Sport n my life

Sport n my life.

The topic I’m going to speak about s entitled “Sport in my life”. To begin with I’d like to say that doubtlessly sport is part of a healthy and active way of life. I’m sure that most people prefer healthy way of life nowadays. They are more and more concerned about healthy food they eat, fresh clean air they breathe, about the way they look and feel. In short they want to keep fit. Being fit suggests that a persons in good physical condition, particularly as a result of taking regular exercise. I must admit that fortunately we are offered a wide range of spot facilities to keep fit nowadays. Some keep fit exercises and activities are especially popular among young people today. They are aerobics, shaping, bodybuilding, marshal arts, yoga, dancing and many others. I believe they are so widespread because they help people to maintain good health, to stay in a good shape and at the same time they are quite fashionable. In consequence everyone can choose an activity that appeals to them. All this activities are part of the world wide spread revolution that is taking place now.

There is no doubt that sport in the modern world is divided into amateur and professional. As far as I can understand amateur sport means when doing sport is just part of your life, when it is fun and pleasure, whereas professional sport is a person’s job and a way of earning money. Doubtlessly there are a lot of arguments in favor of doing sport because sport can be a very positive experience for young people. I’m sure that you can gain a lot by doing sports. Undoubtedly sport has the favourable effect on our health and appearance. A good reason for doing sport and in particular for the fitness boom is youth and beauty. People nowadays try their best to look as young as possible and fit people not only feel good, they look good too. Sport makes a person fitter, stronger, more cheerful, more energetic and in general healthier. On the other hand many people argue that sports are off value because they build up character. They make people more organized and better disciplined in their daily life. Sports and games develop and promote such good qualities as hard-work, friendship, mutual help and support, communicativeness, responsibility, ambition and many others. Even though some of this arguments seem doubtful today it goes without saying that sport makes a person a high achiever. As far as I know if people take sport seriously they devote all their leisure time to it and in that case sport is really an alternative for harmful habits. On the whole doing sport for fun

is doubtlessly a source of relaxation, joy, pleasure and great excitement.

As far as Russia is concerned we have always paid great attention to sport in our schools, colleges and universities. There is hardly any school without a gym or a sports ground. Our school is not the exception. We have a gym in our school where we have two lessons of PE every week. I suppose these lessons to be very valuable, because they help us to keep fit, and to relax after a hard day at school. What’s more we learn to play volleyball, basketball and football. On the whole I should say that as a result we develop our physical stamina and achieve good results at all competitions.

In Russia as in other countries it’s been a tradition to divide sport into professional and amateur. There are different sporting societies and clubs in Russia. Many of them take part in different international tournaments and are known all over the world. A great number of world records have been set by Russian sportsmen: gymnasts, weight lifters, tennis players, swimmers, figure skaters, runners, high jumpers. Our sportsmen also participate in the Olympic Games and always win a lot of gold, silver, bronze medals.

There are also a lot of amateur clubs in Russia where people go in for aerobics, yoga, body-building, swimming, jogging. Thousands of people go to the stadiums to support their favourite team and many more thousands more prefer to watch games on TV. But watching sports events and going in for sports are two different things.

What about me my favourite kind of sport is swimming. That’s why I go to the swimming pool twice a week. I’ve been doing it for 4 years. Nobody will deny if I say that all sports have advantages and disadvantages. Swimming is not the exception. On the one hand swimming develops your physical stamina, helps to improve your health and feel cheerful. On the other hand there are not too many swimming pools in Russian on whole and in Moscow in particular. What’s more swimming pools are closed for summer and you don’t have an opportunity to train and develop your skills. In spite of all this people have been doing swimming since the 15th century. First competitions were held in 1515 in Venice. First swimming pools appeared in the 19th century in Germany, France and Austria. They still exist. Personally speaking I enjoy swimming very much. However I‘d like to learn to play tennis if I had more free time.

As far as I remember my last competition in track-and-field competitions were held on the 1st of May 2005. We took part in such events as running, High jumping and others. We did our best but got only the second place. I suppose we should train harder to achieve better results.

As for me I enjoy watching different competitions on TV. I can’t help mentioning that all competitions are attended by spectators and fans. If it is an international competition you can always see a crowd of spectators round the sports field encouraging their favourite team. Different fans encourage their favourite players in different ways at different parts of the game. Before the competition they show particular interest in both teams, trying to find out some information about the opponents. Then, when the match begins the fans follow it, try to cheer their teams by shouting enthusiastically, applauding. All spectators wait patiently for the results hoping to win a victory. However usually one team is defeated and it sometimes happens that angry fans begin fighting. It causes a lot of injuries so matches attend great efforts to arrange the security. From my point of view the encouragement is helpful to the sportsmen, because they fill the admiration and try to do their best to justify the fans’ hopes.

