Sport: to each country its main discipline?
The Olympic rings firmly in place near the Tokyo-2020 national ctade, January 8, 2021, 200 days from the Olympic and Paralympic Games Behrouz MEHRI AFP / Archives
By: Emmanuelle Bastide
2 min
The Russians excel in artistic swimming, the Chinese are the stars of diving while Egypt has staked everything on squash and South Korea on archery.
If the disciplines are sometimes confidential or even unknown, they bring medals and prestige to the nation.
After a one-year postponement due to the covid-19 pandemic, the Summer Olympics finally begin this Friday, July 23, 2021 to the happiness of millions of people around the world.
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With 33 sports, 51 disciplines, more than 11,000 athletes and 206 countries represented, the Olympic Games show us how much sport is globalized.
If some disciplines are exported like football, born in Great Britain in the middle of the 19th century and today played on almost all continents, some countries still have their favorite sport.
How to explain that some countries surpass all the others in certain sports?
Is it linked to a culture, a political will?
Why handball rather than boxing, swimming rather than volleyball?
How to maintain its rank for a country?
With :
Guillaume Evin
, journalist and writer.
Author of
Small stories of sports domination - Or why handball in France, diving in China and boxing in Cuba?
(Editions du Rocher)
Patrick Clastres
, sports historian, professor at the
Institute of Sports Sciences of the University of Lausanne
(Switzerland)
A focus with Olivier Pron of the RFI sports department on the occasion of the opening of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics
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