CITY STADIUM
The city stadium in Poljud is known under the nickname „Poljud beauty“. It was constructed in 1979 as part of the objects facilitating the VIII. Mediterranean games. This stadium impacted the architectural design of many other international stadiums constructed afterwards and attracted the focus and interest of international experts of sport's facilities architecture at that time.
STRUCTURE
In the opulence of a seashell design, the stadium fits into the environment as if it has been there forever. It perfectly melts into this Mediterranean setting, almost in reach of the sea-waves. This object represents an architectural structure of top international standards by both functionality and technical properties. With 630 floodlights, this is definitely one of the best illuminated stadiums in the world. At night is looks like a space ship had landed.
The stadium's structure consists of steel and semi-transulcent lexan screen. The span of the inner arch is 215 meters, with a free flying arch of 45 meters. Twenty bridges lead into the stadium, which has a seating capacity of 35.000.
The seashell line varies in the seat rows: the greatest depth of the seating area is 54 rows, in the northern tribune its 27 rows. The western and eastern part are identical in their basic dimensions. The reporter boxes are flexible and can be organized for all types of sports events (athletics or football). The cabins for radio and TV reporters hang on the stadium roof, above the western part.
In the ground floor of the western part of the stadium are two changing room sections for the first team, a massage room, a sauna and locker-rooms, anti-doping test facilities, a large training hall with artificial grass, a weight lifting room, a hall for individual training, a laundry room, logistics rooms and service facilities. In the first floor are the lounges with a terrace, the small lounge, the trophy room, a conference and interview hall, the VIP lounge with 114 seats and 15 double bedrooms for „quarantine“ purposes. The exterior part of second floor contains the objects management facilities with 10 offices, the interior part of the objects contains the press center that is directly connected with the reporter boxes behind the VIP boxes.
Two auxiliary football fields are also part of the stadium complex, one with illumination for evening matches. There is also a training course for the footballers (60 x 40 m) and a four lane athletic warm up track of 140 meters length.
The g field in the stadium is covered in natural grass, of dimensions 105 x 68 m, also enabling all types of athletic competitions /field and track/, since the stadium has an synthetic athletic track around the field.
MAJOR EVENTS HELD IN THE STADIUM
Along with the already mentioned Mediterranean games in 1979, the stadium hosted the European Championship in Athletics in 1990. Many European and World record have been broken during this Championship. The French relay team on 4 x 100 meters set the new world record with 37,79. In total 165 medals were awarded, national flags were raised 125 times for the award winning ceremonies and 43 national anthems were played. In total 1200 reporters from all over the world reported from this event.
It also needs to be mentioned, that ten years earlier, in 1980 during the International Athletics Meeting many famous athletes like Acherman, Simeon, Byer, Mennea competed in this stadium, while Ruth Fuchs throw her javelin onto a new world record distance of – 69,96 m.
Poljud is one of those stadiums in which all home plays of the local football Hajduk and many matches of the Croatian national football team are played. Many of the leading football teams played in this object – like Brazil, Germany, Italy, Netherlands and others.