|
RELATED LINKS:
Visitors to this link will find articles of interest regarding
sports figures, teams and little known facts.
PAGE CONTENTS: Sports Pot Pourri
Bowling
Ice Hockey
Tennis
Table Tennis
Tour de France
Volleyball
Chess
Sports Pot Pourri
Eddie Arcaro, one of the greatest jockeys in horse race history, rode 250
losers before he won his first race. Ultimately, Arcaro won 4,779 races -- including five Derby winners, six in the Preakness,
and six in the Belmont Stakes, on such famous horses as Whirlaway, Citation, and Kelso. Roger Bannister was the first man to break the 4-minute mile;
however, he did not break the four-minute mile in an actual race. On May 6, 1954, he ran 3:59.4 while being carefully paced
by other runners. Bannister's quarter-mile splits were 57.5 seconds, 60.7, 62.3, and 58.9. Twenty-three days after Bannister
had run the most famous mile of all time, his fellow Briton, Diane Leather, became the first woman to break five minutes with
a 4:59.6 seconds, in Birmingham, England, on May 29, 1954. In the forty-plus years since the two British runners broke these
significant marks, women's times have improved by a far higher percentage than men's. Barbara Jo Rubin became the first female jockey to win a horse
race on February 22, 1969. She rode Cohesian to victory at CharlestownRacetrack in West Virginia. The name of the game "cricket" is believed to have
been derived inthe late 1500s from the Middle French word criquet, meaning a"goalpost." Badminton was once known as battledore and shuttlecock. The game
as we know it today took its name from Badminton House in Gloucestershire,England - home of the Duke of Beaufort. Tonya Harding was the first American ice skater
to successfully land a triple axel in competition. A Harlem-born, African American bicycle messenger went on to win a silver medal in cycling at the 1984 Olympics.
His name was Nelson "The Cheetah" Vails.
Sports historians have traced roller
skating to the early 1800s whenan unknown Dutchman sought to find a warm-weather equivalent to iceskating. He decided to attach
wooden disks to shoes; after a shortperiod of refinement, roller skating became a popular pastime in Holland. The sport attained
even greater popularity among the NorthAmerican public with the introduction of the steel wheel with ballbearings.The first female athlete to appear in a Wheaties "Breakfast
of Champions" television commercial was Mary Lou Retton, shortly after her gold medal win at the 1984 summer Olympics. Volleyball was invented in a Holyoke, Massachusetts YMCA in 1895. Its inventor was William
George Morgan. The game was first called "mintonette" and was played by hitting a basketball over a rope. On May 17, 1875,
Aristides was the winner of the first Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs in Louisville, Ky.
Athletic supporters were introduced in 1874 to help bicycle riders as they pedaled
over cobblestone roads. The term "jock strap" comes from these early "bicycle jockeys?"
(Source: ILoveBacon.com) Some form of bowling is played in
more than 90 countries around the world. Approximately 100 million people participate in bowling today. WHAT WAS THE FIRST PUBLICLY TELEVISED SPORTING EVENT?
It was
a Japanese baseball game, broadcast on September 27, 1931. The Ushigome and Awazi Schuciku Higher Elementary Schools battled
it out on the Tozuka Baseball Ground, watched by viewers on 8-by-5-inch screens.
Which sort of football discourages kicking the ball?
According to
the rules of Gaelic football, players may punch the ball, but the punching motion must be clearly visible to the referee.
Players may not pick up the ball off the ground unless they first get their toe under the ball.
Which sport was the first filmed?
Boxing was the first
sport to be filmed. Thomas A. Edison filmed a boxing match between Jack Cushing and Mike Leonard in 1894.
Who coined the slogan, "You can't tell the players without
a scorecard"?
Baseball's first professional concessionaire, Harry M. Stevens, who used it when he started
hawking ballpark programs in Columbus, Ohio, in the 1880s.
