What Is The Oldest Sport?

What Is The Oldest Sport
Wrestling – – Wrestling is regarded the oldest sports in the world and we have proof. The famous cave paintings in Lascaux, France, dating back to 15,300 years ago, depict wrestlers. So we can safely say, wrestling one the more popular sports of that time. In other countries such as Japan, a papyrus fragment was found with wrestling instructions on it, dating somewhere between 100 and 200 AD.

What is the oldest sport in Earth?

Wrestling – Wrestling is considered to be the oldest sport in the world. We know this because of a set of famous cave paintings in Lascaux, France, dating back 15,300 years ago which depict wrestlers. And it wasn’t just in France either; paintings with illustrated wresters have been found in caves all over the world, from 7000 BC in Mongolia, from 6000 BC in Libya and in prehistoric caves in Japan.

What is the 2nd oldest sport?

Football is the second oldest sport in the United States. What sport is the oldest in the U.S.? Answer– Lacrosse, which dates back to the early 1600’s.

Which of the 4 major sports is the oldest?

Major Professional Sports Leagues: The US & Canada Professional sports leagues have become one of the most lucrative entertainment industries in the world. According to a report by the Businesswire, the global sports market will reach a value of US$614.1 billion by 2022.

As per expectation, it is likely to grow at a CAGR of 5.9%. The big four professional sports in the USA are the NFL, the MLB, the NBA, and the NHL. Other leagues are the MSL and the CFL. These sports leagues tend to have a huge fan following around the world. In 2018, the average number of fans who attended the games of these six leagues was 15,000.

Let’s understand these leagues better.1- Major League Baseball In the US, MLB is the oldest professional sports league. Major League Baseball consists of 30 teams. Out of these 30 teams, 15 teams play in the National League and the other 15 in the American League.

The MLB season, with 162-games, is the longest of the major American sports. After the regular season, the highest-ranking teams enter playoff games. Total eight teams, four from each league, get into the playoffs. Eventually, the winner from the AL and the NL plays in the World Series. Thus, the champion of the season is determined.

After the NFL, MLB is the wealthiest professional sports league by revenue. In 2019, MLB revenue was around US$10.7 billion, What Is The Oldest Sport 2- National Football League The NFL, formed in 1920, is America’s most popular professional sports league. It consists of 32 franchises, divided between NFC and AFC, competing each year to win the world’s biggest annual sports event, the Super Bowl. There is a further subdivision of 16 teams of each conference in four four-team divisions that are North, South, East, and West.

Each division winner enters the playoffs, and there are two non-division winners wild card entries as well. Playoffs consist of four rounds. The Super Bowl is the last round, where two conference champions compete with each other to determine the league champion. As per revenue, the NFL is the wealthiest professional sports league.

In 2018, the NFL was the most profitable sports league, with US$16 billion in revenue, What Is The Oldest Sport 3- National Basketball Association The NBA, founded in 1946, is an American professional basketball league. It consists of 30 teams, with two conferences of 15 teams each. Each team plays 82 games. There are further three divisions of these 15 teams in each conference. 4- National Hockey League The NHL, founded in 1917, is the second-oldest major professional team sports league in North America. The NHL consists of 31 clubs in two conferences and four divisions. The three highest-placed teams in each division from each conference enter the playoffs. What Is The Oldest Sport 5- Major League Soccer The MLS, founded in 1993, is a professional soccer league authorized by the United States Soccer Federation. It celebrates its 25th Season in 2020, featuring 26 clubs throughout the United States and Canada. It comprises 23 in the U.S.

and three in Canada. The MLS is planning to expand the number of teams to 30 by the 2023 season. The regular-season of MLS starts from late February to October. In the 2020 MLS season, each team plays two games against every team in its conference.6- Canadian Football League The CFL, officially founded in 1958, is a professional sports league in Canada.

