporting venue in a survey carried out by Barclays last year to identify the seven wonders of the sporting world.

It is perhaps telling that none of the 3,500 British sports fans who were surveyed identified anything in Britain worthy of such an accolade, instead opting for a truly international mix of facilities of all ages.

Monaco’s position at the top of the list with 18% of the vote is testament to the Principality’s continued importance on Formula 1’s increasingly global calendar and of perhaps of how Formula 1 is viewed by the more general sports fan. That a race track whose pedigree dates back to 1929 can usurp more modern and prodigious facilities suggests that heritage and tradition remain key values for sports aficionados and race fans.

The number of football venues on the list is perhaps less surprising with Barcelona’s Nou Camp taking second place with 15%. Madrid’s Bernabeu stadium registered 5% to take fourth spot while Milan’s San Siro attained 4% and was fifth of the seven. Brazil’s Maracana stadium, which is set to be upgraded and used in the 2014 World Cup, came sixth.

Third on the list is one of the world’s most recently inaugurated facilities, the Bird’s Nest stadium in China, which was famously used for the 2008 Olympic Games. The impressive venue has just been confirmed as host for the 2015 Athletics World Championships and will undoubtedly be a crowd puller across other spheres of sport and entertainment. Its use in the Olympics certainly left a positive impression on 14% of the surveyed sports fans.

The Melbourne Cricket Ground in Australia takes the final position as one of the world’s seven sporting wonders and encapsulates all that makes a venue really iconic – versatility across sports, heritage and modernity all with long-standing international relevance. The MCG hosted the first ever Test Match between England and Australia in 1877, it was the main stadium at the 1956 Olympics and the main stadium at the 2006 Commonwealth Games, while being used annually for Australian Football League.

Monaco, it would seem, remains streets ahead when it comes to ultimate sporting wonder.

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