Windsurfing was invented in the mid-sixties by two southern Californian surfers, Hoyle Schweitzer and Jim Drake. Surfers need strong rolling waves, and they hate days of calm sea. Schweitzer noticed that on days when waves were not high enough to surf, there was often a strong wind and he set about finding a way to use it. His first experiments involved standing on his surfboard holding out a piece of sail cloth in his hands. Gradually he and Drake refined this idea into a basic design for a sailboard, similar to a surfboard, but holding a mast and a triangular sail which could be tilted and turned in any direction. The windsurfer operates a boom which controls the amount of wind in the sail, for speed and change of direction. Schweitzer immediately went into business designing and making the new sailboards and taking the idea abroad. By mid-seventies, the sport had spread to Holland, Germany and France.
Nowadays, sport is an important thing in the people's life. Some people prefer to watch different sports events, others choose to take part in the sport games. Millions watch them on television.
The most popular sports are football, hockey, basketball, tennis, and motor racing. Many people enjoy watching these competitions. World Football, Hockey and Basketball Championships attract people from all over the world. It is wonderful that television is bringing all kinds of sports to our homes. Sometimes I go to the stadium to watch a game, but more often I stay at home and watch matches on TV.
In 1453 before Christ the first games were held in Olympia. Beginning with approximately 776 before Christ the games were organised every fourth year. These sports consisted of running, wrestling and other exercises. The favourite games of that time were horse-racing and jumping. The ancient winners received wreaths of palm leaves. The modern Olympic Games were revived in 1896. They take place every four years. They cannot take place in a country which is at war, and during the two world wars there were no Olympic Games. So except in 1916, 1940 and 1944, the Olympic Games have been held every leap year. Women's events were held beginning from 1912. Winter Olympic Games first took place in 1924.
I am going to tell you about the history of football, one the most popular sport games all over the World.
Football is a popular sport played all over the world. It is the national sport of most European and Latin-American countries and of many other nations. Millions of people in more than 140 countries play football. Football is played in the Olympics. Games similar to football were played in China as early as 400 ВС. Egyptians played a kind of football too. They played games involving the kicking of a ball. In about 200 AD the Romans played a game in which two teams tried to score by advancing a ball across a line on the field. The Romans passed the ball to one another but they never kicked it.
Table tennis was first Invented in England in about 1880. At first the game had several strange names: Gossima. Whiff Whaff and Ping Pong. It wasn't until 1926 that the International Table Tennis Association was formed with international championships and rules. Although the game was invented in England British players don't have much chance in international championships. It's the Chinese with their fantastic speed and power who win almost every title. Table tennis looks more like gymnastics when the Chinese start playing, with the ball flying over the net at speeds of over 150 kilometres per hour.
The English are great lovers of sport; and they are neither playing nor waching games, they like to talk about them. However, there is important thing about sport in Britain which we must know. Today, the big-time sport is professional and famous players can make much money.
Lat's take Football for example. It is the most popular team game in Britain. It is played in most of the schools, and there are thousands of amateur teams for young men in all parts of the country. But for most of the public football is a professional game which is watched on saturday afternoons at the stadium.
Professional football is a big business. Every large town has one or more professional clubs.
People all over the world are very fond of sports and games. That is one thing in which people of every nationality and class are united.
The most popular outdoor winter sports are shooting, hunting, hockey and in the countries where the weather is frosty and there is much snow-skating, skiing and tobogganing. Some people greatly enjoy figure-skating and ski-jumping.
Summer affords excellent opportunities for swimming, boating, yachting, cycling, gliding and many other sports. Among outdoor games football takes the first place in public interest. This game is played in all the countries of the world. The other favourite games in different countries are golf, tennis, cricket, volleyball, basketball and so on. Badminton is also very popular.
Sport is probably as old as the humanity itself. All over the world people of different ages are very fond of sports and games. Firstly, sport helps people to become strong and to develop physically. Secondly, it makes them more organized and better disciplined in their daily activities. Also sport keeps your mind healthy. Sport helps people to keep in good health. We all need to exercise. Regular exercises gives you more energy. Exercises make you feel and look better. The best exercises are: walking, jogging or swimming. Among the sports popular in our country are football, basketball, swimming, volley-ball, ice hockey, tennis, gymnastics, figure skating. A person can choose sports and games for any season, for any taste.
