1 . The International Olympic Committee (IOC) Young Leaders programme empowers talents to make a positive difference in their communities through sport. Twenty-five young leaders are being selected every two years for a four year period. They promote the Olympic values, spreading the message of sport for good.

To be an IOC young leader, you need to first complete the 4-Week Learning Sprint (冲刺).

4-Week Learning Sprint

The 4-Weck Learning Sprint, which will take place during November 2023, is a virtual learning programme. The sessions can be attended live or watched back after they are made available on the IOC channel. Each week, participants will be asked to complete a topic-specific reflection task.

The 4-Week Learning Sprint is open to anyone, with the target audience aged between 20 and 28.

After successfully completing the 4-Week Learning Sprint you will need to submit a plan for a sport-based project which you will work on if selected as an IOC young leader.

Requirements for the Applicants

·You have successfully completed the 4-Week Learning Sprint.

·You have completed your high school studies.

·You have at least one year of work experience.

·You have strong public speaking skills.

·You are self-motivated and committed.

·You are passionate about creating positive change in your community.

·You are open to being coached and advised by experts and peers (同伴).

·You are able to work with people from different backgrounds.

Table tennis started as an after-dinner game, but is now a fast, high-tech sport. It also has     1     most players of any sport in the world.

    2     is believed that upper-class Victorians in England invented table tennis in the 1880s as an after-dinner alternative (可能的选择) to tennis,     3     (use) whatever they could find as equipment. A line of books would often be the net, and sometimes a cigarette box cover would be a racket.

In 1926, at a meeting     4     (hold) in Berlin, the International Table Tennis Federation was formed. The first World Championships were held in London in the same year, but the sport had to wait a long time before it was given a chance     5     (make) its first appearance at the 1988 Seoul Olympic Games.

The sport     6     (progress) greatly since it was first invented. Nowadays, players use     7     (special) developed rackets and a lightweight, hollow (空心的) ball. Thanks to their high-tech rackets, they can now enjoy the     8     (magic) feeling of hitting the ball at over 150 kilometres per hour!

Over the years, table tennis has developed into a worldwide sport. There are perhaps 40 million competitive table tennis players and countless millions     9     play less seriously. Hopefully, table tennis     10     (play) by more people all over the world in the future.

5 . For people suffering from depression, there’s an all-natural treatment they should use — getting more exercise. It could help fight depression, even if people have a genetic risk, new research shows.

For the study, researchers collected information from nearly 8,000 people and found those with related genes were more likely to have depression over the next two years after examining them. But that was less likely for people who were more active at the study’s start, even if they had a family history of depression. Higher levels of physical activity helped protect even those with the highest genetic risk of depression.

Both high-intensity (高强度) exercise and low-intensity activities were associated with a reduced risk of depression. Adding four hours of exercise a week could lower the risk of a new episode (一段经历) of depression by 17%, according to the study. “Our findings strongly suggest that, when it comes to depression, being physically active has the potential to remove the added risk of future episodes in individuals who are genetically risky,” said lead author Karmel Choi. “On average, about 35 additional minutes of physical activity each day may help people to reduce their risk and protect against future depression episodes.”

Depression is a common mental illness globally, with more than 264 million people affected. “Depression is so ubiquitous, and that underlines the need for effective approaches that can impact as many people as possible,” Choi said. And mental health and primary care providers can use the findings to advise patients that there’s something meaningful they can do to lower their risk of depression.

As is known to all, the Olympic Games are the most important events in the world. They were first held in ancient Greece in 776 BC. And the events were named after Olympia,     1     city in Ancient Greek. Slaves and women could not     2     (allow) to take part in the ancient Olympics, and the     3     (athlete) were all from the same country.

In 1896, the first modern Olympics opened in Athens, the capital city of Greece. From then on, the event     4     (take) place every four years.

Athletes from the whole world can take part in the     5     (importance) events, whether they are men       6     women. The five rings on the Olympic Flag stand for five continents and the union of the whole world.

China didn’t become a member of the modern Olympics     7     the 1950s. And in 1984, Xu Haifeng became the first Chinese     8     won an Olympic gold medal in shooting. With the development of China, Beijing finally succeeded in     9     (hold) the 2008 Olympics, during which the five Fuwa mascots ( 吉 祥 物 )       10     (deep) impressed the whole world.

8 . Older women who walk a little over three kilometers each day might live longer than less active women of the same age, a new study suggests.

Many Americans hoping to stay healthy set a daily goal of 10,000 steps, or about eight kilometers. They often have this goal because they are wearing electronic devices which set that target, note researchers in the United States. Their findings appeared recently in the publication JAMA Internal Medicine.

But it is not clear how much intensity (强度) or speed matter when counting the health benefits of every step, the researchers write. They add that 10,000 steps per day might not be the right goal for everyone.

For the study, researchers observed 17,000 women, all in their early 70s. They asked the women to wear accelerometers for at least four days. Accelerometers are small devices that measure the number of steps and the intensity of movement. The researchers followed up with the women much later, around 4 years later. Since the beginning of the study, 504 women had died. Compared to women who took no more than 2,718 steps daily, the women who took at least 4,363 steps per day were 41 percent less likely to die.

“Even a modest amount of steps is associated with lower death rates.” said I-Min Lee, the lead writer of a report on the study. “The rate of stepping did not matter in these older women: it was the number of steps that mattered.”

The study had a few limitations. For example, the researchers only measured women’s movements once, at the start of the study period. It is possible that the women’s behaviors changed over time. Still, the results are “good news for older adults who may have difficulty walking at faster paces.” said Keith Diaz, a researcher at Columbia University. He was not involved in the study.

“Any walking is better than nothing,” Diaz said by email. “With even small amounts of walking, your risk of death will be sharply reduced.” For those who have difficulty walking, other research shows that any form of aerobic activity provides health benefits, he added. “Swimming, bicycling or any form of activity that is continuous in nature will provide health benefits.”

10 . Various sports attract fans for different reasons: Spectator sports draw even more fans who just love to watch. Here are some of the most beloved sports worldwide.

Football, better known as soccer in the US, is by far the most popular sport in the world. Experts estimate that the origin (起源) of football may go as far back as two thousand years, beginning in ancient China during the Han Dynasty. One major reason for football’s global popularity is that, unlike other sports that require expensive equipment, all you need to play football is a ball and your feet.

Volleyball pits two teams across a high net, each attempting to smash the ball onto the opponent’s (对手的) floor. A popular variant, beach volleyball, is competed on sand by pairs rather than the regular six players per team. The crowd appeal of beach volleyball has grown greatly in recent years.

An estimated one billion people worldwide follow professional tennis tournaments and matches. In tennis, players on both sides of a net try to hit a ball with a racket so that it either goes past their opponent or bounces twice on their opponent’s side of the court to score points. Tennis superstars like Rafael Nadal, and Serena Williams are now household names around the world, with huge international fan bases.

Hockey, both on ice and on a field, wins a following of two billion enthusiastic fans worldwide. Field hockey is mainly played in Europe, Africa, Asia, and Australia, while ice hockey is particularly popular in Canada and the US, where kids grow up playing pond hockey. Unlike ice hockey, field hockey usually does not have body contact in the form of checking and hitting.