Olympic Stadium (Montreal)
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| Le Stade Olympique | |
|---|---|
| "The Big O" | |
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| Location | 4549 Pierre de Coubertin Avenue Montreal, Quebec H1V 3N7 |
| Broke ground | April 28, 1973 |
| Opened | July 17, 1976 (Olympics) April 15, 1977 (Baseball) |
| Owner | Régie des Installations Olympiques (Government of Quebec) |
| Surface | Grass (1976) AstroTurf (1977–2001; 2005-2006)) Defargo Astrograss (2002–2003) FieldTurf (2004) Temporary Grass (2007 for FIFA U-20 World Cup Canada) |
| Construction cost | C$ 770 million C$ 1.47 billion (2006 - including additional costs, interest and repairs) |
| Architect | Roger Taillibert |
| Tenants | |
| Montreal Expos (NL) (1977–2004) Montreal Alouettes (CFL) (1976–1997; 1997-present [playoff games]) Montreal Manic (NASL) (1981–1983) Montreal Machine (WLAF) (1991–1992) |
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| Capacity | |
| Baseball: 43,739 Football: 65,255 |
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Le Stade Olympique (The Olympic Stadium) is a stadium in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It was the main venue of the 1976 Summer Olympics and was the home ballpark of the National League's Montreal Expos from 1977 until the franchise was moved to Washington, D.C. after the 2004 season. Currently the stadium has no primary tenant nor is it opened year round any longer. It currently functions as a 56,040-seat multipurpose stadium for the city during non-winter months.
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[edit] History
[edit] Background
The stadium was designed by French architect Roger Taillibert to be a very elaborate facility featuring a retractable roof, which was to be opened and closed by a huge 175-metre (583 ft 4 in) tower — the tallest inclined structure in the world, six metres (20 ft) taller than the Washington Monument, and the sixth tallest building in Montreal.
The Olympic swimming pool is located under this tower. An Olympic velodrome (since converted to the Montreal Biodome, an indoor nature museum) was situated at the base of the tower in a building similar in design to the swimming pool. The building was built as the main stadium for the 1976 Summer Olympic Games. The stadium was host to various events including: the opening and closing ceremonies, athletics, football finals, and some equestrian events.
[edit] Construction
As construction was well underway, a labour strike caused a major delay to the building of the tower. The delay resulted in the tower being unfinished for the 1976 Summer Games. The roof languished in a warehouse in France until 1982.
[edit] Opening
Problems plagued the stadium from the time it opened for the Olympic Games, when it was only half built.
Seating 58,500 at the time, the stadium was not fully completed in time for the games due to strikes by construction workers, leaving it without a tower or roof for the opening and several years following. Both the tower and the roof, made of over 60,000 square feet (18,000 square metres) of kevlar, were not completed for over a decade, and it was not until 1988 that it was possible to retract the roof. The 65-ton roof then proved difficult to retract, and was occasionally torn in heavy winds.
[edit] Stadium Financing
The stadium was originally forecast in 1970 to cost only C$120 million dollars. But strikes and construction delays all began to escalate the cost of the stadium, and by the time the stadium opened (unfinished) the cost had risen to C$250 million, from then on the stadium's costs quickly spiraled out of control.
The Quebec government introduced a special tobacco tax in May 1976 to help recoup its investment. By 2006 the amount going to the Olympic Installations Board accounted for 8% of the tax revenue earned off of cigarettes. The 1976 special tobacco tax act stipulated that once the stadium was paid off, ownership of the facility would be returned back to the City of Montreal.
In December 2006 the stadium was finally paid off, the total cost paid (including repairs, renovations, construction, interest, and inflation along with other expenses) amounting to C$1.47 billion. It was finally paid off in December 2006, [1] with the last payment being made by the Olympic Installations Board (who run the facility) to the provincial treasury. It had been planned to be paid off in October 2006, but an indoor public space smoking ban introduced in May 2006 curtailed the amount of revenue gathered by the tobacco tax [2]. No decision has been made yet if or when the transfer would occur.
Perceived by many to be a white elephant, the stadium has also humorously been dubbed The Big Owe, Uh-O or The Big Mistake. In a speech announcing that Montreal would host the Olympic Games, then-mayor of Montreal, Jean Drapeau, is remembered for saying, "The Olympics can no more have a deficit than a man can have a baby." This now-famous quote is often parodied by residents.