Sports play an important part in our life as our state of health depends on it. It’s popular among both children and grown-ups. The sport helps to bring up physically strong, courageous, strong-willed and energetic people.
People who are interested in sports can be roughly divided into two following groups: those who like doing sports and those who prefer watching sport events or competitions. The first group includes people who prefer to take part in competitions, do morning exercises regularly and train themselves in different clubs and sections. The second group is more numerous and consists of people who like just watching competitions and sports games, listening to sports news and interesting stories about sportsmen. They do not go in for sports.
Americans' interest in sports seems excessive to many foreign visitors. Television networks spend millions of dollars arranging to telecast sports events. Publications about sports sell widely. In the US professional athletes can become national heroes.
Sports are associated with educational institutions in a way is unique. High schools have coaches as faculty members, and school teams compete with each other. Nowhere else in the world are sports associated with colleges and universities in the way they are in the States. College sports, especially football, are conducted in an atmosphere of intense excitement and pageantry.
People all over the world are fond of sports and games. Sport makes people healthy, keeps them fit, more organized and better disciplined. It unites people of different classes and nationalities.
Many people do sports on their personal initiative. They go in for skiing, skating, table tennis, swimming, volleyball, football, bodybuilding, etc. All necessary facilities are provided for them: stadiums, sport grounds, swimming pools, skating rinks, skiing stations, football fields. Sport is paid much attention to in our educational establishments. Gymnastics is a part of children's daily activity in the kindergartens. Physical culture is a compulsory subject at schools and colleges.
If you want to keep fit you must go in for one kind of sport or another.
Sport is an essential part of my daily life. Every morning all the year round I do my morning exercises. Almost every day I do some training. In summer I go swimming or rowing. During my summer holidays I go on hikes. I usually spend my winter holidays in the country where I ski, skate or toboggan.
I also go in for track-and-field (athletics) events. Different sports and games are popular with my classmates. All my friends go in for different kinds of sport, such as water polo, gymnastics, horse-racing, wrestling, fencing, weightlifting, boxing, ice-hockey, speed-skating, figure-skating, football, basket-ball, volley-ball, etc.
A lot of Australians think you shouldn't worry too much about life.
But some things in life are really important, and to many Australian men, one of these things is sport. It's something they don't joke about. Sport matters. In pubs, clubs and even at work you'll often find men who can talk about only one thing — sport.
Australians are lucky. They have a perfect climate, and an endless amount of land. They have wonderful waves f 01 surfers on their beaches. They also have a strong wish to win. Put these together and you get a lot of good sportsmen and women. In fact, Australia has a very high number of world champions, in all kinds of sports, for a country of only 16 million people.
There are many public houses in London and elsewhere, where beer, wine and spirits may be bought and drunk at certain times of the day. These are suitable for all classes of the community and provide a place, where people may meet together and talk, and perhaps play at darts or other games, as well as drink.
In the bar of every English "pub" there is a dartboard, and on most evenings the game of darts is being played. This is a traditional English game. The first record of something like the modern game appears in a sixteenth century. In this tournament people threw missiles in a target by hand, instead of using a bow.
Snowboarding is the fastest growing winter sport and is set to become even more popular than skiing. It is hard to say who actually "invented" the first snowboard because it was influenced by many different people including Sherman Poppen, Demetrije Milovich, Tom Sims and Jake Burton Carpenter. Snowboarding's roots, however, may be traced back to the early 1920's. Then children in Vermont built what would now be considered makeshift snowboards out of barrel staves and rode them sideways down a snowy hill.