It consists of nine teams located in nine major cities across the country. In 2012, the CFL celebrated the 100th year of the Grey Cup, which is a championship game and the largest single-day sporting event in Canada. The 2019 CFL season featured a 21-week regular season, with 18 games with three bye weeks.

After the regular season, six teams compete in the three-week divisional playoffs to enter the Grey Cup championship game in late November. Final Thoughts The above listed major professional sports leagues in the United States and Canada are going global, drawing the attention of a growing fan base outside the US.

All six sports leagues enjoy wide-ranging media coverage, making a positive impact in North America and Europe, both in terms of business and on the field.

What was the first ever sports?

What is the first sport ever played? – Although it is impossible to know for sure, it is usually considered that wrestling and boxing were the first sports ever played, Competitions using the simple mode of human transport, running, would also have been among the first sports played.

Competitions involving hitting, kicking, throwing a ball-like object, as well as sports related to hunting and throwing would also be expected to have been played in early times. Many sports have developed as competitions from means of early transportation, such as horse riding and canoeing, and from military activities such as rifle shooting and archery.

Some of the sports in the past are not played anymore as they became superseded with a better version or changed due to improved technology, while some are lost altogether as sporting and leisure trends come and go. At the first recorded ancient Olympic Games in 760 BC, there was only one event, a footrace. Olympic Games host cities The most popular sport played around the world today, Association football (soccer), has its origins in China (see Soccer History ). There is evidence in China that military forces around the 2nd and 3rd century BC (Han Dynasty) played a game, originally named “Tsu Chu”, that involved kicking a leather ball stuffed with fur into a small hole.

What is the youngest sport?

Bossaball, the World’s newest extreme sport Nerve Rush – 8/2011 Introducing Bossaball, a delicate mélange of volleyball, soccer, gymnastics, capoeira and extreme trampolining. Developed between 2003 and 2005 by Filip Eyckmans, Bossaball is played on an inflatable court that takes less than 45 minutes to set up.

The inflatable playing surface and change in gravity allow for a range of techniques, team tactics and strategies.
Eyckmans, a Belgian living in Spain, grew up playing tennis for the Belgian national team.
Off-court, he assisted live soccer matches and DJ’ed private parties and founded Musickness back in 1993 who manages bands such as dEUS, Balthazar, Tamino & more.

In the early nineties, he was traveling in Brazil as a band manager and became fascinated with capoeria, the Afro-Brazilian, half-martial arts, half-dance phenomenon. Eyckmans ultimately developed Bossaball, the ultimate combination of flexibility, agility, coordination and sport.

Bossaball clubs are popping up all over the world.
So far, you can find them in countries like Brazil, Germany, Netherlands, Portgual, Singapore, Ecuador and Saudi Arabia.
The most famous club teams, the Selection of Spain and the Selection of Brazil, travel the world to promote the game and perform Bossaball exhibitions.

How to Play Bossaball Each team consists of three to five players on each side of the Bossaball net. One player, called the attacker, stands on the trampoline. Similar to volleyball, one team serves up the ball over the net, with the intention of landing the ball on the opposing teams inflatable surface or trampoline surface.

The defending team must not use a combination of more than six (or eight?) contacts with the ball to return it over the net. Any body part can be used, with a maximum of two successive contacts with the head or feet and a maximum of one contact with the hands. Get creative, folks. During a rally, the one attacker jumps on the trampoline in order to gain height, trying to position him or herself while one of the other players aims the ball’s trajectory at just the optimal height.

It’s one of those sports you have to see to believe. The rally continues until the ball drops in one of the scoring zones. Three points for a drop on the trampoline, and one point for a drop on the larger inflatable area. The team that scored gets to serve again, and the same server is used.

When possession rotates–when the defensive team wins the point–the team is rotated to feature a new server, similar to volleyball. The game continues until one team scores 25 points and is two points ahead. In one Bossaball match, it’s best two out of three games, or sets. For more information, check out the official Bossaball site,,

Have any of you tried playing? : Bossaball, the World’s newest extreme sport

Is soccer one of the oldest sports?

