This September, maintenance and rehabilitation work began on the Tripoli International Olympic Stadium, located at the southern entrance to the city of Tripoli, in a step aimed at reviving one of the most prominent major sports facilities in northern Lebanon, which has a stadium capacity of about 22,400 spectators and includes a football field and athletics facilities.
The stadium has a prominent sporting history, as its hosting of Group Two matches and five total matches in the 2000 AFC Asian Cup was the most prominent stage in its career, when Lebanon prepared it to be a facility capable of receiving major tournaments. It then continued to host the Lebanese Football League competitions, and matches in the sport of “Rugby League”, most notably the Mediterranean Championship in 2003, and the International Quadruple Championship in 2004, which brought together the Lebanese national teams. France, Croatia and Serbia, in addition to athletics events and various public activities.
Despite this rich history, the stadium has witnessed, over the past years, a noticeable decline and neglect resulting from a lack of maintenance work, which led to the deterioration of its basic facilities, such as the stands, the media platform, the canopy, and various equipment, leading to the cessation of any sporting activity in it for about twenty years until the start of the recent rehabilitation attempts.
The current maintenance work aims to treat the stadium’s floor and rehabilitate its basic facilities to gradually return it to service, going beyond just repairing the football field, to include restoring the stadium’s role as an integrated facility capable of hosting major competitions, tournaments and sporting events in northern Lebanon, thus paving the way for a new chapter aimed at restoring life to this ancient sporting edifice.
