An active city
Helsinki promotes wellbeing by offering its citizens extensive opportunities for sports, both indoors and outdoors throughout the year.
Helsinki is internationally known for sports, catering for the needs of both professional and amateur sportspeople as well as those that seek to maintain an active lifestyle. The city promotes wellbeing by offering its citizens extensive opportunities for sports, both indoors and outdoors throughout the year.
Sports clubs in Helsinki organize activities in a wide array of sports. The most popular are ice hockey and football, and the list covers well over one hundred other sports.
Helsinki’s large green areas including the Central Park and the sea offer ample opportunities for physical activity: walking including popular Nordic walking, running, jogging, hiking, bicycling, roller skating, swimming, boating and fishing.
The City organizes a number of community sports activities and maintains a variety and extensive sports facilities. These facilities include more than 200 km of tracks for walking, jogging and running, close to 200 km of ski tracks in winter, some 30 indoor sports halls, some 10 indoor ice rinks and 80 outdoor ice rinks and 14 indoor swimming halls.
Ice Park is a downtown winter-time skating rink on Railway Square, complete with skate rental and a heated café.
One of the exotic sports in Helsinki is ice swimming, and Helsinki even hosts ice swimming world championships. The City maintains some 15 ice swimming sites throughout the city.
Helsinki offers a variety of other outdoor recreational opportunities. The Helsinki Metropolitan Area Bicycling and Outdoor Map shows many of these opportunities.
Links:
City of Helsinki City of Helsinki: Sports
Text: Helsingin kaupunki
Photo: Helsingin kaupungin matkailutoimisto
Töölö sports hall