[edit] Recent History
Olympic Stadium was remodeled in 1991, with 12,000 seats being removed for Expos games. On September 8 of that year, support beams snapped and caused a 55 ton concrete slab to fall on to an interior walkway. No one was injured, but the Expos had to play their final 13 home games on the road. The following season in 1992, the retractable roof concept was abandoned in favour of a new permanent cover roof. This fixed roof was temporarily removed (for repairs) in May 1998, turning the park into an outdoor stadium for the season. In January 1999, a 350 square metre portion of the roof collapsed, dumping ice and snow on workers that were setting up for the annual Montreal Auto Show. This led to the auto show leaving the Olympic Stadium for good. Repaired once again, the permanent roof was back for the 1999 season and has remained on the park since; however, even this roof has proven less than reliable, as structural breaches have occurred during the winter months (due to snow and ice accumulation). The contractors, manufactures and engineers of the roof are now being sued for the roof failure.
The stadium is now closed for 4 months every winter as the fire marshal has concerns about the roof being able to support snow loads. A third replacement roof is being considered as of March 2006.
In addition to the Expos, the park was home to the Canadian Football League's Montreal Alouettes for a number of years, but they now use the Percival Molson Stadium of McGill University. The stadium is, however, still used for the team's last regular season game and for all playoff games. The stadium was also the home of the Montreal Manic soccer team from 1981 - 1983. A 1981 playoff game against the Chicago Sting attracted a crowd of over 58,000. The stadium also has various other multipurpose uses: indoor exhibitions, monster truck shows, and so forth (excluding winter months, due to safety issues with the current roof in place). In 2005, the FieldTurf surface was sold for $1 million (Canadian) to the BC Place domed stadium in Vancouver, British Columbia, which is being used by the CFL B.C. Lions.
[edit] Transit
The stadium is directly connected to the Pie-IX metro station on the Green Line of the Montreal Metro.
[edit] Stadium Usage
[edit] Baseball
The park opened for baseball on April 15, 1977, with the Philadelphia Phillies beating the Montreal Expos 7–2. The Expos played their home games at the stadium from then on, except for 13 games played on the road in 1991 due to structural problems with the stadium and 22 home games played at Hiram Bithorn Stadium in San Juan, Puerto Rico in each of the 2003 and 2004 seasons. Their final home game was a 9–1 loss against the Florida Marlins on September 29, 2004.
It was recently used in 2006 for the openning and closing ceremonies of the 1st World Outgames and is regularly used for other events such as the main event of the Black and Blue Festival, the biggest gay circuit party in the world.
[edit] Facts and Figures
- Olympic Stadium holds the record for a soccer game attendance in Canada. at the 1976 Olympic soccer final, 72,000 people witnessed East Germany's 3-1 win over Poland.
- Olympic Stadium was extensively featured on the final episode of The Amazing Race: Family Edition, when teams spent part of a leg in Montreal.
- In 1977, Pink Floyd wrapped their In The Flesh tour at this venue. That night they played, Roger Waters started to sing "Pigs on the Wing 2" and an audience member set off a firecracker near to the stage. He stopped singing and shouted out, "Oh, for fuck's sake. Stop letting off fireworks and shouting and screaming. I'm trying to sing a song." The crowd cheered at this.
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- "I mean I don't care. If you don't wanna hear it, you know... Fuck you! I'm sure there's a lot of people here who do want to hear it. So why don't you just be quiet... If you wanna let your fireworks off, go outside and let them off out there. And if you wanna shout and scream and holler go and do it out there but... I'm trying to sing a song that some people want to listen to. I want to listen to it!"
- The show has been released as a bootleg titled, "Who Was Trained Not To Spit on the Fan", which happens to be similar to lyrics from the song "Dogs". The actual lyrics are, "Who Was Trained Not To Spit in the Fan."
- He then continued with the song, but things went downhill from there, and during "Pigs (Three Different Ones)", Waters watched incredulously as one fan climbed the netting that separated the audience from the band and in disgust, Waters spat in his admirer's face. Near the end of the show, Pink Floyd guitarist and singer David Gilmour was reported to have walked disgustedly off the stage, sitting out the final encore. Afterwards Waters regretted what he had done, and lamented the separation between the audience and band. It was this which caused Waters to come up with the idea of the critically acclaimed album The Wall. The band would not play here again until 1988 on their A Momentary Lapse of Reason tour and this time the performance went smoothly (they subsequently played here on their 1994 The Division Bell tour.