Soccer, or better known to the rest of the world as football, is one of the oldest sports in history. Dating back to 206 B.C., there are accounts of Chinese soldiers playing Tsu’chu, “kicking the ball,” to supplement their training regiments during the Han Dynasty.

While many other ancient cultures played games involving a ball, Tsu’chu was the first to not allow hands.
Goals consisted of a net attached to two bamboo poles and elevated 30 feet in the air.
This is quite the contrast to modern goals that sit on the ground and extend eight feet high and 24 feet wide.

The particular style of playing a game with a ball, centered around one’s feet, spread throughout the world. During the medieval period in Europe, particularly in England, games were played in towns that pitted rival squads against one another. This was called Folkball.

The goal was to place the ball into a designated area, usually the captain’s house, to score a point.
This would often entail a distance of a few miles between scoring destinations.
Games typically resulted in low scoring matches as the process of advancing the ball would be brutal and without regard to one’s well being.

Without any set rules the game would cause massive commotion throughout the towns in which it was held, leading to its ban in the 14th century. In 1863, official rules for football were drawn up to create an organized game in England. These rules formally differentiated between rugby football and association football.

Hence, modern football was born. As more clubs agreed to Football Association (F.A.) rules, the desire to breed uniform leagues emerged. In 1872 the first F.A. Cup was played, and by 1888 a league was formed with 128 teams participating in some capacity. England’s love for the game rubbed off on neighboring European countries, eventually making its way to South America.

Why soccer instead of football?

What Is The Oldest Sport © Mikael Damkier/Dreamstime.com One of the best-known differences between British and American English is the fact that the sport known as football in Great Britain is usually called soccer in the United States. Because the sport originated in England, it is often assumed that soccer is an Americanism.

In fact, the word is thoroughly British in origin. So why is it that Americans (not to mention Canadians, Australians, and others) are likelier to use the word than Brits are? The answer lies in how the sport developed in each country. Although football-type games have been around for centuries, the sport we know today is often said to have begun in 1863, when England’s newly formed Football Association wrote down a set of rules.

At the time, it was the most widely played game of its kind in the country, but it wasn’t the only one. Rugby football, named after an English boarding school, was a variation that allowed players to carry and run with the ball to advance it toward the goal.

The game played under the Football Association’s rules thus became known as association football. Inevitably, the names would be shortened. Linguistically creative students at the University of Oxford in the 1880s distinguished between the sports of “rugger” (rugby football) and “assoccer” (association football).

The latter term was further shortened to “soccer” (sometimes spelled “socker”), and the name quickly spread beyond the campus. However, “soccer” never became much more than a nickname in Great Britain. By the 20th century, rugby football was more commonly called rugby, while association football had earned the right to be known as just plain football.

Meanwhile, in the United States, a sport emerged in the late 19th century that borrowed elements of both rugby and association football. Before long, it had proved more popular than either of them. In full, it was known as gridiron football, but most people never bothered with the first word. As a result, American association-football players increasingly adopted soccer to refer to their sport.

The United States Football Association, which had formed in the 1910s as the official organizing body of American soccer, changed its name to the United States Soccer Football Association in 1945, and it later dispensed with the “Football” altogether.

No longer just a nickname, soccer had stuck.
Other countries where the word soccer is common include those that, like the United States, have competing forms of football.
For instance, Canada has its own version of gridiron football ; Ireland is home to Gaelic football ; and Australia is mad about Australian rules football (which is derived from rugby).

In places where football can be ambiguous, soccer is usefully precise.

Who invented football?

The Birth of American Football – Early football was a hodgepodge of soccer and rugby rules played with large numbers of players attempting to advance the ball into the goal. Often referred to as “Mob Foot-ball,” the game’s violence resulted in numerous injuries.

