Otázka: Sports
Jazyk: Angličtina
Přidal(a): Natálie V.
Sport can help us: keep fit physically and mentally, take off some weight, meet new people, fight stress. We can do sports actively (as professionals, or just as a freetime activity). The majority of people are just spectators: they like watching sports on TV or they visit football or ice-hockey matches as fans.
Some kinds of sports
We can divide sports into groups:
- a) according to the place where they are practiced:
- indoor sports – which are practiced in halls and gyms or indoor swimming pools: gymnastics, table tennis, volleyball, basketball, wrestling, boxing
- outdoor sports – skiing, hiking, rock climbing, horse riding, golf, rowing, windsurfing, cycling, riding a mountain bike
- b) according to the season:
- summer sports – all „track and field“ events: sprints, middle and long distance run, high jump, long jump, throwing a javelin, throwing a discus, pole vaulting
- winter sports – downhill skiing, cross-country skiing, ice-skating, figure-skating, bob-sledging
- Some sports can be practiced both outdoors and indoors, during all seasons. For example swimming. We can swim several styles: crawl, breast stroke, butterfly stroke.
- Some sports are called „adrenaline sports“ – they are very challenging physically and especially psychically: bungee-jumping or paragliding.
Games
- The games are usually all-season activities, they can be practiced indoors and outdoors. Football (called soccer in the US), ice-hockey, basketball, handball, volleyball, floorball, rugby etc.
Most popular games:
a) In Britain
- The British like playing and watching games, and they also like talking about them. Football belongs to favourite games. There are a great number of clubs (Manchester United, Arsenal). In London there is one of the world’s biggest football stadiums: the Wembley Arena.
- Rugby football is also very popular. This game was first played at Rugby (a town) school in England. In this game the ball is oval.
- Golf is of Scottish origin. Cricket is an English national game. Lots of spectators visit horse races. Queen Elizabeth II. loves watching horse-racing.
- Lots of the British look forward to another sports event: the famous university rowing race between Oxford and Cambridge which is held on the River Thames.
b) in the USA
- American football – the ball is oval; the players carry the ball in their hands
- baseball
- basketball – often with girls called „cheerleaders“ (they jump and dance and encourage the spectators; cheerleaders also have their own competitions in „cheerleading“)
- ice-hockey
- Sports in the USA are commercialized and turned into big shows. The sports stars make a lot of money.
c) in CZ
- ball games are the most popular ones: football, volleyball, basketball, handball, tennis
- ice hockey is played on a very high level
- we have successful sportsmen in athletics (for example javelin and decathlon), in netgames (tennis, volleyball); some shooters are also successful
- winter sports such as downhill skiing and cross-country skiing are very popular with the Czechs: we have lots of ski resorts with long ski slopes, for example in the Giant Mountains, the Jeseniky Mountains, the Sumava, Bohemian Paradies etc. Skiers can accommodate in apartment houses or mountain cottages.