Later, there were some people, who built snowboard like sleds. One of them was M.J. "Jack" Burchett. He cut out a plank of plywood in 1929 and tried to secure his feet with some clothesline and horse reins. Burchett came up with on of the first "snowboards". Another snowboard inventor is Sherman Poppen. In 1965 Poppen, a chemical gases engineer in Muskegon, Michigan, invented "The Snurfer" (a mix between the two words „snow" and „surfer") as a toy for his daughter. He made the Snurfer by strapping two skis together and attaching a rope to the front tip of the snurfer, so the rider could hold it and keep it more stable. Many of his daughters friends wanted one of those new Snurfers, and soon Poppen lincensed his new idea to a manufacturer.
The topic presented to you today is devoted to the Olympic Games. In my speech I am to dwell upon the following points:
- Firstly, I am to tell you about the history of the Olympics;
- Secondly, I would like to speak about modern Olympic games;
- After that, I would like to attract your attention to the problems of modern Olympics;
- Finally, I am to draw a conclusion expressing my opinion.
- Firstly, I am to tell you about the history of the Olympics;
- Secondly, I would like to speak about modern Olympic games;
- After that, I would like to attract your attention to the problems of modern Olympics;
- Finally, I am to draw a conclusion expressing my opinion.
By way of introduction I would like to say that The Olympic Games are one of the most spectacular reminders of the debt we owe to the Greeks. The original Olympic Games were held every four years in honour of Zeus, the supreme god of Greek religion. The first record of the games dates from 776 B.C., but it is certain that they existed prior to that. The Olympic festival was a great unifying bond between the Independent city-states of Greece. The important sports in the original Olympic Games were running, jumping, wrestling, throwing the discus and throwing the javelin.
Speed, excitement, danger. You can find all these in the different extreme sports that have become popular in last 10 years. Take bungee jumping. You jump off a bridge and you fall and fall, and then, just before you hit the ground or water, an elastic rope pulls you back. In skysurfing you jump out of aeroplane and use a board to "surf" the air, doing gymnastics in mid-air!
Winter sports have always an element of danger. For example snowboarding, which has all the excitement of surfing but on snow, is more dangerous even than skiing.
Probably the most dangerous of all the new winter sports is snowrafting. You sit in a rubber boat and sail down a mountain at great speed – and you can't control the boat!
Of course, water sports have always been fun. Ice diving, for those people who are absolutely crazy. You put on diving equipment and dive under a frozen lake. And, if that's not enough, you try to walk upside down on the ice!
We often hear a saying "Don’t invent a bicycle" about something simple and known fora long time. Really, the bicycle is old enough - more than a hundred years of age. Its first prototype appeared in 1791 in France. In 1800 a Russian peasant Artamonov made an iron bicycle and travelled on it from Nizhni Tagil to Moscow.
First bicycles looked odd: a large (about 1.5 m high) front wheel with a cranked axle. The back wheel was usually smaller. Bicycles were made of iron and riding them was not comfortable because of shaking. They were even called "boneshakers". In 1868 rubber tyres were invented, first solid, then pneumatic. New types of bicycles appeared every year but only in 1885 people saw a model which looked like modern cycles. It had two almost equal wheels and a chain drive to the rear wheel. The frame of the cycle was diamond-shaped. This shape survived and became basic. The new machine looked more elegant than the old "spiders" which were soon abandoned. As time went by, new bicycles were invented – for two, three and even fifteen riders!
My name’s (своє ім'я) . I like doing many things but one thing that I really like doing is playing chess.
Chess is an indoor and competitive game played between two players. It is being played in tournaments, online or at home. The origin of chess is traced to India of the 6th century during the Gupta Empire. The military had four divisions known as "infantry", "cavalry", "elephant" and "chariot". These names are represented in the chess game as: pawn, knight, bishop and the rook respectively. In the 9th century, the game was introduced to Western Europe .
We know a lot about physical training and sports. They are part of our everyday life. Sports help people to stay in good shape. Many boys and girls are interested in sports. They take part in sports activities, they visit either a sports club or a sports school. From time to time competitions are held and we hear about new champions. But what is the aim of such competitions? Is it to find out those who can produce the best results? Yes, that is one of the aims. But the main thing is to help young people to be healthy and strong. All people can go in for sports, but not all of them can become champions. It’s a very difficult thing to win a victory in an athletics competition. An athlete must train a great deal and know many things about his or her kind of sport.