Yale’s freshman and sophomores traditionally held a match on New Haven ‘s town green but the city banned the game in 1858, forbidding its playing in the streets or on any public square. Yale officially formed their Football Association in 1872, but in 1876, when Walter Camp started playing as a freshman, the game was still in its infancy–played under the Rugby Union rules established by the Intercollegiate Football Association.

Camp served as the team captain for three years and continued to serve for much of his later life as Yale’s unofficial coach. Camp also served as a member of the national football rules committee from 1877 until 1925 while working at the New Haven Clock Company.

A respected businessman, Walter Camp eventually ended up running the company, one of the largest manufacturers in Connecticut at the time.
Walter Camp is credited with altering the rules of rugby to create the game of modern North American football we are familiar with today.
The line of scrimmage, use of downs, point system, the number of players per side, and the creation of the quarterback position all stemmed from Walter Camp’s influence.

One of the highest-paid nonfiction writers of the time, Camp is also credited with the “long-term commercialization” of the sport, having written hundreds of articles and dozens of books extolling the virtues of football. In 1928 Yale erected a monument to Camp’s contribution, the Walter Camp Memorial Gateway at the Yale Bowl.

How old is the sport of soccer?

The history of soccer According to the Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), football – or soccer as it is known in North America – is played by upwards of 240 million people worldwide. Records trace the origins of the sport back more than 2,000 years ago to ancient China, Greece and Rome, where the ‘ball’ was made of rock or animal hide stuffed with hair.

There have even been suggestions it dates even further back to old Mesoamerican cultures – but ‘football’ or ‘soccer’ as we know it today has its roots in 19th century England. From England, the idea of football spread to Europe and across the Atlantic. Two schoolteachers, August Hermann and Konrad Koch, introduced the game to Germany circa 1874.

Immigrants, meanwhile, are thought to have brought soccer to the United States. Through the history of soccer we have seen multitudes of stars be born. Jadon Sancho is one of world footballs most talented players of now and the future. – DFL The first football association was formed in England in 1863. Rules were established – but continued to change – and the size and weight of the match-ball standardised.

Crucially, carrying the ball with the hands was outlawed: association football (soccer) and rugby became two separate entities. Football continued to undergo rapid development into the 1900s, accelerated by industrialisation. Public school teams soon became the minority following the emergence of factory and other work-based clubs.

The best players received monetary incentives, and tickets were sold to the public – mainly members of the working-class – for matches. Domestic leagues became commonplace around the world – the English Football League being the first professional division.

In Germany, football was played at an amateur level until 1949, when semi-professional leagues were introduced. The country’s first professional division, the Bundesliga, started in 1963/64. Forty-six clubs from the former West Germany applied for admission to the new league. Sixteen were selected based on their sporting track record, economic criteria and representation of the various sub-regional leagues.

Until 2001, the Bundesliga was directly under the auspices of the Deutscher Fußball-Bund (DFB or German Football Association). This changed with the formation of the Deutsche Fußball-Liga (DFL or German Football League). The very-first season of Bundesliga football took place in from 1963 to 1964. – imago sportfotodienst/imago sportfotodienst Early soccer leagues in the US mostly adopted the name ‘football’ for their activities, but confusion between American football and association football resulted in the term ‘soccer’ being used to describe the latter in the 1910s and early 1920s.

Two professional soccer leagues were started in 1967, the United Soccer Association and the National Professional Soccer League, which merged to form the North American Soccer League in 1968. Interest in soccer within the United States continued to grow and, as part of the United States’ bid to host the 1994 FIFA World Cup, US Soccer pledged to create a professional outdoor league.

Major League Soccer duly launched in 1996. Latter-day continental club tournaments have existed, in various guises, for many years. Europe’s UEFA Champions League and the Americas’ CONCACAF Champions League are perhaps the best known. Interleague club competition can be traced back as far as the late 19th century, but international club tournaments are a relatively new concept.

