Sport facts

Ronaldo had simply had enough of Fabien's ridicuolous outfield runs!

PoloCross hit by shortage of horses!!

Diego wondered if the judges could be swayed with humour

Geoffrey found this position strangely theraputic

Sports Facts

• For winning Wimbledon WTF Billie Jean King received a 25 pound gift voucher
• For winning Wimbledon venus Williams received £300,000
• In America Alex Rodriquez recently signed a 275 million dollar Baseball contract with the texas rangers
• A badminton shuttle travels easily up to 180 km/h (112 mph). It is one of the fastest objects in sports
• All athletes competed nude in the ancient Olympics
• Where does the word "soccer" come from?
In the 1880s students of Oxford university abbreviated words by adding "er" to the end; for instance, "rugby rules" was referred to as "rugger." When one student, Charles Wreford Brown, was asked if he'd like to play rugger, he was the first to abbreviate "association rules" (Football Association rules) by answering, "No, soccer."
• Fishing is the biggest participant sports in the world.

• Soccer is the most attended or watched sport in the world.

• Boxing became a legal sport in 1901.

• More than 100 million people hold hunting licences.

• Jean Genevieve Garnerin was the first female parachutists, jumping from a hot air balloon in 1799.

• In 1975 Junko Tabei from Japan became the first woman to reach the top of Everest.

• The record for the most Olympic medals ever won is held by Soviet gymnast Larissa Latynina. Competing in three Olympics, between 1956 and 1964, she won 18 medals.

• The record for the most major league Bbaseball career innings is held by Cy Young, with 7,356 innings.

• The first instance of global electronic communications took place in 1871 when news of the Derby winner was telegraphed from London to Calcutta in under 5 minutes.

• In 1898, one of the first programmes to be broadcasted on radio was a yacht race that took place in British waters.

• Sports command the biggest television audiences, led by the summer Olympics, World Cup soccer and Formula One racing.

• Gymnasiums were introduced in 900BC and Greek athletes practised in the nude to the accompaniment of music. They also performed naked at the Olympic Games.

• The very first Olympic race, held in 776 BC, was won by Corubus, a chef.

• The first modern Olympic Games were held in Athens, Greece in 1896. There were 311 male but no female competitors.

• Michael Schumacher is the highest paid sportsman, ahead of Tiger Woods and Arnold Palmer. (Not including sponsorship endorsements.)

• Martina Hingis is the highest paid sportswomen.

• The high jump method of jumping head first and landing on the back is called the Fosbury Flop.

• The Major League Baseball teams use about 850,000 balls per season.

• About 42,000 tennis balls are used in the plus-minus 650 matches in the Wimbledon Championship.

• A baseball ball has exactly 108 stitches, a cricket ball has between 65 and 70 stiches.

• A soccer ball is made up of 32 leather panels, held together by 642 stitches.

• Basketball and rugby balls are made from synthetic material. Earlier, pigs' bladders were used as rugby balls.

• The baseball home plate is 17 inches wide.

• Golf the only sport played on the moon - on 6 February 1971 Alan Shepard hit a golf ball.

• Bill Klem served the most seasons as major league umpire - 37 years, starting in 1905. He also officated 18 World Series.

• The oldest continuous trophy in sports is the America's Cup. It started in 1851, with Americans winning for a straight 132 years until Australia took the Cup in 1983.

• Volleyball was invented by William George Morgan of Holyoke, Massachusetts in 1895.

• Ferenc Szisz from Romania, driving a Renault, won the first Formula One Grand Prix held at Le Mans, France in 1906.

• The word "gymnasium" comes from the Greek word gymnos, which means naked. In ancient times athletes practised in the nude to the accompaniment of music. They also performed naked at the Olympic Games. Women were not allowed to participate or even to attend as spectators.

• The first Olympic games were held in 776BC. For many years the Olympics consisted of only one race, a sprint of 192 metres (210 yards, the length of the stadium) called the "stadion." A second race of 400 metres was added 50 years later.
• No medals were awarded in the ancient Olympics. A winner received an olive wreath to wear on his head. Second and third placings received nothing. When the Olympics were revived in 1896 in Athens, Greece, winners received silver medals instead of gold medals. Eight years later, at the 1904 Games in St. Louis, gold replaced silver for first place. Today's gold medals actually are sterling silver covered with a thin coat of gold.
• At the first modern Olympic Games there were 311 male but no female competitors. Women were allowed to take part in the next Olympics in Paris. In the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games there were 3543 female competitors.
• The youngest ever Olympian is Greek gymnast Dimitrios Loundras, who competed in the 1896 Athens Olympics. He was 10 years old.

• The Olympic Games is the largest single broadcast event in the world, broadcasted in 220 countries to more than 3.5 bilion people.

• The Sydney 2000 Olympics was only the second Olympic Games to be held in the Southern hemisphere

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