Sport plays a very important role in our life. It helps people to keep fit, to be healthy and strong. Children and their parents should go in for sport and do physical exercises regularly to be

Sport plays a very important role in our life. It helps people to keep fit, to be healthy and strong. Children and their parents should go in for sport and do physical exercises regularly to be active and cheerful.

There are summer and winter kinds of sport. Football and volleyball, rowing and swimming, sailing and running, jumping and horse-riding are popular in summer. People are fond of skiing and skating, hockey and mountain skiing in winter. Basketball, gymnastics, boxing, wrestling, fencing and table-tennis are good all the year round.

There are a lot of people in the world that are fond of sports events. Some of them participate in different competitions and some of them are spectators. They attend as many sports events as possible and consider themselves real fans.

In my opinion the most popular international sporting events attended by thousands of spectators are world championships, Winter and Summer Olympic Games.

The Olympic Games are an international sports festival that began in ancient Greeсе more than two thousand years ago. The earliest record of the Olympic Games goes back to 776 ВС. The famous Games at Olympia took place every four years and all the cities in Greece sent their best athletes to take part in them. The ancient Games were held in honour of Zeus, the most important god for ancient Greeks. According to the earliest records, only one athletic event was held in the ancient Olympics — a footrace of about 183 metres. A cook, Coroibus of Elis, was the first recorded winnеr. Only men were allowed to compete or watch the games. When the powerful, warlike Spartans began to compete, they changed the programme of the Games. The l8th Olympics already included wrestling and pentathlon, and later Games — chariot races and other sports. The competitions lasted five days. The winners of the Games were highly praised and honoured for their results. The winners in each kind of sport or art got an olive wreath which was the highest honour. When the champions came back home, the people greeted them with flowers. The Greeks often put statues of their champions in the city squares, because they brought glory to their native city. It became a tradition even to stop wars for the time of the Olympic Games, and the people lived in peace.

The Olympic Games were brought to an end in the early Christian era. In 394 AD the Games were officially ended by the Roman emperor Theodosius, who felt that they had pagan meaning. The Olympic Games were renewed in 1896, and since then they have been staged every fourth year, except during World War I and World War II.

Pierre de Coubertin, a young French nobleman, had an idea to bring the Olympic Games back to life. With the help of the people who supported him he managed to organize the first modern Olympic Games in 1896.

The Athens Games in 1896 were a success. Athletes from thirteen countries competed in nine sports. A Second Olympiad was held in France in 1900.

Perhaps the main difference between the ancient and modern Olympics is that for the ancient Greeks the Games were a way of saluting their gods, when the modern Games are a manner of saluting the athletic talents of people of all nations. The original Olympics included competitions in music, oratory, and theatre performances as well. The modern Games haven't got them, but they represent a lot more sports than before. For two weeks and a half any international conflicts must be stopped and replaced with friendly competitions. This is the noble idea on which the modern Olympic movement isbased. “We will take part in the Olympic Games in fair competition for the honour of our country and for the glory of sport,” says the Olympic Oath.

Beginning in 1926 Winter Olympics were included. They were held in the same year as the Summer Games, but starting in 1994, the Winter Games are held two years after the Summer Games.

The Olympics are governed by the International Olympic Committee (IOC), situated in Lausanne, Switzerland. It decides where each Olympics will take place. They ask a city (not a country) to be the host: one city for the Winter Olympics and one for the Summer Olympics. Nearly 150 countries are members of the International Olympic Committee.

There is a lot of work in preparing for the Olympics. The host city should have very good sports stadiums and an Olympic village for the sportsmen to live during the games. Host cities often build new sports stadiums, hotels and other buildings.

In 1952 the Soviet Union sent athletes to the Olympic Games in Helsinki, Finland, for the first time. Since then the Russian young men and women have always shown very good results and have won lots of gold and silver medals at the Olympic Games.

The capitals of many countries have been Olympic cities: Athens, Paris, London, Berlin, Helsinki, Rome, Tokyo, Mexico, and some others.

In the summer of 1980 Moscow became the 17th city in modern times to host the Olympic Games. The most famous athletes of different countries carried the Olympic Flame from Greece to Moscow. All the Soviet people were proud of their capital; Moscow made the 22nd Olympic Games a bright, beautiful and exciting festival of sport.