WHAT
SPORTS PERSONALITY SAID, “THE OPERA AIN'T OVER 'TIL THE FAT LADY SINGS”?
It was not Yogi
Berra. Former Washington Bullets coach Dick Motta popularized the saying during the 1978 NBA playoffs, but it was Dan Cook,
a television sports announcer and writer for the San Antonio Express-News, who invented it.
WHEN WAS THE FIRST INDIANAPOLIS 500?
The 500-mile
race was first held on May 30, 1911, when Ray Harroun won in 6 hours, 42 minutes, 8 seconds. His average speed was 74.59 miles
per hour.
Which sport claims
the most injuries?
The sport with the largest expenses (medical, legal, and others) due to injuries treated
in U.S. emergency rooms in 1995 was bicycling, with costs exceeding $4 billion. More than half a million bicycling injuries
were documented. A huge percentage of those injuries were head injuries, which could have been prevented had riders worn protective
helmets.
Who developed table
tennis?
Table tennis was originally played with balls made from champagne corks and paddles made from cigar-box
lids. It was created in the 1880s by James Gibb, a British engineer who wanted an invigorating game he could play indoors
when it was raining. Named "Gossima," the game was first marketed with celluloid balls, which replaced Gibb's
corks. After the equipment manufacturer renamed the game "Ping-Pong" in 1901, it became a hot seller.
Bowling
Objects used for a game similar to bowling,
which date from 5200 BC, were found in the tomb of a young Egyptian boy. In the third and fourth centuries, bowling
in Europe was a religious ceremony, participants tried to hit the pin, or kegel (hence the word kegling for bowling) in order
to be judged free of sin.
Dutch colonists brought bowling to America in the 17th century. The game consisted of
9 pins set in a triangle. It was regularly played in an area of New York City still known as "Bowling Green".
The Women's International Bowling Congress (WIBC) was founded in 1916 and has grown to 3.5 million members. The
Professional Bowlers association was organized in 1958 to promote exhibition and arrange major tournaments. Interest in bowling,
particularly in the United Slates, had its major spurt after World War II.
The
American Bowling Congress (ABC), founded in 1895, is the governing body for tenpins. The ABC standardized rules and the scoring
method, and it also organized the fast U.S. national bowling tournament, in 1901. Each year the ABC sponsors nationals in
singles, doubles and five-man team competition for its members, whose numbers exceeds 5 million.
The introduction
of the first automatic pinsetter in Brooklyn, N.Y. in 1952 was responsible for much of the increase in bowling popularity.
Previously, pins were set by young boys, and Bowling Alleys, as the establishments were called, often had poor reputations.
The Italian version of bowling, Bocce, which is still played today, is somewhat similar to "Lawn Bowling",
an English game originating over 800 years ago.
Copyright 2008 by NextEra Media. All
rights reserved. Feel free to forward this, in its entirety, to others.
 Ice Hockey
Bobby Orr of the Boston Bruins won the James
Norris Memorial Trophy eight times, more than any hockey player in history. The
Zamboni Machine
As it
moves across the ice it scrapes the loose shavings of ice off and lays down a layer of hot water, the water must be hot to
melt the upper surface and weld a smooth sheet. It takes minutes to freeze.
The Hockey Rink
The name hockey--as the organized game came to be known--has been attributed to the French word "hoquet" (shepherd's
stick). The term rink, referring to the designated area of play, was originally used in the game of curling in 18th-century
Scotland.
The Original Six
The survivors of a league that had grown at times to as many
as 10 franchises, and had seen teams change names and cities with regularity in the 1920's and 30's, would settle
in an era of stability, known as the age of the "Original Six." The Red Wings, the Blackhawks, the Rangers, the
Canadiens, the Bruins, and the Leafs; these few teams would symbolize hockey for fans across North America.
WHAT MAKES UP AN OFFICIAL HOCKEY PUCK?