In 2000, the FIFA Club World Cup was born, a tournament between the winners of the six continental confederations, as well as the host nation’s league champions. Since 2005, it has become an annual event. In the late 19th century, only a few national football teams existed, England and Scotland among them.

Germany has been represented in international football competitions since 1908, while the first US national soccer team was constituted in 1885. Football became an International Olympics Committee-recognised sport in 1900, but it wasn’t until 1930 that FIFA – football’s world governing body – decided to stage their own international tournament, the World Cup. The FIFA World Cup played in the USA in 1994 was a ground-breaking moment for soccer in the United States. – imago The UEFA European Football Championship, more commonly known as the Euros, is the primary association football competition contested by the senior men’s national teams of the members of the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA), determining the continental champion of Europe.

It is held every four years, in the even-numbered year between World Cups. The first edition took place in 1960. The CONCACAF Gold Cup, the main association football competition of the men’s national football teams governed by The Confederation of North, Central America and Caribbean Association Football (CONCACAF), determining the continental champion of North America, Central America, and the Caribbean, is staged every two years.

Today 211 national associations are members of FIFA, football’s world governing body. The world regions are divided into six confederations: Confédération Africaine de Football (CAF), Asian Football Confederation (AFC), UEFA, CONCACAF, Oceania Football Confederation (OFC), and Confederación Sudamericana de Fútbol (CONMEBOL). Germany have won the European Championships three times, the last of which came in England in 1996. – imago : The history of soccer

Who created the first sport?

The documented history of sports goes back at least 3,000 years. In the beginning, sports often involved the preparation for war or training as a hunter, which explains why so many early games involved the throwing of spears, stakes, and rocks, and sparring one-on-one with opponents.

What’s the best sport in the world?

What Is The Oldest Sport Pexels.com For many people, sports are an integral aspect of life. Exercise, team building, and the ability to make new acquaintances and develop close bonds with others are all facilitated by sports. Sports have the power to bring people together around a common interest, give people something to cheer for, and even provide as a momentary escape from the stresses of daily life.

Every nation or region in the world has a preferred sport; in fact, many of them share the same preference.
There are just a select few sports that are the most well-known globally and that have the most ” https://match.center/ “.
World’s Most Popular Sports Football/Soccer Soccer, also known as association football, is by far the most popular sport in the world, despite the fact that it may not be obvious in the United States.

Soccer is the most popular sport in practically all of Europe, South America, Africa, the Middle East, Central America, and Asia.250 million people play the sport in 200 different countries, and there are around 3.5 billion fans worldwide. The next three most popular sports are field hockey, which has 2.2 billion fans globally, basketball, and cricket, which has 2.5 billion fans (2 billion).

Cricket Cricket is also a popular sport in Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nepal, and other nations that were formerly under British rule.
One of the few things of Indian culture that unites the entire nation is cricket.
India’s first cricket match was officially recorded in 1721, and in 1932 it joined England, Australia, South Africa, the West Indies, and New Zealand as the sixth member of the “elite club.” Ice hockey Ice hockey, which was invented in Montreal and is the nation’s national winter sport, is the most popular sport in Canada.

The three primary junior hockey leagues in Canada are represented by the Canadian Hockey League (CHL), which was established in 1975. The Western Hockey League, Ontario Hockey League, and Quebec Major Junior Hockey League are the three member leagues.

The overall number of teams is 60, of which 52 represent nine Canadian provinces and eight represent four American states.
The CHL’s top prize for the winning team is the Memorial Cup.
In an annual effort to capture the coveted Stanley Cup, Canadian hockey teams compete in the National Hockey Competition (NHL), the American hockey league.

The Toronto Maple Leafs, Ottawa Senators, Winnipeg Jets, Edmonton Oilers, Calgary Flames, and Vancouver Canucks are Canadian National Hockey League teams. Baseball Baseball is the most popular sport in Japan. Baseball was first brought to Japan by American Horace Wilson in 1872, and the first professional competitions appeared in the 1920s.

