I have seen a lot of articles online trying to determine what are the most popular sports in the world, and almost without exception Soccer ( World Football) is listed on top. I came up with the idea of looking at the page view stats on Wikipedia to see what sport pages are the most popular. Surprisingly, the highest ranked Sport page was in fact Basketball. This would partly be due to the high US based traffic to the English version Wikipedia site, but mostly it was because the stats for Soccer is split between Soccer and Association Football pages. When these stats are combined, it regains it title of the most popular sport in the world! See more analysis of the World’s Most Popular Sports According to Wikipedia.
Rob's Sports, Fitness & Science Blog
Entries Tagged as 'Sport'
Is Basketball the World’s Most Popular Sport?
March 10th, 2011 · No Comments · Basketball, Football (Soccer), Sport
Tags: basketball
Swimmers Blast Back From The Past
February 14th, 2011 · 1 Comment · Swimming
What is with all the Australian swimmers coming back from retirement? First it was butterfly swimmer Geoff Huegill, who made a successful comeback to the Commonwealth Games, including shedding a huge amount of post-competitive weight, then announced he would continue until the 2012 London Olympics. More recently, Ian Thorpe told us he has been secretly training for three months, losing a bit of weight too no doubt and is back on track for the Olympics too. Not to be left behind, ex-teammate Michael Klim has also announced he is coming back from retirement. Can’t these guys make up their mind? I always thought that retirement is just that, let yourself go and enjoy just being a spectator. Of course the desire to be out there competing may still be there, but usually the body has made the decision for you. Come on, move over and let the next batch of swimmers do their thing. They are not going to be satisfied with anything less than what they achieved in their previous career, and they are only setting themselves up for embarrassment. Well at least that will be entertaining.
Tags: retirement·swimming
The Beep Test Can Kill
January 30th, 2011 · No Comments · Fitness, Rugby Union, Sports Medicine
The beep fitness test should not be taken lightly. It is a maximal test, which means the participants are required to go as hard as they can for as long as they can (though they do not always do this). This was highlighted recently when 27 year old Welsh man Adam Rumming died while performing the bleep test as part of an army fitness test at the Sandhurst Academy where elite British Army officers are trained. He is believed to have had an undiagnosed heart problem, which is often the case for sudden death during exercise in seemingly healthy young people. If you are ever in charge of conducting fitness testing, particularly exhausting tests, you should exclude anyone with a fever or other risky medical condition, or even better get them to complete a PAR-Q (Physical Activity Readiness Questionnaire).
Tags: beep test
My Gymnastics Clipart on Soap
September 22nd, 2010 · No Comments · Gymnastics
My clipart has been used for websites, logos, t-shirts, posters, and many other purposes, but this is the first time that I know of it being used to illustrate soap! I don’t know how it was done, you will have to visit a canuck in Oz and to find out how to do it for yourself. To see the original clipart images, go to the gymnastics clipart page.
Tags: gymnastics
Perth City2Surf 2010
September 6th, 2010 · No Comments · Fitness, Track & Field
Last weekend I joined a record number of 40,468 people in the Perth city to surf event, from the city centre to City Beach, a distance of 12 km. As a sign of my increasing age, I had opted to join the walkers of the 12 km event, pushing my 3 year old and 9 mth old in a stroller. It was still a brisk walk to complete the course in 2 hrs 10 minutes, with plenty of people still behind us, and the sore feet to show for it.I would have just beaten the marathon runners!
I’m glad I was not in the half marathon event, as the lead out cyclist took the runners the wrong way, requiring the leaders to backtrack quite a bit. I cannot imagine they would be too happy about that.
As usual there were plenty of characters, people dressed up like the one pictured. It was a fairly warm day, so he would have been feeling the heat. As would have the two dressed in Storm Trooper outfits. All done to raise funds for a worthy charity.
Bet on the Octopus
July 12th, 2010 · No Comments · FIFA World Cup, Football (Soccer)
Paul the ‘Psychic’ Octopus, also known as the ‘Oracle of Oberhausen’ and ‘Pulpo Paul’, is a resident of the Oberhausen Sea Life aquarium. He became a celebrity after a 100% success rate at predicting the winners of eight World Cup matches – all of Germany’s games and the final between Spain and The Netherlands. I want to go out on a (octopus) limb, and say that it was all due to chance. I know it may sound far-fetched and very unlikely, but maybe he was just lucky and was able to select the winning teams through chance. No psychic abilities, no hand of God, and no conspiracies – just luck. A lot of luck.
Tags: betting·FIFA World Cup·football·Germany·octopus·soccer