According to the National Hockey League’s official
rulebook, an approved hockey puck must be made of vulcanized rubber or other approved material, measure 1 inch thick and 3
inches in diameter, and must weigh between 5½ and 6 ounces.
The Hockey Hall of Fame was opened in 1961 to honor hockey greats.
Traveling Cup On March 22, 1894, the first Stanley Cup championship
game was played. The Montreal Amateur Athletic Association (which won the cup unchallenged the previous year) triumphed over
the Ottawa Capitals.
The Stanley Cup is the only professional sports trophy that each player on the winning team gets to take home.
The Cup weighs 36 pounds
and stands 35 1/4 inches high.
In 1980, New York Islander Clark Gillies fed his dog from it. Gillies's teammate
Bryan Trottier slept with it.
In 1991, the cup turned up at the bottom of Mario Lemieux's swimming pool. The Stanley behind the Stanley Cup was Lord Stanley of Preston.
**************
In 1994, members
of the New York Rangers took the cup on The Late Show with David Letterman. There it was used in a sketch called "Stupid
Cup Tricks."
The longest
game in NHL history was between the Montreal Maroons and the Detroit Red Wings in 1936. They played 116 minutes, 30 seconds
of overtime before Detroit broke the scoreless tie to end it. Almost three complete games of hockey were played that night.
The longest modern era (post-World War II) game was in the 2000 playoffs, when the Philadelphia Flyers needed 92 minutes of
overtime to beat the Pittsburgh Penguins. It was the third longest game of all time.
The first testicular guard
"Cup" was used in Hockey in 1874 and the first helmet was used in 1974. It took 100 years for men
to realize that the brain is also important.
In hockey, a "deke" is a quick fake by a puck carrier intended to trick an opponent out of position.
Tennis
Arthur Ashe
In 1931, Lili de Alvarez was the first woman to wear shorts at
Wimbledon. According to the U.S. Lawn Tennis Association, a tennis ball is supposed
to bounce between 53 and 58 inches when it is dropped on concrete from a height of 100 inches. The concrete surface should
be 4 inches thick. In 1900, the solid silver trophy known today as
the Davis Cup was first put up for competition when American collegian Dwight Filley Davis challenged British tennis players
to come across the Atlantic and compete against his Harvard team.
Why is tennis scored so oddly?
For those not in the
know, tennis is scored 15, 30, 40 rather than the more traditional 1 point, 2 points, 3 points of other sports. This is because
in its early days as an indoor sport, a tennis game's score was kept by moving the hands of a clock to 15, 30 and 45.
Later, for reasons now rather obscure, the 45 became 40. WHY IS A ZERO SCORE IN TENNIS CALLED "LOVE"?
When tennis first became popular in
France, a round zero on the tennis scoreboard looked something like an egg and was therefore CALLED an egg. The word for egg
in French is "l'oeuf". When transferred to America, "l'oeuf" was pronounced "love".
Why do tennis
balls feel fuzzy?
Tennis balls aren't completely bald for two reasons. The fuzz is there, for one thing,
to slow it down. You might find that hard to believe had you ever had to receive a cannonball serve from John McEnroe, but
there you are. It facilitates rallies by increasing wind resistance and preventing the ball from leaving the stadium on one
bounce. The fuzz also increases racket control by holding the ball against the strings for just a fraction of
a second longer than would happen with a smooth ball.
Source: JUST CURIOUS JEEVES by Jack Mingo and Erin Barrett
Catgut
Is the "catgut" used in some tennis rackets and stringed instruments actually...?
These days tennis rackets
tend to be strung with steel or nylon, but some are still made from sheepgut, which is known for its strength. And when you
strum a guitar, don't be surprised if you think you hear a bleat among the twangs. Sheepgut is still a mainstay
in string instruments. It also shows up in surgical sutures and--don't faint--sausage casings. So why do they call
it catgut? Fewer letters? Because sadism toward pussycats is politically correct? In truth, we don't know.