The Central League and the Pacific League were created in 1950 following the 1936 formation of the first Japanese professional league. Nippon Professional Baseball for Puro Yaky (“professional baseball”) is the name of the professional league. The ball, striking zone, and playing field are all slightly smaller in Major League Baseball (MLB) in the United States than they are in Japan, and ties are permitted.

Baseball for high schools is likewise quite well-liked in Japan. At Koshien Stadium, more than 50,000 people attend the national high school baseball championship, and millions more watch it on television.

What is the hardest skill in sports?

Hitting a baseball is the hardest skill to pull off in sports. Here’s why. There are few aspects of life where you can fail seven out of 10 times and still be considered great at what you do. With a 30 percent score on the MCAT, you wouldn’t get into medical school.

You’d likely lose money if you only won 30 percent of your Super Bowl bets. But in baseball, if you get a hit 30 percent of the time you step up to the plate, you might be headed to the Hall of Fame—and that’s because it’s perhaps the most difficult thing to do in any major sport. Ted Williams, for instance, one of the greatest hitters to ever play Major League Baseball, finished his 19-year career playing for the Boston Red Sox with a,344 batting average.

That’s a 34 percent success rate, tied for seventh best in the sport’s history. But even he famously said that hitting a baseball is So why is that the case? For one, the physics are extreme. The velocity of the average fastball in the Major Leagues is more than 90 miles per hour.

When the ball whizzes in at that speed from less than 60 feet away, the hitter has about to decide whether they want to swing. That’s literally the blink of an eye. And even though a hitter has that 150 milliseconds to decide whether to swing, the ball is only in the hitting zone for less than 10 milliseconds, according to David Kagan, a physics professor at California State University, Chico, and the self-proclaimed “Einstein of the National Pastime.” Essentially, the amount of time the ball is in a spot where the batter can make contact and keep it in fair territory equates to the time separating a photo finish at the Kentucky Derby.

Plus, hitting a round baseball with a round bat squarely is an additional piece to this complicated puzzle. Getting those two curvy objects to connect in just the right way is extremely difficult—if you’re off by just a smidge, the ball could hook foul or make for an easy out instead of sailing over the wall.

Imagine the bat like a target.
If the bat hits the ball at exactly the correct spot, a bullseye that’s one-fifth of an inch in diameter, the batter will likely hit a home run.
But if the ball makes contact with the ring just outside the bullseye, they’ll hit nothing more than a ground ball back to the pitcher.

In other words, the margin of error for where the batter can make contact with the ball and hope to get a hit is half the width of the SIM-card in your iPhone. Taking a peek at hitters’ brains can also explain why getting a hit is such a difficult feat.

Paul Sajda, an engineering professor at Columbia University, studies the neural processes involved in rapid decision making.
He compares trying to hit a baseball with trying to hit a bullet with another bullet.
You’re trying to hit something that’s moving super-fast with something else that’s moving super-fast,” he says.

Thomas Kaminski, the director of athletic training education at the University of Delaware, compares trying to hit a baseball to trying to catch a peanut in your mouth from someone 100 feet away. Although even then, he says, it would be much easier for the individual to get in a good position to catch the peanut.

Hitting a baseball is “truly a marvel if you think about it,” he says. What’s more, the incredible hand-eye coordination of baseball players transfers well to other sports—but excelling at other sports doesn’t mean you’ll be able to hit a baseball. An athlete could look competent on the soccer field or the basketball court.

But take a soccer or basketball player and get them to try to hit a baseball? That won’t work out so well, he says. That’s because successful hitters are exceptional in two areas, Sajda’s lab hypothesizes. First, hitting a baseball is not about how fast a batter can swing, but rather how fast they can stop themselves from swinging at pitches they aren’t likely to get hits on—preventing more strikeouts and creating more opportunities to get a hit.

