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GENEVA/SAN JUAN - (2014 FIBA World Championship) - Barcelona has been added to the list of cities to host the 2014 FIBA World Championship in Spain, bringing the number of venues to six.
The games set to take place in the country’s second largest city will be played at the Palau Sant Jordi, which can sit 20,000.
The decision was made during the FIBA Central Board meeting in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Barcelona will host half of the Eight-Final, Quarter-Final and Semi-Final games, while Madrid will host the other half of these games as well as the final and bronze medal games.
First Round games will be played in Bilbao, Granada, Las Palmas, and Seville as was previously announced during the assignment ceremony in Geneva last year.
FIBA President Bob Elphinston is excited about the news: “This is a positive change to what has been proposed to us in an already excellent bid. Barcelona is the cradle of Spanish basketball and we therefore gladly accept the proposal.”
Barcelona can look back at a great tradition in organising top FIBA events, amongst them the 1992 Olympic Games, which saw the legendary USA ‘Dream Team’ take gold, and the 1997 EuroBasket, won by Yugoslavia.
José Luis Sáez, President of the Spanish Basketball Federation (FEB), worked hard on including the Catalan capital: “We are very happy to present Barcelona as a new venue for the 2014 FIBA World Championship. There is a rich tradition and also a great passion for our sport and our organisation will profit from that.”
FIBA
source: http://www.fiba.com/pages/eng/fc/news/presRele/p/newsid/39426/presReleArti.html
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