Now You Know Big Book of Sports. Doug Lennox
NOW YOU KNOW
NOW YOU KNOW
Doug Lennox
DUNDURN PRESS
TORONTO
Copyright © Magnetawan Communications Inc. and Dundurn Press Limited, 2009
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Contributing Editor: Shaun Smith
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Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Lennox, Doug
Now you know big book of sports / by Doug Lennox.
ISBN 978-1-55488-454-4
1. Sports--Miscellanea. 2. Olympics--Miscellanea. I. Title.
GV707.L46 2009 796 C2009-902997-9
1 2 3 4 5 13 12 11 10 09
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J. Kirk Howard, President
Printed and bound in Canada.
Printed on recycled paper.
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contents
Football •
Rugby •
Baseball •
Basketball •
Lacrosse •
Curling •
Olympics •
Tennis •
Golf •
Bowling •
Running •
Cycling •
Skiing and Snowboarding •
Auto Racing •
Boxing and Wrestling •
Winners and Champions •
Question and Feature List •
The vast collection of human activity called sports provides a fascinating portrait of humanity at both its best and worst. Courage, endurance, skill, tenacity, invention, cowardice, greed, pain, luck, weakness, and strength — these are just some of the qualities of human endeavour that run through the history of athleticism. They are the subject of this book.
Through questions, answers, lists, statistics, charts, and sidebars, I have tried here to assemble as detailed a collection of the most unusual, puzzling, revealing, and downright fascinating facts about sports as possible.
Who gained a winning edge with drugs, who disgraced themselves with rage, who defied the odds, and who won the love of the world? Who died on the ski slopes, who cheated at golf, who fought to win another day? What’s inside a bowling ball? Where was rugby born? Why do the Japanese buy hole-in-one insurance? Where is the world’s oldest curling pond? Who owns the all-time record for the most career stage wins in the Tour de France? (It’s probably not who you think it is.)
All and more is here. From the power of F1 to the finesse of fencing. From the statistics of baseball to the brutality of boxing. From the speed of ice hockey to the strategy of football. A special section on the Olympics — Summer and Winter — offering material on every current official Olympic sport (plus a few extras) rounds out the collection just in time for the Vancouver 2010 Winter Games.
Let the games begin!
Where and when did hockey originate?
The location and the approximate date of ice hockey’s origins, as with many sports, are much-debated and conjectured issues. Stick-and-ball games have deep roots and various types can be traced back to ancient Egypt, Persia, Greece, and Rome. Hockey appears to have evolved from a number of older sporting endeavours that employed some sort of stick (usually short and curved) and a ball: Irish hurling or hurley, Scottish shinty, English field hockey and bandy (the latter becoming popular in Scandinavia and Russia), Canadian/ American shinny, and American ice polo. North American First Nations also likely influenced the development of stick games on ice and were probably inspired in turn by European games. Gughawat, or Indian shinny, and baggataway, or lacrosse, were certainly played by First Nations people when the first Europeans arrived on the scene. Both games utilized short, curved sticks, numerous competitors per team, and fierce competition (practically an all-out battle) for possession of a ball.
What is the origin of the word hockey ?
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