The ability to determine in 150 milliseconds whether to swing matters more than the batter just being able to swing quickly.
The second important area is a hitter’s ability to identify pitches, he says.
To an ordinary person, determining the difference between a fastball and a curveball is like determining the difference between the faces of two strangers in 150 milliseconds.

What sports are older ages?

Bone Loss – Both men and women lose bone as they age. Women are especially vulnerable to bone loss after menopause due to a decrease in estrogen, says Dr. Tavel, which makes it even more important for women to participate in activities that help improve bone mineral density.

Bone-bolstering exercises often include some form of resistance (such as bands or weights) or balance strengthening to help prevent falls, notes Dr.
Tavel, who lists golf, tennis, dancing, yoga, hiking, cycling, walking and jogging as great examples of activities for older adults to try or remain engaged in.

Of course, not every sport is prudent for every person. Rugby, underwater hockey or ice dancing, for instance, might not be the easiest starting choices for some older adults. What’s important is that “people continue to move, strengthen their muscles and challenge their bodies in a safe way so they can maintain and even improve bone density, muscle mass, heart and lung function and mental capabilities,” explains Dr.

Is the oldest Olympic sport?

The Games | The Real Story of the Ancient Olympic Games The ancient Olympic Games were primarily a part of a religious festival in honor of Zeus, the father of the Greek gods and goddesses. The festival and the games were held in Olympia (see in the glossary), a rural sanctuary site (model shown here, courtesy of the British Museum) in the western Peloponnesos.

The Greeks that came to the Sanctuary of Zeus at Olympia shared the same religious beliefs and spoke the same language. The athletes were all male citizens of the city-states from every corner of the Greek world, coming from as far away as Iberia (Spain) in the west and the Black Sea (Turkey) in the east.

The sanctuary was named in antiquity after Mt. Olympos (see in the glossary), the highest mountain in mainland Greece. In Greek mythology, Mt. Olympos was the home of the greatest of the Greek gods and goddesses. The ancient Olympic Games began in the year 776 BC, when Koroibos, a cook from the nearby city of Elis, won the race, a foot race 600 feet long.

The stadion track at Olympia is shown here. According to some literary traditions, this was the only athletic event of the games for the first 13 Olympic festivals or until 724 BC. From 776 BC, the Games were held in Olympia every four years for almost 12 centuries. Contrary evidence, both literary and archaeological, suggests that the games may have existed at Olympia much earlier than this date, perhaps as early as the 10th or 9th century BC.

What’s that, you ask? A series of bronze tripods have been found at Olympia, some of which may date to the 9th century BC, and it has been suggested that these tripods may in fact be prizes for some of the early events at Olympia. Source: Deutsches Archaologisches Institut, Athen The marathon was NOT an event of the ancient Olympic games.

The marathon is a modern event that was first introduced in the Modern Olympic Games of 1896 in Athens, a race from Marathon northeast of Athens to the Olympic Stadium, a distance of 40 kilometers. The race commemorates the run of Pheidippides, an ancient “day-runner” who carried the news of the Persian landing at Marathon of 490 B.C.

to Sparta (a distance of 149 miles) in order to enlist help for the battle. According to the fifth century B.C.ancient Greek historian Herodotus, Pheidippides delivered the news to the Spartans the next day. The distance of the modern marathon was standardized as 26 miles 385 yards or 42.195 km.

In 1908 when the Olympic Games were held in London.
The distance was the exact measurement between Windsor Castle, the start of the race, and the finish line inside White City Stadium.
NUDITY AT THE GAMES? There are two stories relating to the question of nudity at the ancient Olympic Games.
One story states that it was a runner from Megara, Orsippos or Orrhippos who, in 720 B.C.

was the first to run naked in the race when he lost his shorts in the race. Another tradition is that it was the Spartans who introduced nudity to the Olympic Games in the 8th century B.C. as it was a Spartan tradition. It is not clear if the very first recorded victor at Olympia, Koroibos, who won the race in 776 B.C.

