Karaïskákis Stadium

The Karaiskaki Stadium is located near Piraeus in the Faliro area of Athens, Greece. It is the home ground for the football section of the Olympiacos sports club. The stadium is named after Georgios Karaiskakis, hero of the Greek Revolution of 1821 for national independence.

It was used during the 1896 Summer Olympics as a velodrome where Frenchman Paul Masson took the three track cycling gold medals. It was renovated during the 1960s and most recently a dramatic reconstruction in 2004 into a 33,334 capacity all seater stadium ready for the football competition of the 2004 Summer Olympics. The last renovation took a record time of only 14 months, finishing just in time for the Olympic Games.

Olympiacos are now the stadium’s prinicpal users once again, holding it on loan from 2003-2052 and is traditionally labelled as the club’s true home. The ticket sales average higher than any team’s in recent decades for the National A Division history and are not expected to drop in the foreseeable future.

Sales for national team matches have also been impressively high, but this is for the most part due to Greece’s success in Euro 2004

(source .. wikipedia) reproduced under GFDL

[ Anything to add? Spotted an error? Click here to improve this entry ]

Why not add your own photos?

Karaïskákis Stadium wikipedia entry
Olympiacos FC wikipedia entry
Olympiacos Sports Club website
The Olympic Movement

[ Anything to add? Spotted an error? Click here to improve this entry ]