New Winter Olympic Sports

Next month we will be treated to the Olympics with four new events during this Winter Olympics: big air snowboarding and freestyle skiing on the slopes, and mass start speed skating and mixed doubles curling on the ice.

Top Ten Sports

These are the top ten sports in the world from the lowest to highest, according to number of fans. Seems it is not the age of the sport, but the sport itself that makes it popular.

• American Football, # of fans: 400 million (began 1800s)
  
• Basketball,  # of fans: 400 million (began late 1800s)
  
• Golf,  # of fans: 450 million (began 1400s)
  
• Baseball,  # of fans: 500 million (began late 1800s)
  
• Table Tennis,  # of fans: 850 million (began 1900s)
  
• Volleyball,  # of fans: 900 million (began late 1800s)
  
• Tennis,  # of fans: 1 billion (began in 1300s)
  
• Field Hockey,  # of fans: 2 billion (began 3rd century BC)
  
• Cricket,  # of fans: 2.5 billion (began 1600s)
  
• Soccer,  # of fans: 3.5 billion (began 200s BC)

Wordology, Sport

Speaking of sports, the word sport was formed as an abbreviated form of disport. It first appears in a Middle English romance called Ipomadon in about 1440, 150 years before Shakespeare.

Disport derives from Anglo Norman desporter "to carry away" or, metaphorically, "to divert, entertain", formed from des "apart" and porter "carry". The word originally referred to "amusement". It did not gain its modern use until the 19th century.

Running Healthy

Roger Bannister is the first man in history to run a mile in less than four minutes. On the magic day, May 6, 1954, Bannister almost scrapped the whole run. It was windy and he preferred to save his energy for another run when the wind wouldn’t ruin his time, but the winds died down and Roger consented to race. When the announcer took the mic to tell the excited stadium what the final time was, he purposely drew out the announcement as long as possible to tease the masses. When he finally said, “3. . .” the crowd went nuts and drowned out the rest of the result, which was 3:59.4.

He only held the record for six weeks. Aussie John Landy surpassed the sub-four-mile mark by just a sliver (3:57.9). On August 7 of the same year.

Bannister got his chance to win the title back when he and Landy faced off at the British Empire and Commonwealth Games. Although Landy led for the majority of the race, Bannister came up with his famous “Bannister Burst” in the last quarter of the race and sped past Landy to win. Landy ended up retaining the record anyway: they both came in at times slower than Landy’s previous 3:57.9. The current record of 3:43.13 was set by Hicham el Guerrouj of Morocco in 1999. Wow! 45 years and about 15 seconds faster.