Sports: The Complete Visual Reference

Qa International Collectif

Description

You will find everything you need to know about the history, rules, techniques, tactics, records, and even facilities and equipment. In addition, profiles on athletic training and psychological preparation will help you understand the quest for excellence and achievement that fascinates us all. In a single book, Sports - The Complete Visual Reference, you will find invaluable information on sports that are new to you or that you would like to know more about.

Sujets

• Sport
• English language

Informations

• Publié par: Québec Amérique
• Date de parution: 05 septembre 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9782764408971
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 56 Mo

Extrait

S p o r t s

Sports

The Complete Visual Reference

QA INTERNATIONAL

Sports

Sports The Complete Visual Reference

QA INTERNATIONAL

IV

Publisher Managing editor Editorinchief Writers

Art director Assistant art director

Computergraphics supervisors

Illustrators

Graphic designer

Jacques Fortin François Fortin Karine Delobel Denis Fourny Benoit Fradette Jean Gounelle Francis Magnenot Anne-Marie Villeneuve Jessie Daigle Jean-François Lacoste Jean-Yves Ahern

Claude Thivierge Rielle Lévesque

Jocelyn Gardner Michel Rouleau Yan Bohler Mélanie Boivin Charles Campeau Mivil Deschênes Martin Desrosiers Jonathan Jacques Danièle Lemay Alain Lemire Martin Lortie Raymond Martin Annie Maurice Nicolas Oroc Frédérick Simard Yan Tremblay Mathieu Blouin Sébastien Dallaire Hoang Khanh Le Pierre Savoie Mamadou Togola Anne-Marie Ouellette Anne Tremblay

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission in writing from the publisher.

Sports: The Complete Visual Referencewas created and produced by: QA International e 329, rue de la Commune Ouest, 3 étage Montréal (Québec) H2Y 2E1 Canada T514.499.3000F514.499.3010 www.qainternational.com

© 2000 QA International. All rights reserved.

ISBN : 978-2-7644-0897-1

Layout

Researchers

Photograph retouching Translators

Proofreaders

Computer programmer Production coordinator Preprint technician Consultants

Véronique Boisvert Pascal Goyette Lucie Mc Brearty Josée Noiseux Yan Bohler Mario Bergeron Jessie Daigle Nancy Lepage Sophie Pellerin Sylvain Robichaud François Vézina Gilles Vézina Kathleen Wynd Daniel Provost Isabelle Lafrance

Hélène Coulombe Argos interprètes et traducteurs inc. Käthe Roth Veronica Schami Denis Fourny

Daniel Beaulieu

Guylaine Houle

Tony O’Riley Paul Ohl Guy Thibault

2005 REVISED EDITION EditorinchiefJulie Cailliau ResearcherGilles Vezina LayoutDanielle Quinty Kien Tang Karine Lévesque TranslatorsKathe Roth Diana Halfpenny

editor’s note

Sport plays an ever-growing role in our daily lives. Sports and games are found in a wide variety of forms and on every continent. Major international and national sports events are broadcast to ever-increasing audiences the world over.

Although there is a large amount of information available on individual sports, it tends to be scattered. It is often easier to find material on the most popular sport in one’s hometown than on events such as world cups or seasonal championships.

Sports: The Complete Visual Referencebrings together more than 120 sports, described and explained in concise, clear texts with an abundance of spectacular illustrations. It is an essential and comprehensive guide to the sports world in the context of international competitions. To give readers a real understanding of what athletes do and how each sport works, the designers of this unique book have provided up-to-date and complete facts, drawing on the knowledge of recognized experts in their fields: federation directors, elite athletic trainers, and the athletes themselves.

Readers will discover the history of each sport and its evolution into its current form. Athlete profiles provide information about the training techniques for each discipline and offer a glimpse of the daily challenges faced by athletes aiming for the elite level. Amateur athletes can compare their own skills and training regimens with those of the champions in their sports.

The physical environment for competitions, the roles of the players and officials, and the dynamics of each sport are presented, along with specific terms and expressions. Thanks to clear and lively illustrations and descriptions, readers can discover new sports and games or quickly find visual guidelines and information about a discipline with which they are familiar.

Key movements are broken down into series of illustrations with clear descriptions to explain how athletes perform these movements. Finally, the equipment used in each sport is shown and explained.

In short,Sports: The Complete Visual Referenceis an ideal guide to exploring the world of contemporary sport. Readers can use this attractive resource in any number of ways as they seek out specific information or simply allow their curiosity to discover the wonderful world of sport!

François Fortin

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introduction

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Pushing the limits of one’s abilities is both a personal undertaking and an experience common to all sporting endeavors. There could therefore be as many definitions of “sport” as there are athletes. All sports, however, share one need: rules that establish a fair framework within which to place performances. This basic principle is the only connection between the Olympiads of Antiquity, which had an essentially religious nature, and the “physical culture” of the 19th century, considered a form of training and education. The notion of pleasure, without which today’s athletes—including professionals—could not reach the highest levels, gradually came to the fore over the course of the 20th century.

