Sporting events in 2016
What will 2016 bring? Highlights of the year in politics, business and sport. Part 3: sport.
The 15th UEFA European Championship will be held in France from 10 June to 10 July 2016. The men’s tournament will be played in 10 French stadiums and the number of teams competing for the Coupe Henri-Delaunay will rise from 16 to 24 for the first time. The German squad of national coach Joachim Löw will play its first match on 12 June in Lille against Ukraine. In the preliminary round, the current World Cup winners Germany will also be competing against teams from Poland and Northern Ireland. French star DJ David Guetta aims to set up a unique backing choir for the official song of the tournament “This one’s for you”: he is looking for one million fans from all over the world to contribute to the song he has produced.
Rio de Janeiro will be the host of the 2016 Olympic Games. From 6 to 21 August 2016 it will be the first city in South America and the second in Latin America to host the event. Among the German athletes there will be several with reasonable hopes of winning a medal. They include sprint canoer Sebastian Brendel, who won Olympic gold in the C-1 1,000 metres event in London, and breaststroke swimmer Marco Koch from Darmstadt, who is the current world champion in the 200-metre breaststroke. In the preliminary competitions he has already been able to prove he is one of the favourites for the gold medal in Rio. However, the star of the German swimming team is Franziska Hentke. The native of Magdeburg travels to the 2016 Olympics as favourite in her discipline.
