An American game that has traveled well is basketball.     1    is now played by more than 250 million people worldwide in an     2    (organize) way, as well as by countless others in informal games. Basketball began in 1891, when a minister, called James Naismith,     3     (ask) to teach a class of young men in Springfield, Massachusetts.

The class was well known     4    being difficult to teach and Naismith was told to invent a new game     5     (keep) the young men busy. Then it     6     (be) winter and very cold outside. It needed to be a game that could be played indoors.

Naismith thought back to his childhood in Canada where he and his friends had played a game which had involved (需要) trying to hit     7     e big stone off a rock with smaller stones. He also remembered     8     (watch) rugby (橄榄球) players throw a ball into a box or fruit basket     9    had been raised up. Naismith made up the     10     (rule) for the game in less than an hour, Most of them still apply in some form today.

It’s never easy for     1     Asia athlete to shine in track and field events. But Su Bingtian 28,     2     (know) as the “Chinese flying man”, became the first male Chinese sprinter to win a     3     (globe) medal in an individual event.     4     March 3, he took the silver in the men’s 60m final at the World Indoor Championships in the UK. In the final, Su Bingtian ran his personal best of 6.42 seconds,     5     (break) the Asian record of 6.43, which he also set last month in Germany.

The last time a Chinese athlete achieved a milestone was in 2004,     6     Liu Xiang won a gold medal in Athens in the 110m hurdles. Inevitably, Su     7     (compare) to Liu. “Liu Xiang is my idol and also my friend,” Su told Xinhua News Agency.

As a matter of fact, Su had expected     8     (win) a bronze during the final. “There is no difference between silver     9     bronze. Even a bronze could prove that Chinese sprinters have made breakthroughs in major world     10     (compete),” he said.

During his life, Dr. James Naismith worked as a doctor, taught P. E. and wrote several books.     1     he never thought it very important, Dr. Naismith is today best known for one thing—he was one of the     2     (master) of basketball.

    3     (bear) in Canada in 1861, he first worked at a special sports school in the USA.

One day the school principal told James he was having a problem with the students. Because of heavy snow, the students could not go outside. He told James that they needed a sport that the boys could play indoors and gave him two weeks to think of something.

It was     4     the very last day that James came up with his idea. The “birth of basketball” is said to be on December 21, 1891,     5     two teams from the school played the     6     (sweat) game. It was quite different from the basketball games of today. It had nine players on each team, and footballs     7     (design) for students instead of basketballs. Soon after, the game changed to five players on each side,     8     (challenge) each other on the court.

    9     (extreme) to our sadness, Dr. Naismith did not live to see basketball become the worldwide game as it is today. However, in 1936, just three years before his death, basketball became     10     Olympic sport at the games in Berlin.

Freestyle skier Gu Ailing, 18, is one of the     1     (superstar) of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympic Games.

Born to an American father and a Chinese mother, Gu decided to compete     2     China in the 2022 Winter Olympics in June 2019. Just two months later, she bagged her first gold medal for China at the Australia New Zealand Cup. Her strength continued to grow as she     3     (win) one bronze (铜 牌) and two gold medals at the International Ski Federation (FIS) Snowboard and Freeski World Championships in March.

People say she is     4     (talent). But Gu says that talent counted for “only 1 percent" of her wins,     5     (add) that her hard work is what counts. While going to school in San Francisco, Gu could only practice on weekends. She spent eight hours going to the ski hill and back, doing her homework on the way and making full use of her time at the hill     6     (practice) skiing.

Gu said she wants to encourage more girls in China to try skiing and other extreme sports, many of     7     have only been known there for 20 years, according to the Olympics website. She said skiing gives her “freedom and     8     (creative)”, especially when she     9     (perfect) controls her body and does tricks that others cannot do.

On February 8th, she claimed her first Olympic gold medal in the women’s freeski big air of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics as     10     full-time athlete. “I’m not skiing just for medals,” Gu once said. “What’s more important is to bring out my own style, enjoy the game and love the sport.”