Simon-Olivier Lorange
I had the chance to witness, as a common spectator, events that were very emotional. The last match of the Atlético de Madrid season, in 2016, just before their departure for the Champions League final. A football game at the University of Tennessee Stadium in Knoxville, surrounded by 100,000 fans dressed in orange. Another at Soldier Field in Chicago, where I had never before seen fans so angry with their own club. However, in my very humble opinion, there is still nothing like a local Montreal Canadiens game in the playoffs. Two memories come back to me spontaneously. There is Jaroslav Halak’s famous 53 save game in 2010. But even more so Game 3 against the Tampa Bay Lightning in 2004: I have, to this day, never been exposed to a level of decibels as high as when Patrice Brisebois gave the Habs a 3-2 lead at the end of the third period. However, it was a little quieter when the visitors tied the score and then won in overtime.
Mathias Brunet
The atmosphere at a playoff game at the Bell Center is hard to beat. Didier Drogba’s debut in a Montreal Impact uniform also plunged the Saputo stadium into an unparalleled frenzy. But nothing will top the atmosphere experienced at the Ann Arbor football stadium in Michigan for the Wolverines’ games against the Penn State Nittany Lions and the Virginia Cavaliers, which I covered in 1994 to follow the journey of Quebec running back Tshimanga Biakabutuka, a former player at the versatile Jacques-Rousseau de Longueuil drafted eighth overall in the NFL. I still remember this reflection, a few moments before the start of the match, walking onto the stadium pitch before returning to the press box, with more than 106,000 spectators screaming at the top of their lungs, and a fanfare almost as noisy that almost made my clothes vibrate. I was experiencing the strongest feeling of my young career as a journalist. A feeling never equaled.
Jean-François Tremblay
I visited several NHL arenas, several football and baseball stadiums, soccer stadiums. I’ve been very lucky to be able to watch sport at all these places, I’m very aware of that. But frankly, nothing will ever match Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Final in Las Vegas in 2018. The Golden Knights were still a rookie team, with an audience to conquer, in the entertainment capital of the world. You can imagine the excitement. An Imagine Dragons show before the match, a Blue Man Group show at intermission, theater on ice with a – obviously – golden knight, an excited crowd. Add to that a city that vibrated organically with its Golden Knights, despite a busy schedule along the Strip. I still thank God that my two colleagues assigned to hockey at the time, whose seniority dwarfed mine, took their summer vacation at that time.
Richard Labbe
It’s not easy to answer that, because the choices are numerous; a college football game at Nebraska, for example, is something, just as an indoor soccer game at the Molson Center used to be. But the place where I couldn’t hear myself think anymore because there was so much screaming in the stands was at the Colts stadium in Indianapolis, not the current stadium but the previous one, the RCA Dome, an old indoor stadium that could tell you deaf for three days because the noise was so deafening. Plus, Indianapolis isn’t that big, and when the Colts play a big game there, it feels like the entire city is in the stadium.
Nicholas Richard
It may not be international or of immense scale, but each Laval Rocket game remains an experience that Quebec hockey fans would be crazy to do without. Low price, parking spaces, only good tickets, a family atmosphere and a crowd that loves and knows their team. We are far from the ties and the pretension of the Bell Center. I still remember the very first Rocket game, in 2017, when Guy Lafleur made the ceremonial throw-in. Even my father, a big Bruins fan before the Lord, was overcome by emotion. And what about Rafael Harvey-Pinard’s overtime goal, in the Eastern final, in 2022. I thought the metro was going to break down because the ground shook so much. Long live the northern crown!
Guillaume Lefrançois
Fan-made signs at wrestling shows are always entertaining. But some should be taken more seriously than others. This was the case on June 11, 2006, at the Hammerstein Ballroom, a folk venue located a stone’s throw from the Empire State Building in New York. On the occasion of the show One Night Stand, someone arrived with an inscription that read: “If Cena wins we riot”. Translation: If John Cena wins, we riot. The fights may have been scripted, but anyone familiar with the wrestling culture of that era knew there was a real chance it would blow up. John Cena, today recognized as one of the biggest names in wrestling history, was not yet fully accepted by the “die-hards”, unlike his rival that evening, Rob Van Dam.
It should also be noted that the Hammerstein Ballroom was one of the favorite venues of Extreme Championship Wrestling (ECW), an organization which enjoyed some success in the 1990s, presenting fights of impressive violence. And the show featured many former ECW mainstays. It was a bit like The Police reunion tour. Indeed, the atmosphere was fiery. The crowd roared from start to finish and all the classics were there, as were the spectators who screamed “Balls” with every punch thrown by Balls Mahoney. Favorite for the Sandman, a guy who made his way through the crowd, splashing cans of beer in his forehead, to the sound ofEnter Sandman, Of course. The fight had not yet begun when he was already bleeding from his forehead. We’ll never know if the crowd would keep their word, as John Cena ultimately lost, sending everyone home happy.
Calling all
And you, where have you witnessed the best atmosphere for a sporting event?