The choice of the sports offered in this World sports book has been done according to two criteria.
On one hand, sports with World Championships or Olympic sports;
On the other hand, the presence of worldwide sports, impossible to be forgotten in a reference book, like golf or rollers, even though they have no direct World Championship.
The texts have been written according to the official rules of national or international sports federations.
Sports are presented in alphabetical order.
One of the main purposes of this work is to offer a general knowledge of the main sports practiced in the whole world. Anyone should find interest in it: sports fans, televiewers, students, teachers or members of the family of a player, sport quiz fans...
The chosen display for each sport is on a double page, to give to each discipline an equivalent respect, to make it easy to read in order to enable a comparative research, if necessary, as each informative unit will be found in the same area of the text.
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Sports list
Alphabetical order sports list
Download the sports list.
Download the last update.
Références
PRESS
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ABCD Sports : The principle
Each sport is shown under 7 sections: a title, a definition, the origin, the game unit (game, race, competition...), the venue, the equipment and the unfolding of the main rules.
Definition
In one phrase describes the main actions of the game.
ORIGIN
When each sport was created and by who.
Which year the World Championships started.
Which first year it was declared as an Olympic Sport, if any.
The game
Between
Who is going to play?
The players, their numbers as well as the substitutes and the way they are introduced in the game.
Includes
The game’s unit composition.
The different phases of the competition and its number of periods.
Length
How long is each period, phase, or competition.
The winner
The winner can be nominated by adding the results of several phases of the competition (ju jitsu), some others by the winning of the last phase (judo)...
Directed by
The officials: who and how many are they?
Venue
You can see the setting up and the game’s tools given by the organizers of the competition.
Equipment
Description of the participants’ outfits.
Unfolding of the playing unit
The main rules of the sport are described.
Choices have been done and we have preferred the understanding of the unfolding of the sport described to the strict repetition of the rules. Therefore, too specific details for the general public might be missing!
By the way, some rules sometimes change, and, in this respect, a downloadable update of new rules is available on our website. But anyway, the game spirit rarely change enough for the general use of this text to be out of interest.
3 examples ...
CURLING
«Sliding more stones than the opponent toward the center of a target on an icy surface.»
FENCING
«Two combatants confront each other on a rectangular mat with the following types of arms: épée, foil or saber.»
«Mixed teams try to throw a ball into a basket defended by the opposing players.»
les images ...
The drawing
A drawing shows the venue.
When it is necessary, figures are given in the text (bold with brackets), indicating the names of non obvious elements (like lines or areas).
They are reduced to the minimum, as we considered the references of the median lines, back lines and other sidelines as established.
The pictures
A photographic work has been especially done for this book, and was made possible with the free help of a great number of volunteers (sport photographs, professionals, federations...) and with a number of sportive themselves.
We hope they will appreciate the result of their contribution to this project. You will find their names in the last pages of this book.
Final note
You might have noticed that a sport having World Championships is missing or a major mistake. Please let the editor know.
Send him information regarding the official international rules of that sport and the dates of the last World Championships (without those precise information, we cannot do anything).
Addresses of the international federations are indicated in the last pages.
We wish you as much pleasure to read these pages as we had to conceive and realize them.
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