(Source: HOW DO THEY DO THAT? by Caroline Sutton)
Table Tennis
Table tennis was
originally played with balls made from champagne corks and paddles made from cigar-box lids. It was created in the 1880s by
James Gibb, a British engineer who wanted an invigorating game he could play indoors when it was raining. Named "Gossima,"
the game was first marketed with celluloid balls, which replaced Gibb's corks. After the equipment manufacturer renamed
the game "Ping-Pong" in 1901, it became a hot seller
Copyright © 2009 ArcaMax Publishing,
Inc., and its licensors. All rights reserved.
 The Tour de France Le Tour de France (Tour of France), often referred to as La Grande Boucle, Le Tour
or The Tour, is the most famous and prestigious road bicycle race in the world. With the exception of interruptions for World
War I and World War II, it has been held annually since 1903. It is a long-distance stage race competition for professional
cycling teams, travelling through France and its nearby countries over the course of three weeks each July. The winner is
the individual rider who finishes the course of the race in the least accumulated time.
The Tour was
founded as a publicity event for the newspaper L'Auto by its editor Henri Desgrange, to rival the Paris-Brest et retour
ride (sponsored by Le Petit Journal), and Bordeaux-Paris. The idea for a round-France stage race is also credited to one of
his journalists, Georges Lefevre, with whom Desgrange had lunch at the Cafe de Madrid in Paris on 20 November 1902. L'Auto
announced the race on January 19, 1903. Promotion of the Tour de France certainly proved a great success for the newspaper;
circulation leapt from 25,000 before the 1903 Tour to 65,000 after it; in 1908 the race boosted circulation past a quarter
of a million, and during the 1923 Tour it was selling 500,000 copies a day.
The Tour is a "stage race", divided
into a number of stages, each being a race held over one day. The time it takes each rider to complete each stage is noted,
recorded, and accumulated. Riders who finish in the same group are awarded the same time, with possible subtractions due to
time bonuses. Two riders are said to have finished in the same group if the gap between them is less than one bike-length.
A crash within the final 3 kilometres of a normal stage means that all riders in the same group entering the final 3 kilometres
are given the same time. The ranking of the riders according to accumulated time is known as the General Classification, or
GC. The overall winner is the one who is ranked first on GC at the end of the final stage. It is possible to win the overall
race without winning any individual stages (which Greg LeMond did in 1990).
The maillot jaune (yellow jersey), which is worn
by the overall time leader, is the most prized. It is awarded by calculating the total combined race time up to that point
for each rider. The maillot vert (green jersey) is awarded for sprint points. At the end of each stage, points for this jersey
are earned by the riders who finish first, second, etc. The "King of the Mountains" wears a white jersey with red
dots (maillot a pois rouges), referred to as the "polka dot jersey". At the top of each climb in the Tour, there
are points for the riders who are first over the top. The maillot blanc (white jersey) is like the yellow jersey, but only
open for young riders who are under 25 years old on January 1 of the year the Tour is ridden. Finally, the "fighting
spirit" award goes to the most combative rider of the previous stage. Each day, a group of judges awards points to riders
who made particularly attacking moves the day before, and the rider with most points in total gets a white-on-red (instead
of a black-on-white) identification number.
One rider has won the Tour a record seven times: Lance Armstrong (USA) in 1999,
2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, and 2005 (seven consecutive years). Four other riders have won the Tour five times: Jacques
Anquetil (France) in 1957, 1961, 1962, 1963 and 1964; Eddy Merckx (Belgium) in 1969, 1970, 1971, 1972 and 1974; Bernard Hinault
(France) in 1978, 1979, 1981, 1982 and 1985; and Miguel Indurain (Spain) in 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994 and 1995 (the first to
do so in five consecutive years). Other than Armstrong's winning the Tour six times on his way to a seventh win, no one
else has won the Tour more than five times.
