Unusual Sports and Games

Curling is a popular sport in Canada. However, it probably started in Scotland or Holland around three hundred years ago. There are two teams with four people on each team in curling. The teams play on a sheet of ice that is 45 meters long and 4.3 meters wide.

Each player slides two heavy stones toward the "house" circle at the opposite end of the ice sheet. The stones weigh almost twenty kilos. Each stone is flat on the top and bottom and has a handle on the top. The player swings the stone off the ice and it curls as it slides along.

While one player throws the stone, his teammates sweep in front of the-stone. This smoothes the ice. The players believe that the stone travels faster on smooth ice. The captain of the team yells "Sweep!" and the teammates start sweeping the ice.

Lacrosse is another popular sport in Canada. It is one of the oldest organized sports in America. It is also popular in Britain and Australia. It was invented by Indians in northern New York and southern Ontario. They used it to train for war before Columbus arrived in the New World.

People play lacrosse outdoors. The lacrosse field is 70 meters long. At each end of the field there is a goal. There are ten players on each team. Each player hits a ball that is 21 centimeters around and weighs 140 grams. They try to hit the ball into the net as many times as possible. Lacrosse is a very fast game because the players can catch and pass the ball at high speed with their sticks.

Sumo wrestling is the national sport in Japan. Every year there are six tournaments, and millions of Japanese watch them on television. Sumo is almost as old as the nation of Japan itself. Stories say there was sumo wrestling over 2000 years ago. Sumo wrestlers weigh from 100 to 160 kilos. One famous wrestler weighed 195 kilos. Sumo wrestlers do not look beautiful, and sumo wrestling is a very slow sport. Sumo wrestlers start training when they are boys. They exercise to make their bodies strong. They also eat, eat, and eat. Sumo wrestlers wrestle in a round ring with a sand floor. A wrestler loses the match if he leaves the ring or if any part of his body except his feet touches the floor. Each wrestler tries to push the other down on the floor or out of the ring. People from other countries usually think sumo is very strange, but the Japanese love it.

The most recent unusual sport is the triathlon, which became popular in the US before spreading elsewhere. This most demanding sport came from a late-night discussion in a Honolulu bar in 1977 about which sport was the most exhausting: swimming, bicycle racing, or long-distance running. Someone suggested that they all be put together. The result was the first triathlon, the "Ironman", in 1978, with 15 participants. This contest was a 3.9-kilometer ocean swim, followed immediately by a 180-kilometer bicycle race, and ending with a 42 kilometer run. Five years later there were already 1,000 such competitions throughout the US, and the triathlon is becoming more and more popular in Europe, too.

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