Stade de la Rabine, multi-purpose stadium in Vannes, France
Stade de la Rabine is a multi-purpose sports stadium in Vannes, a city in Brittany in northwestern France. It has a natural grass pitch, covered stands on the main side, and training areas used for football and other sports.
A first stadium was built by the city in 1920 as a velodrome with a football pitch at its centre; a covered stand with seven rows followed in 1932. The 1954 Tour de France stage from Brest finished there, won by Jacques Vivier. The velodrome was demolished in 2000 and replaced by a football ground whose honour stand opened with 1,600 seats; the north stand became the Tribune Lucien-Jaffré in 2020.
The name Rabine comes from Breton and means "avenue planted with trees", after the tree-lined promenade nearly 800 metres long beside the marina. The ground hosts Vannes OC football and Rugby Club Vannes, which moved in permanently after promotion to Pro D2 in 2016. In October 2020 the North stand was renamed Tribune Lucien-Jaffré, after a former deputy mayor in charge of sport.
The stadium sits on the edge of Vannes and is easy to reach by car, with parking available nearby. On event days, arriving a little early is a good idea as the surrounding roads can get busier than usual before kickoff.
The name comes not from a neighbourhood but from the promenade de la Rabine, a tree-lined avenue nearly 800 metres long between the harbour esplanade and the commercial port quays; in Breton "Rabine" means "tree-lined avenue".
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