Nobody will deny if I say that the Olympic Games are the main games nowadays. They have a very long history. They began in 777 BC in Greece and took place every four years for nearly twelve centuries at Olympia. They included many different kind of sports: running, boxing, wrestling, and others. All the cities in Greece sent their best athletes to compete in the Games. For the period of the games all the wars were stopped. So the Olympic Games became the symbol of peace and friendship.

In 394 AD the Games were abolished and were not renewed until many centuries.

In 1894, a Frenchman, Barron Pierre de Coubertin, addressed all the sports governing bodies and pointed out the significance of sports and its educational value.

Two years later the first modern Olympic Games took place. Of course the competitions were held in Greece to symbolize the continuation of the centuries-old tradition.

In 1896 the international Olympic Committee was set up. It is the central policy-making body of the Olympic movement. It is formed by the representatives of all countries that take part in the Olympic Games. The International Olympic Committee decides upon the programme of the games, the number of the participants and the city-host of the games. Over one hundred and fifty countries are represented in the International Olympic Committee now. Besides, each country has its National Olympic Committee.

Summer and winter games are held separately. There are always several cities wishing to host the Games. The most suitable is selected by the International Committee. After that the city starts preparations for the competitions, constructs new sports facilities, stadiums, hotels, press centres. Thousands of athletes, journalists and guests come to the Games, and it takes great efforts to arrange everything. There is always an interesting cultural programme of concerts, exhibitions, festivals for each Games.

Russia joined the Olympic movement in 1952. Since then it has won a lot of medals. In 1980 Moscow hosted the Twenty-Second Olympic Games.

The latest Olympic Games were held in Athens n 2004. 202 countries took part in the Games. Russian sportsmen won 92 medals: 27 gold, 27 silver, 38 bronze. As a result we took second place in the number of won medals after the USA.  Aleksey Alipov won gold medal for shutting, Ermakova and Davidova won gold medal in synchronized swimming. All Russian are proud with them.

On of the sportsmen who competed in these Games was Aleksey Nemov. He was born on May,28,1976 in Barashevo, Russia, but lived with his single mother n a small townon the Volga called Tollyati.   He started gymnastics at age 5, was quickly judged to be a remarkable talent, and invited to live at the Round Lake training center outside Moscow, where he has been ever since. He made his worlds debut in 93, where he took the 5th place. But his big breakthrough was at the 1994 Goodwill Games, where he destroyed the competition, and won the first prize. It is often said that he does huge movements and remains graceful. Thanks to that he took third place in the Olympic Games in Greece.

On the whole I should say that to be a really good sportsmen you should possess some qualities. Among them its worth mentioning ambitiousness, persistence, diligence, enthusiasm. What’s more you should be very optimistic.

For us, the learners of the English language it is not only important to learn the history of the county, but also about the national sport of Britain. Sport is a very important part of life in Great Britain. Thousands of people devote their leisure time to outdoor and indoor games, athletics, cycling, mountain climbing, boxing and others. Horse-racing, dog-racing and motor racing are among the most popular sports in Britain. They gather many spectators.

The number of participants and spectators show that the most popular of the team games are football and cricket, and the most popular individual game is lawn-tennis.

Although Englishmen played a kind of football in the Middle Ages or even earlier, as an organized game it dates from just over a century ago.

One type of football, in which the players carried oval ball in their hands, appeared in 1859 at Rugby school. That is why the game took the name of Rugby or “rugger”. The rules of the game are different from football and there are 15 players instead of 11, on a team. Soccer matches get big crowds. The Cup Final is one of the most important football matches of the year in England; it is always played at the Wembley stadium, near London, which holds 100 000 spectators.

Cricket is England’s national summer game. Nobody knows exactly how old the game is, but some form of cricket was being played in England in the 13th century. That game was probably quite different from the one which is known now, as the rules of the game changed over the years. Most matches last one day, but important matches (such as international ones) can last six days. The oldest series of international matches is between England and Australia, and the team that wins takes home a famous trophy called The Ashes. The trophy has this odd and unusual name because it contains the ashes of the stumps and bails that were used in the test series of 1882 and then burnt. And even today for cricket lovers in England and Australia wining The Ashes is like wining the World Cup for football.

In England cricket is played in schools and universities and almost all villages and towns have their cricket teams which play regularly at least one match a week during the season-from May to September. There are many thousands of cricket grounds all over England.

In conclusion I’d like to say that physical culture is important and necessary for people especially for teens, because it develops their physical stamina and makes them healthy and slim. Every doctor always says that physical culture is considered factor in health protection. And I fully agree with it, because health is above wealth.