- A month later, Emerson Lake and Palmer recorded and filmed a live performance at this venue with an orchestra which was released on the live album Works Live and the video Live at Olympic Stadium.
- Fifteen years later in 1992, Metallica lead singer James Hetfield had his arm severely burned in a pyro mishap causing Metallica to curtail their set. Then Guns and Roses curtailed their set when Axl Rose's microphone went dead and a riot broke out at the venue.
- The roof is only 52 metres (173 ft 4 in) above the field of play. As a result, a number of pop-ups and long home runs hit the roof since play began, necessitating the painting of orange lines on the roof to separate foul balls from fair balls.
- The Montreal games of the FIFA U-20 World Cup Canada 2007 will be played at Olympic Stadium on a temporary grass surface, as per the wishes of FIFA.
- The scenes representing the M&T Bank Stadium in the 2002 film The Sum of All Fears were filmed at Olympic Stadium.
- In the movie Blades of Glory, the 2006 World Figure Skating Championships were held at Olympic Stadium (though not actually filmed in Olympic Stadium). The logo for the games was the elevator lift at Olympic Stadium.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- Ballpark Digest visit to Olympic Stadium
- Ballparks.com
- Football Ballparks.com
- Baseball Reference
- Baseball Library
- Régie des installations olympiques (Government of Quebec)
- Google maps
- Olympic Stadium datasheet on Images Montreal
[edit] Multimedia
- CBC Archives A clip from 1975 - Stadium architect talks about his design.
- CBC Archives - A look back on the history of the stadium (1999).
| Preceded by Jarry Park Stadium 1969-1976 |
Home of the Montreal Expos 1977-2004 |
Succeeded by RFK Stadium 2005-present |
| Preceded by Cleveland Stadium |
Host of the All-Star Game 1982 |
Succeeded by Comiskey Park |
| Summer Olympic stadia |
|---|
| Athens, 1896 • Paris, 1900 • St Louis, 1904 • London, 1908 • Stockholm, 1912 • Berlin, 1916 • Antwerp, 1920 • Paris, 1924 • Amsterdam, 1928 • Los Angeles, 1932 • Berlin, 1936 • Helsinki, 1940 • London, 1944 • London, 1948 • Helsinki, 1952 • Melbourne, 1956 • Rome, 1960 • Tokyo, 1964 • México City, 1968 • Munich, 1972 • Montréal, 1976 • Moscow, 1980 • Los Angeles, 1984 • Seoul, 1988 • Barcelona, 1992 • Atlanta, 1996 • Sydney, 2000 • Athens, 2004 • Beijing, 2008 • London, 2012 |
| Current stadiums in the Canadian Football League |
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| Western Division | Eastern Division | |
|---|---|---|
| BC Place Stadium | Commonwealth Stadium | McMahon Stadium | Mosaic Stadium at Taylor Field | Canad Inns Stadium | Ivor Wynne Stadium | Percival Molson Stadium | Rogers Centre | (Olympic Stadium) | |
| Montreal landmarks | |
|---|---|
| Buildings | Biodome | Biosphère | Bell Centre | Canadian Centre for Architecture | Montreal Casino | Complexe Desjardins | Montreal Forum | Grande Bibliothèque du Québec | Habitat '67 | Mary, Queen of the World Cathedral | McCord Museum | Montreal Science Centre | Notre-Dame de Montréal Basilica | Olympic Stadium | Palais des congrès de Montréal | Place des Arts | Place Ville-Marie | Redpath Museum | Saint Joseph's Oratory | Tour de la Bourse | Underground City | World Trade Centre Montreal |
| Neighbourhoods | Chinatown | Old Montreal | Old Port | Quartier international de Montréal |
| Nature and Parks |
Jardin botanique de Montréal | Mount Royal |
| Islands | Île Bizard | Island of Montreal | Île Notre-Dame | Nuns' Island | Saint Helen's Island |
| Transportation | Montréal-Mirabel International Airport | Montreal Metro | Montréal-Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport | Windsor Station | Central Station |
Categories: Landmarks in Montreal | 1976 Summer Olympic venues | 1976 architecture | Baseball venues in Canada | Canadian football venues | Cookie cutter stadiums | Covered stadiums | Defunct Major League Baseball venues | Incomplete buildings and structures | Montreal Expos | Olympic stadiums | Soccer venues in Canada | Sports venues in Montreal | Major League Baseball All-Star Game venues | World Bowl venues | Retractable-roof stadiums | Inclined towers