A number of factors led to the emergence of modern sports. The British were largely responsible for setting structures; the modernization of performance measurement led to the creation and keeping of records; and the birth of the Olympic movement was a key event in popularizing sports and games. In more recent times, the social and economic impact of sport has grown considerably thanks to an explosion in media coverage. A massive infusion of money has encouraged the circulation of funds from organizations to team owners, and finally to the athletes themselves. In the current sports environment, the interests of athletes, sponsors, and broadcasters are tightly linked and dependent on viewer ratings.

* * *

introduction

In the late 19th century, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, an active proponent of the benefits of physical exercise, decided to bring the modern Olympics to life. The Games were to be founded on a democratic search for perfection—a concept inherited from the ancient games. De Coubertin was responsible for the creation of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) by the Congrès de Paris in June 1894, and the first Games of the modern era were played in 1896 in Athens, Greece. Although special stamps were issued along with government funding, it took the assistance of a Russian millionaire (George Avenarius) for the stadium to be finished on time. The opening ceremonies took place before an audience of 70,000—public enthusiasm was spectacular—and 311 athletes from 14 countries competed in nine events.

De Coubertin played a major role in the Olympic organization. He chaired the IOC until 1925, writing the Olympic Charter and Protocol, the athletes’ oath, and the protocol for the opening and closing ceremonies. He took part in all decisions and devoted all his energy to developing the spirit of the modern Olympics according to his ideals. For him, the athletes’ commitment to convey, through competition, “their concept of honor and impartiality regarding sport to the same degree as their physical training” provided an example of the kind of harmony that would transcend narrow nationalism and individual glory.

The Olympic symbols and ceremony protocols that de Coubertin created include:

• The Olympic motto:Citius(swifter),altius(higher),fortius(stronger). Borrowed from a French cleric, the words refer to the struggle to outdo oneself, the desire and courage needed in competition, and the three basic activities in track and field: running, jumping, and throwing.

• The Olympic emblem, which appears on the Olympic flag. There are five interlacing rings, which symbolize the five continents and the friendship that unites all people on Earth. Each nation has at least one of the colors of the Olympic flag on its own flag.

* * *

Today, sport is an international cultural phenomenon, conveying the social values of fame and success. Many commercial brands try to take advantage of the Olympics’ prestigious image. Sports, broadcast live throughout the world, have gone beyond national borders by transforming their financing from gate receipts to revenues from television and sponsors. This globalization has resulted in a consolidation of structures to form a complex network linking sports institutions, athletes’ agents, commercial partners (usually manufacturers), and broadcasters. The two major currents of modern sport, amateurism (exemplified by the Olympics) and professionalism, have merged. Seeking larger audiences, and thus a source of greater revenues, many sports are changing to make broadcasting easier. The choices of sites and dates and competition

VII

VIII

introduction

formats are being changed to adapt to laws of the marketplace, and the Olympic movement has not escaped this transformation.

The 1960 Olympics marked a turning point, with the sale of television rights. Since then, the number of competitions has grown steadily, audiences have expanded considerably, and private sponsors seeking greater visibility have been increasingly attracted to the Games. The ever-growing popularity of professional sports has meant record-setting in the professional arena where, in many cases, the athletes are the best. The Olympics officially abandoned amateurism in 1981, and commercial exploitation of the Olympic symbols was authorized in 1986. These two decisions by the IOC led to an explosion in revenues, and other events of global interest (World Cup soccer, Formula 1 racing, and tennis and golf tournaments, to name a few) followed suit. The biggest sports events are now retransmitted to more than 200 countries, have viewers numbering in the billions, and generate revenues in the many hundreds of millions of dollars.

* * *

This full-scale entry of sport into the world of showbiz and high performance has not been without its problems. The use of doping substances to improve performances is just one example. The public’s identification with athletes is based on the principle of transparency: exploits are achieved in front of a huge number of spectators. For viewers, this corresponds, legitimately, to a guarantee of truth and reality, but it places athletes in a contradictory position. Their income is based on the marketability of their results: as long as they are a profitable investment, the sky’s the limit. The objective of the athlete’s employers or sponsors is to reduce the uncertainty associated with athletic endeavor so that they can predict the economic returns. Athletes must therefore provide reliable performances, even though the constant increase in effort required pushes them ever closer to the natural limits of the human body.

Forced to stake out a clear position, international authorities count on anti-doping controls to settle questions of contested performances. Beyond this official and dominant current of thought, however, there have been a few notable initiatives in different directions. The International Powerlifting Federation, for instance, keeps sets of records in two categories: with drug testing, and without drug testing.

Nevertheless, a new type of elite athlete seems to have sprung up precisely to defy the constraints of contemporary sport; these athletes can both meet the obligation to produce results and handle media pressure. Alain Prost in Formula 1, Michael Jordan in basketball, Wayne Gretzky in ice hockey, and Greg Norman in golf, for example, in spite of the enormous expectations placed upon them, became legendary for their ability to stay at the top of their game over exceptionally long careers. By accumulating the most