Sports in Louisville, Kentucky include amateur and professional sports in baseball, football, basketball, horse racing, horse shows, ice hockey, soccer and lacrosse. The city of Louisville and the Louisville metropolitan area have a sporting history from the mid-19th century to the present day.
Louisville is now home to two minor-league professional men's teams, and one major-league professional women's team. The Louisville Bats are a baseball team playing in the Triple-A East as the Class AAA affiliate of the Cincinnati Reds. The team plays at Louisville Slugger Field at the edge of the city's downtown.
The U of L football team, with coach Bobby Petrino, finished No. 7 in the nation for the 2006 season, 19th in the final BCS rankings of 2005 and 10th in 2004. After winning the Orange Bowl—the school's first Bowl Championship Series game—in January 2007, Petrino left the Cardinals to be the head coach of the Atlanta Falcons. Steve Kragthorpe was hired to replace Petrino less than two days later. Kragthorpe was fired after three years and replaced by University of Florida defensive coordinator Charlie Strong. Petrino returned for a second stint with the Cardinals in 2014, after Strong left for the head coaching vacancy at Texas. The U of L football team plays on campus at Cardinal Stadium. U of L won the Allstate Sugar Bowl in 2013, upsetting the Florida Gators.
The U of L baseball team advanced to the 2007 and 2013 College World Series in Omaha, where eight teams competed for the national championship. In 2012–13, U of L became the first school ever to appear in a BCS bowl game, the men's and women's Final Fours in basketball, and the College World Series in the same school year.[2]
Besides racing there is the World's Championship Horse show. This show is mostly for Saddlebred horses and is held in conjunction with the Kentucky State Fair. This is the premier event of the year for Saddle seat Pleasure and Equitation.
High school sports are also very popular in the city, especially football and basketball.
Louisville area high schools have been dominant in football in recent years. Trinity (1994, 2001–2003, 2005–2008, 2010–2013), Male (1993, 1998, 2000, 2015) and St. Xavier (1992, 1995, 1997, 1999, 2004, 2009) high schools have won 22 of the 24 football titles in Kentucky's largest enrollment class (4A through 2006, 6A since 2007) since 1992. Central has won five 3A titles since Kentucky's move to a six-class system (2007, 2008, 2010–2012). Manual also has a storied history, collecting 5 state titles (1925, 1938, 1948, 1959, 1966) and 2 national titles (1925 and 1938). Manual and Male are the oldest high schools in Louisville, and the 1st football game in the state was played between these two in 1893. Also, Trinity and St. Xavier have one of the fiercest rivalries in high school football. Every year, the Trinity-St. Xavier game draws an average of 35,000 fans to Cardinal Stadium, and is promoted by the schools as the largest attended regular-season high school football game in the country.[6] Currently, St. Xavier leads this storied rivalry with 31 wins, 26 losses and 2 ties.
The 2002 Kentucky state 4A Football Championship between Male and Trinity, a showdown between future UofL teammates Brian Brohm (Trinity) and Michael Bush (Male) that ended with a 59–56 Trinity win, is listed as one of the top 50 sporting events of all time by many critics. The "Old Rivalry" between Male and Manual high schools is one of the nation's oldest, dating back to 1893, and was played on Thanksgiving Day through 1980, with Manual winning the final T-Day game by a score of 6–0 in overtime.
Annual competitions
From 2007 to 2019, Louisville was host to the annual Ironman Louisville triathlon, in August until 2014 then in October afterwards.[7] In 2019, 2,366 participants finished the course.[8]
In early 2012, Louisville became the first American city to ever host the UCI Masters Cyclocross World Championships, and the following year became the first American city to host the Masters, Juniors, U23, and Professional Elite Women's and Men's UCI Cyclo-cross World Championships, the biggest races of the fastest growing form of bicycle racing.[9] The event was held at a new permanent cyclocross course at Eva Bandman Park.[10]
The Kentucky Colonels were the winningest team in the history of the American Basketball Association, but the Colonels were not included in the ABA–NBA merger in June 1976. A later team with the same name played in Louisville in the ABA 2000 league but moved to Murray, Kentucky, in 2007 before folding.[11] Louisville and the corporate community had also attempted to pursue the Vancouver Grizzlies franchise before their ultimate move to Memphis in 2001,[12] as well as the Charlotte Hornets franchise, which ultimately moved to New Orleans in 2002 but was revived in 2004 as the Charlotte Bobcats, regaining the Hornets name and the team's pre-relocation history in 2014.