Wore shorts or not. It seems fairly clear that by the late 8th century nudity was common for the male contestants. FROM ANCIENT TO MODERN Although the ancient Games were staged in Olympia, Greece, from 776 BC through 393 AD, it took 1503 years for the Olympics to return. The first modern Olympics were held in Athens, Greece, in 1896.

The man responsible for its rebirth was a Frenchman named Baron Pierre de Coubertin, who presented the idea in 1894. His original thought was to unveil the modern Games in 1900 in his native Paris, but delegates from 34 countries were so enthralled with the concept that they convinced him to move the Games up to 1896 and have Athens serve as the first host.

THE OLYMPIC FLAME The idea of the Olympic torch or Olympic Flame was first inaugurated in the 1928 Olympic Games in Amsterdam.
There was no torch relay in the ancient Olympic Games.
There were known, however, torch relays in other ancient Greek athletic festivals including those held at Athens.
The modern Olympic torch relay was first instituted at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin.

The Olympic Oath was introduced in 1920. Did you know. Additional athletic events were gradually added until, by the 5th century BC, the religious festival consisted of a five-day program. For a complete list of events, click, PLUS. For a complete list of modern Olympic Game location sites, click,

Shown here is the stadium entrance at Olympia. Any Winter Games? The first modern Winter Olympic games were held in 1924 in Chamonix, France. There was no winter Olympic festival in ancient times. Separate Winter Games were first authorized in 1911 to be held in 1916, but due to World War I they didn’t occur until 1924, in Chamonix.

Starting with Lillehammer in 1994, it was decided that every other year will be an Olympic year (with Summer and Winter Games alternating), rather than holding Summer and Winter Games every 4th year. This was done to accommodate TV networks and audiences.

The Modern Olympic flag of five linked rings, each with a primary color used in the flags of the nations competing in the games, was introduced in 1908.
There is no ancient basis for this modern symbol.
Detail from an Attic Red Figure Kylix, ca.490-480 BC, depicting two men wrestling.
Above them hang a discus in its bag and a pair of jumping weights called ‘halteres.’ Long jumpers used the weights to increase their competition distances by vigorously swinging them forward at the moment of takeoff.

The coach or trainer stands to the left of the wrestlers, leaning on his staff and holding a long forked branch. Museum Object Number:, : The Games | The Real Story of the Ancient Olympic Games

What is the youngest sport?

The inflatable playing surface and change in gravity allow for a range of techniques, team tactics and strategies. Eyckmans, a Belgian living in Spain, grew up playing tennis for the Belgian national team. Off-court, he assisted live soccer matches and DJ’ed private parties and founded Musickness back in 1993 who manages bands such as dEUS, Balthazar, Tamino & more.

Bossaball clubs are popping up all over the world. So far, you can find them in countries like Brazil, Germany, Netherlands, Portgual, Singapore, Ecuador and Saudi Arabia. The most famous club teams, the Selection of Spain and the Selection of Brazil, travel the world to promote the game and perform Bossaball exhibitions.

The defending team must not use a combination of more than six (or eight?) contacts with the ball to return it over the net.
Any body part can be used, with a maximum of two successive contacts with the head or feet and a maximum of one contact with the hands.
Get creative, folks.
During a rally, the one attacker jumps on the trampoline in order to gain height, trying to position him or herself while one of the other players aims the ball’s trajectory at just the optimal height.

When possession rotates–when the defensive team wins the point–the team is rotated to feature a new server, similar to volleyball. The game continues until one team scores 25 points and is two points ahead. In one Bossaball match, it’s best two out of three games, or sets. For more information, check out the official Bossaball site,,

Have any of you tried playing? : Bossaball, the World’s newest extreme sport