Is Leicester the UK’s sporting capital?

Mark Selby (centre) became snooker World Champion for a second time on the same night that Leicester City won the Premier League and two days after Leicester Tigers ensured a Premiership rugby play-off place

It already lays claim to being the heart of rural England, but is Leicester now the sporting capital of the United Kingdom?

Leicester City’s Premier League title win is the force behind their case, while Mark Selby’s second World Snooker Championship triumph, Leicester Tigers’ hunt for an 11th English rugby union title, Leicester Riders’ success on the basketball court and Loughborough University’s 35 consecutive British Universities & Colleges Sport (BUCS) titles add to the compelling debate.

BBC Sport takes a look at how Leicester compares to other cities on the British sporting landscape.

Leicester, home of champions

Media playback is not supported on this device

BBC Football Daily: Leicester win Premier League – How football reacted

Population: 330,000

Notable sporting success in 2016:

Leicester City: Premier League champions.Mark Selby: Snooker world champion.Leicester Tigers: In the Premiership rugby union play-offs and hunting for an 11th English title, having finished in the top four for a 12th successive season. Also losing European Champions Cup semi-finalists.Leicester Riders: British Basketball League champions, BBL Trophy winners. Chasing a domestic treble after reaching the BBL play-off final against Sheffield Sharks, to be played at London’s O2 Arena on Sunday, 8 May.Leicester City Women: Won Women’s Premier League Midlands Division One title, which is the fourth tier of Women’s football in England, with a 100% record – winning 22 games, scoring 93 goals and conceding just 19.Leicestershire: The only one of the city’s major sporting teams to have struggled in recent years, but won their opening County Championship game of the season having ended a run of nearly three years without victory last summer.

The expert view…

BBC Radio Leicester’s Jason Bourne: “Within a mile or two you can walk from the King Power Stadium, to Welford Road, via Grace Road and then the Leicester Sports Arena.

“You bump into all kinds of people who want to talk about this city’s sporting success. There’s a real sense of pride in all of our teams, all of our sports. It feels like a family, a sporting family.

“I don’t know anywhere else where it’s like this. You can go to London, Manchester or Birmingham but they’ve got more than one football team. We’re a one-team city and that’s how we all feel part of the same thing. One community. One family. “

Media playback is not supported on this device

Leicester City’s comic book seasonThe giants of Manchester

Population: 2.7m (including Greater Manchester)

Notable sporting success in 2016:

Manchester City: League Cup winners, Champions League semi-finalists.Manchester United: FA Cup finalists.League One: Wigan Athletic, promoted to Championship as League One title winners.World champions: Tyson Fury, triple world heavyweight boxing champion. Anthony Crolla, WBA lightweight world champion.

Home of: National Basketball Performances Centre, National Taekwondo Centre, National Cycling Centre, Test cricket ground (Old Trafford), Manchester United’s Old Trafford (home to Super League’s Grand Final).

Old Trafford has a capacity of 75,635, while Leicester City’s King Power Stadium fits 32,262 and Leicester Tigers’ Welford Road has a capacity of 26,000

Manchester, the host city of the 2002 Commonwealth Games, is famous for the success of 20-time league champions Manchester United and Manchester City, who had won two of the previous four Premier League titles before Leicester’s success.

As for the city being able to compete on multiple sporting fronts …

continue reading in source www.bbc.co.uk