AFP
LThe municipal initiative to rename one of the main sports halls in Basel, the hometown of the successful tennis player, as ‘Roger Federer Arena’, has failed as it failed to gather the necessary signatures, the local press reported on Monday.
The promoters of the initiative, who It was launched in March of last year, they needed 3,000 signatures to get it to go ahead, but the campaign ended this Monday with only 1,200 subscriptions, after a few months in which it has been difficult to celebrate this type of action due to the pandemic.
The sports center they want to rename, currently called Sankt Jakobshalle and located in Mnchenstein (southern suburbs of Basel) It has capacity for about 10,000 people and was inaugurated in 1976.
The pavilion has hosted for several years the Swiss indoor tournament that Federer himself has won ten times.
The former world number one, champion of twenty Grand Slam tournaments, has been honored repeatedly by his hometown, for example with the honorary doctorate from the University of Basel.
The city on the Rhine can only grant posthumous street names, but another nearby town, Biena (where the tennis player completed part of his sports training as a young man) has renamed a local alley after the Swiss champion.
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