Copyright © 2006 ArcaMax Publishing, Inc. and its licensors.
Volleyball
In 1895, William Morgan invented the game of volleyball by combining elements of tennis, baseball, basketball
and handball. He raised a tennis net to 6 feet, 6inches above the ground and wrote rules for the game, which required
a team to ground the ball on their opposing tem's side of the net in no more than three tries. Originally, 21 points
won the game, but today 15 points wins.
Volleyball is an Olympic sport, both in team and 2-man play. The U.S.
mens' team won their first gold medal in volleyball at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, while the U.S. womens'
team took home a silver medal.
Volleyball was invented by an American, and yet it was more popular elsewhere
in the world for decades, before becoming popular in the United States. For many years, only soccer was more popular
around the world.
* Excerpted from the book "American Firsts (Innovations, Discoveries,
and Gadgets Born in the U.S.A.)", by Stephen J. Spignesi, ©2004 by Stephen J. Spignesi. Used without permission,
but with the best of intentions.
More on volleyball:
The
game of volleyball, originally called "mintonette", was invented in 1895 by William G. Morgan, after the invention
of basketball by only 4 years. Morgan, a graduate of the Springfield College of the YMCA,
designed the game to be a combination of basketball, baseball, tennis and handball.
The first volleyball net, borrowed
from tennis, was only 6'6" high.
The offensive style of setting and spiking was first demonstrated
in the Philippines in 1916. Over the years that followed, it became clear that standard rules were needed for tournament play,
and thus the USVBA (United States Volleyball Association) was formed in 1928. In 1930, the first 2-man beach volleyball game was played, though the professional
side of the sport did not emerge until much later.
The first beach volleyball association
appeared in California (1965), and the professional players united under the auspices of the AVP (American Volleyball Professionals)
in 1983.
In 1984, the US won their first medals at the Olympics in Los Angeles. The
men won the Gold, and the women the Silver.
Copyright 2009 by NextEra Media. All rights reserved. Feel free
to forward this, in its entirety, to others.
Chess
Can someone please
enlighten me as to why Chess is considered a "Sport" and not just another board game? In my opinion, a sport
is a game where one has be in reasonable physical shape. Of course, golf and bowling are also considered sports, and
we can see the great physical shape of many of the participants....oh, well. I concede that in chess, one needs a great
deal of mental acuity and fitness, but physical? I don't believe that most chess players spend much time
in the gym, working out. But, in deference to those who consider chess a sport, I am including it on my "Sports"
page.
Chess is called the game of kings, because
for many centuries it was played primarily by nobility and the upper classes.
The names of the pieces-- the queen,
king, knight, rook and bishop came about during the Middle Ages, when society was extremely
oriented towards war and rigidly stratified. During the Renaissance period, society became more dynamic and rules were
added to enable rapid attack techniques. These include making the queen more powerful, and permitting pawns to move
two squares on the first move.
The rook is named
from an Arabic word rukh, meaning chariot. This reflects its ability to move quickly in straight lines, but not leap
over obstacles. During the Middle Ages, when chariots were no longer in use, the rook was gradually modified to look more
like the turret of a castle.
The folding chess
board was originally invented in 1125 by a chess-playing priest. Since the Church forbid priests to play chess, he hid his
chess board by making one that looked simply like two books lying together.
The
Isle of Lewis chess pieces are the oldest surviving complete chess set known. Discovered on they Isle of Lewis, they are made
from walrus tusks and show their characters in a range of bad moods - from anger to depression.
Lewis Carrol’s
novel “Through the Looking Glass” was based on a chess
game, much the way "Alice in Wonderland” was based on playing
cards. The idea for picturing the countryside as a chess board came from Lewis Carrol’s days in Oxmoor, where his apartment
overlooked a cultivated moor, separated into neat, rectangular farmer’s fields. Copyright
2009 by NextEra Media. All rights reserved. Please feel free to forward this, in its entirety, to others.
|
