【推荐3】The Olympic spirit is about sportsmanship, personal sacrifice, and a strong will to reach your goals.     1     Instead, it’s a source of motivation to keep going and try to improve every day.

The importance of the Olympic spirit goes far beyond the sports events. And it’s not just for professional athletes, either.     2     Its goal is to encourage everyone, as people, and as citizens, to incorporate (使并入) these values into their lives.

It’s not easy to describe the Olympic spirit in words. Yet everyone who meets it probably knows what it means. One central aspect is having the knowledge that the greatest reward doesn’t lie in getting to a particular goal or victory.     3    

Of course, we’re not trying to suggest that victory means nothing to an athlete or that goals aren’t important. When we speak of personal or professional dreams or goals, we’re aware that reaching the objective is always one’s greatest wish.

Nevertheless, we shouldn’t forget that victory is the result of a long process. It’s only possible through the effort that leads up to it.     4     Everyone who manages to gain victory has to travel a long way to get there. And it must necessarily include some failures and disappointments, but must never end with the person giving up.

Let’s take a track and field race as an example-just to keep going along the line of this sports thread.     5     But all of the competitors are going to give the best of themselves throughout the competition. And you can expect they’ll continue to do so just to improve themselves even after the race.

【推荐1】As the name suggests, alpine football, a variation of the world’s most popular competitive sport, is played on mountain slopes (斜坡) in order to make it more difficult.

Most competitive sports usually take place on level playing fields, but in the case of alpine football, one of the main conditions is that the field must be steep (陡峭的). It sounds totally impossible, but a group of football fans in the Austrian Alps claim that it’s the best way to play their favorite sport. They got the idea for alpine football during the 2014 World Cup, while watching a boring game and brainstorming for ways to make it more challenging.

“We were watching the games and found them very boring,” alpine football co-inventor Franz Mair said. “Then, Peppi Knunz, the other inventor of the sport, said to me, ‘The way they play isn’t hard enough and they should try running up and down our mountains. They’d soon be out of breath.’ And then we thought they might not even be able to play, but we would manage it!”

Flat ground is very hard to find in the Alps, so it’s most often used for more important things than playing football. Therefore, fans of the sport in such mountainous areas decided to turn lemons into lemonade and use the mountain slope to invent a new game. Now, locals take pride in only playing alpine football.

“Anyone can play on flat ground,” says Alois Gantner, trainer of the Supa BUrschis team. “In Montafon, we only play on the steepest slopes we can find.”

The rules of alpine football are the same as for the regular football, with the only difference being the need for strong legs and great energy to fight against gravity on the uneven field.

【推荐2】When a group of college students started their flying disc business back in 2008 in China, few of them could imagine the then little-known sport would have such a big explosion in popularity across the country this summer.

During the first three months of 2022, searches for frisbee shoot up 17-fold on Xiaohongshu, as compared with the same period in the year before. The topic of frisbee has attracted more than 42.4 million views on the platform, reported China Daily.

The rule of frisbee is very easy to understand. The main goal of the players is to catch the frisbee in the end zone. The thrower is not allowed to move after throwing the frisbee out, while others without a frisbee in their hands can move as they want. “For example, when you hold the Frisbee, you cannot move but instead you pivot (绕轴转动) on one foot until the disc is released,” said Qu Xinchen, who started playing frisbee in April 2022. A team will then try to get the frisbee down and throw it to another teammate further down the field.

For those who want to compete, they can try the team disc sport called “ultimate Frisbee”, which encourages honesty and fair play, with no judges there to make a ruling. In another game called “frisbee golf’，players try to hit faraway targets with a disc. Just like in golf, the lowest number of throws wins.

“People now think it is cool to play frisbee.” Qu added to this feeling by saying “I usually burn 1,400 calories during a session, and I can see my friends more.”

On July 7, 2022, frisbee was officially accepted by regulatory (监管的) authorities and the first Chinese Frisbee League was announced by the General Administration of Sport of China.

But why has frisbee become so popular all of a sudden? Apart from the low cost of the sport, experts believe that one reason is that people of all ages can join the game since you only need a disc for equipment. What’s more, the non-contact nature of the sport suits the need for pandemic control.

【推荐3】Cyclocross is cross-country bicycle racing. Racers spend only part of a race on their bikes because only part of the two-mile race is smooth. Other parts of the race have the challenge of obstacles (障碍). When racers reach them, they can ride over them, or pick up their bikes and run.

To be a top racer, you must dismount without slowing down at all. To do this, swing your right leg over the bike seat. At the same time, move the bike away from your body. This makes room for your right foot to hit the ground next to your left foot. As your right foot nears the ground, take your left foot away from the bike. Put both feet on the ground and start running!

As soon as you are running, you have to decide what to do with your bike. You may shoulder it or lift it. It’s important to practice both skills. Sometimes you need to run fast and jump over some obstacles. As your feet hit the ground, you reach down and catch the bottom of your bike. Lift up carefully and keep the bike on your right shoulder while you run. Sometimes you may lift your bike. You catch the top of your bike. Then you lift the bike high enough to get over the obstacles and carefully put the bike on the ground.

After you have carried your bike across an obstacle, you will need to remount. As soon as your bike is on the ground, push off with your left leg, swing your right leg over the bike seat, and move into riding position. Remounting can be the hardest skill of cyclocross. You can learn by watching someone who remounts well.

Cyclocross is a great way to stay active and have fun. However, it can be dangerous. Make sure that you are well prepared. Then, you will just need to go!