The 26^th Summer Olympic Games were held in Atlanta, the USA, in 1996. It is the capital of State Georgia. They lasted 17 days from the 20^th of July till the 5^th of August. 197 countries participated in these exciting events and Russia, the U.K., the USA, Germany, Spain, France were among them. Athletes from all four continents arrived in the USA to take part in different competitions, races, matches, tournaments. Their motto was “The main thing is not winning but participating”. Everybody felt the atmosphere of friendship and warmth. A lot of world records were broken, a lot of new world records were set in different kinds of sport: in wrestling and in shooting, in swimming and in boxing, in cycling and in running, in gymnastics and in track-and-field athletics. 79 countries got gold, silver and bronze medals, 51 countries achieved the best results and their athletes were awarded the highest prize. The spectators attended all the events. They encouraged the sportsmen with enthusiastic shouts and tried to cheer them. The fans admired their favourite athletes and showed a particular interest in the competitions. The whole world was surprised to learn that the athletes of the USA got 101 medals during the Olympic Games. Their countrymen were full of admiration and pride. The USA took the first place winning 44 gold, 32 silver and 25 bronze medals. Russia also sent our best athletes to the Olympic Games. They also achieved wonderful results. They had trained a lot to show their strength, skill, and energy. Russia took the second place and received 63 medals; among them there were 26 gold, 21 silver and 16 bronze medals. It’s a brilliant result. We are proud of all our champions. We remember the names of Beketov (fencing), Kirienko (sabre), Klochneva and Kokarev (shooting), Popov and Pankratov (swimming), Saidov (boxing), Karelin (wrestling), Khorkina (gymnastics), Zabirova (cycling) and many others. They brought glory to our Motherland. A lot of fans in Russia watched the Olympic Games on TV. They followed all the events with great interest.

The Olympic Games are always a great festival of sport, youth and beauty.

The last Olympic Games were held in Athens, Greece, in 2004. I watched all the competitions on TV and was a bit envious of those people who could afford to go there and feel the atmosphere of the Games.

As you see sport is very popular in Russia. More than 30 million people go to sport centres. A lot of different sports are popular in Russia. One of them is football. According to official figures, near­ly 5 million people go in for it. Almost each town has its own football team.

I don’t imagine my life without sport, because it makes my life more interesting. I like to watch competitions on TV and to go in for sport. It is not easy to become a good sportsman. You should be good at running, jumping, swimming and playing sport games. Regular training, keeping to a diet and a lot of exercises are very important for sportsmen. You should follow all the coach’s advice if you want to receive good and excellent results at the

competitions.

My favourite sport is football.

Football has been called the most popular game in the world, and it certainly has many fans in Britain because football was first developed in England. Nowadays it is spread all over the country. There are many football clubs in Britain. The national teams of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland compete with each other every year. The two best teams play in the Cup Final at Wembley Stadium in London. They also take part in many international matches.

Association football (or soccer) is the game that is played in nearly all countries. A team is composed of 11 players: a goalkeeper, two backs, three half-backs and five forwards. Only the goalkeeper is permitted to take the ball into his hands. There is another game called rugby football, so called because it origi­nated at Rugby, a well-known English public school. In this game the players may carry the ball. There is also an Ameri can kind of football, different from the other two. The cap­tain of the team is usually the oldest or best player.

Association football, or soccer, remains one of the most popular games played in the British Isles. Every Saturday from late August until the beginning of May, large crowds of people support their sides in football grounds up and down the coun­try, while an almost equally large number of people play the game in club teams of every imaginable variety and level of skill. Over the last 20 years though, the attendance at football matches has fallen away sharply. This is because of changing lifestyles and football hooligans. As violence at and near the football grounds increased, there was an increasing tendency for people to stay away, leaving the grounds to football fans.

After serious disturbances involving English supporters at the European Cup Finals in Brussels in 1985 which led to the death of 38 spectators, English clubs were withdrawn from European competitions for the 1985—1986 season by the Football Association.

But the Cup Final at Wembley remains an event of national importance. Here is a drawing of a football field, or 'pitch', as it is usually called.

The football pitch should be between 100 and 130 metres long and between 50 and 100 metres wide. It is divided into two halves by the halfway line. The sides of the field are called the touch-lines and the ends are called the goal-lines. In the middle of the field there is a centre circle and there is a goal at each end. Each goal is 8 metres wide and between 2 ^1/2 and 3 metres high. In front of each goal is the goal area and the penalty area. A game of football usu­ally lasts for one and a half hours. At half-time, which lasts 15 minutes, the teams change ends. The referee controls the game. The aim of each team is to score as many goals as possible. If both teams score the same number of goals, or if nei­ther team scores any goals at all, the result is a draw.

Some of the best known clubs in England are Manchester United, Liverpool and the Arsenal. In Scotland Rangers, Celtic or Aberdeen usually wins the cup or the championship.

The world most famous clubs are …

Unfortunately the Russian teams are far from being the best in the world. In spite of this fact many Russians are fond of football, and Brazilian, Italian and French players become the examples that young people try to follow.

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