American sports has evolved from the simple folk games and premodern pastimes of the colonial era to the highly complex, commercial spectacles of the early twenty-first century.Many factors shaped the development of sports in colonial British America and in the United States. Among the most significant were industrialization, urbanization, and ideological and cultural trends, especially those involving religion, social class, ethnicity, race, and gender. During the Colonial era the English, Dutch, and other European settlers who established the thirteen colonies that became the United States, brought with them pre-modern pastimes and folk games that had been popular amusements in the Old World for centuries. These included the early versions of cricket, baseball, golf, football, and bowling, and also foot racing and pitching quoits (similar to tossing horseshoes). Combat sports such as wrestling, boxing, and cudgeling (fighting with sticks), and animal and blood sports, especially bull baiting and cockfighting were also enjoyed in great fervor.
[...] Bodybuilding's first big competition was produced by Eugen Sandow, a man as extraordinary as the contest he brought about. In 1901, the year of the "Great Competition", as he called his contest, Sandow was only 34 years old, but he had already toiled long in the vineyards of physical culture. Rising from obscurity, he had popularized the sport of bodybuilding by his many personal exhibitions in Europe and America. By dint of his own energy, strength and personal magnetism, he had transformed the sport from the occupation of a few cranks and vaudeville performers to a viable way to build a shapely physique and to improve health. [...]
[...] He had made bodybuilding - a sport in its infancy - a center of public interest. Even the staid, respectable Times of London reported the competition favorably, calling it a "novel and interesting display". However, it characteristically warned its readers that "in some cases the development of muscles appeared to be abnormal", and it questioned whether Sandow's system might be beneficial to everyone, since it produces "such extraordinary muscular deviation". It suddenly appeared that thousands were willing to risk "muscular deviation" and give bodybuilding a try. [...]
[...] The principle off-shoot of weight-lifting is modern Bodybuilding and Powerlifting. It is very difficult to discover exactly how, when or why it all started or who was behind it . probably by men who had tremendous strength but no desire or ability to perform on the Olympic lifts yet nevertheless wanted to compete on equal terms with other lifters. The lifts themselves were basic body building movements selected to demonstrate a man's strength to his best advantage. The sport is officially recognized only after a sport has the first contest that's why it's pretty hard to imagine bodybuilding without the Mr. [...]
[...] In October 1995 the event was filmed by the Learning Channel and shown four times throughout the World. The World's Wristwrestling - Armwrestling Championship is always held the second Saturday in October in Petaluma, California. On October the event was filmed by NBC's World News Today and shown throughout the World on October On October the event was filmed by CBS and shown on the 16th on the Bryant Gumbel show. Part of the event was also shown on the Evening Magazine weeks later. [...]
[...] Unlike football and basketball, baseball can be played well by people of average height and weight. Baseball became popular in Japan after American soldiers introduced it during the occupation following World War II. In the 1990s a Japanese player, Hideo Nomo, became a star pitcher for the Los Angeles Dodgers. Baseball is also widely played in Cuba and other Caribbean nations. In the 1996 Olympics, it was a measure of baseball's appeal outside the United States that the contest for the gold medal came down to Japan and Cuba (Cuba won). [...]
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