Sports and Games

Sports and games are activities that are well known for everybody of us. People started to do sports and play games many years ago, but the biggest boom was the last century. With coming of new technologies people got new possibilities and new ideas how to spend their spare time for pleasure, but not only for it. People do the sports because they want to keep fit, build their muscles and make their body look better. It is also very good (the best) kind of relaxation. It helps to keep our mental health in order. The majority of people do the sports as a hobby but some people do the sport as a job. There are six kinds of sports:

- Season sports: summer, winter, seasonal...
- Outdoors: baseball, golf, gliding, skiing...
- Indoors: table-tennis, gymnastic, chess
- Social: all teams games (football, volleyball)
- Single: chess, golf, athletics...
- Water, ball games...

Many sports have their origins in Britain that is why Britain is sometimes called the cradle of sports. Cricket is a real English game, it has never spread in foreign countries, because its rules are too complicated. It is intensively played only in the UK, Australia and some other Commonwealth countries; it is played on a cricket field of approximately size of two pitches, two teams of 11 members, they use cricket-bat and a small leather ball. Once a year a rowing race between two most famous universitas in England - Oxford and Cambridge, takes place which is held on the river Thames.Golf has its origins in Scotland. There are a lot of golf courses in our republic. But golf is sport only for rich people. The most popular game in Britain is football. In this collective game two teams of 11 members play all over the world. In USA this sport is called “soccer”. Tennis and squash are popular, too. Tennis is a sport which is originated in Britain, but at present this sport isn´t spread much. But most famous tennis tournament in the world is Wimbledon. Among the winners ranks also Martina Navrátilová, a famous Czechoslovak tennist. In the USA the most extended sports are baseball, rugby, american football, basketball and ice-hockey. Our republic lives by ice – hockey, footbal and volleyball. We´ve got an excellent athletic school, too. Our decathlonists are an elite in this sport. But sport is not only about winning and losing.
When you want to do some sport you firstly need to know the rules. If you don’t know it you may be sent off the game or you don’t achieve the best results (score) you could. You nearly always need some equipment for doing it. For instance when you play golf you have to have a lot of equipment – different kinds of sticks, balls, special trolley. For some sports you don’t need nearly anything, just your body (volleyball – only good shoes and kneecaps).

Volleyball

- is a team sport that you can play both outside and inside
- it is played on a volleyball court of size 9 by 18 metres, there is a net across the court, which is in a height of 2,43m
- you play with a white ball (now it also can be coloured)
- the team consists of six players (2 of them are smash-men, 2 of them make a blockade, 2 of them pass the ball to smash-men who should score)
- it is important to make the ball touch the rival’s side of the court – it make a point for you; it is played till one team reaches 25 points – it means that they win a set, when you win two sets you also win the match

Among the most famous sport events in the world ranks but Olympic games, of course. People represent their country in more than 30 sport events every four years summer and winter parts changes once every two years. The first Olympic Games took place in Olympia, Greece in the year 776 B.C., there exist many legends – the story of the marathon (in 490 a Greek runner ran about 42 km. from Marathon to Athens; he was bringing news of the Battle of Athens; but he ran too far, too fast; he died from exhaustion). Symbol of the Games is The Olympic Flag – there are five connected circles, each symbolises one continent (blue – Europe, black – Africa, red – America, yellow – Asia, green – Australia); and The Olympic Fire – it is traditionally lighted in Greek Olympia and moved to the city in which the Games are taking place, it burns during the Olympic games.
I think that nearly everybody follows them, enjoys the succes of their favourites, people celebrate, they realise that they are Czech – they are proud of this country, it can join people who don’t like each other together. The country becomes known all over the world. (the Winter Olympic Games in Nagano, Jan Železný – throwing the javelin, Jana Novotná, Petr Korda, Ivan Lendl)...

As a hobby sport could be very funny and what is very important, nearly everybody can do some sport activity. Sport keeps us healthy not only physicaly, but psychicaly, too. We can do sport with our friends, or meet a lot of new interesting people. Sport teaches us, how to improve our condition and some kinds of sports could us teach how to be more responsible and fair but you must be careful and don’t overestimate your power.
As a proffesion it is very hard work, you have to be very good at it if you want to be famous you can earn a lot of money and meet famous people. It could be very dangerous for your body. Some kinds of sports – athletics, are very dangerous for your muscles – you can stretch your muscles, painfully and your joins suffer much. There is a big danger of anabolic steroids (synthetic hormone) – if you take it, it destroys your body very much you have to be very careful of every kinds of injuries, because it could be the end of you carrier if you are a top sportsman, you have to keep the rules very strictly and your private life is under the control, too. So you must know the rules and respect them and must have a good equipment and a trainer.

In generall it isn’t important to win. It’s important to take part in. I don’t do sport to beat someone I do it because it’s fun, because I like it, to relax, forgot about everything. But it’s great to win. You know that you are good at it and that you are better than someone else and it gives you self-confidence. I often lose but I don’t mind it because I know that someone is better than me and I can learn from him. For someone it is very important to win so he uses steroids to insure himself. There was for example a big affair with Petr Korda .

I have a positive attitude to sport. But I think I am lazy and I have some other activities in my life. Additionally I had an accident and I have under two knee-operations. So I take sport as a relaxation in the form of hiking, trekking and camping. I have found out that I love hights, so we plan gone forward walking and cycling expeditions to the mountains with my friends. If I had a lot of money I would try bungee-jumping. But I´m afraid that my health condition won´t allow me do this “sport”. Unfortunatelly. Because, it must be exciting. Or I’ll try paraschooting, it must be great to fall down through the air. I also like swimming. I can swim for a long time but I am not very fast. I do cycling very often. I like cycling to far distances. I don’t know why but I hate football and floorball. They are the only two sports I really don’t like. It maybe because when I was younger everybody used to play football but I didn´t.