2 . Benefits of Sports

Doing sports is a physical, mental and social adventure. It’s a great way for children to take a break from studies and release extra energy. It also helps them lead fuller and happier lives as regular sports have proven beneficial to overall well-being.

The physical benefits of doing sports are probably the most obvious. Regardless of your fitness level when you start playing sports, you’ll notice an increase in your overall fitness once you’re involved.     1     Basketball players focus on strength training; football players work on speed while track athletes train through longer runs. The training process helps promote physical fitness and performances in competitions.

    2     Playing sports also contributes to mental health, helping to increase confidence and self-worth. A pat on the back, a high five from a teammate, or a handshake after a match really boosts a child’s confidence. Words of praise and encouragement from the coach, parents and other players raise self-worth.     3     So after a game, it’s a better idea to ask “Did you enjoy the game?” rather than “Did you win?”

Children who participate in sports might also benefit from the social aspect, feeling part of a group, building up responsibility and leadership.     4     Teamwork involves both being dependable as a teammate and learning to rely on your teammates to achieve a positive outcome. Teamwork breeds responsibility and challenges you to be responsible for your actions. Being part of a team gives you an opportunity to be a leader.

Discipline is another social advantage. Most organized sports require a strict training and practice schedule. As a student-athlete, you need to balance studies and athletics.     5    

There is no shortage of reasons to find a sport to get involved in. Are you ready to go? Pick one and get moving!

3 . I think I will never forget the special day in November. It was hotter than normal. This was the______ my father and I had waited so long for, because we had been working towards this______ for three years. Dozens of familiar faces from church and school flashed across my view. They had come for me. I saw worry and______ on my father’s face. Then the race began!

For the first two and a half miles, I felt______. I had never before been so ready for something. The weeks leading up to the race were filled with controlled______ and a strict diet. My friends hadn’t seen me in weeks, but they understood the______required to make my dream a reality. As in all of my races, I didn’t______ out in the front. I loved the pleasure of passing people as my strength overtook their premature speed.

Then without warning，my strength began to______. Neck and neck with one of my greatest competitors, I could see the finish line. I had begun the final dash into______ when my knees became weak and my legs gave way. Nothing I could do would make them______ weight.

I watched as runners rushed by me.______ I knew my dreams of victory were destroyed, I had to finish the race. However, my legs hurt badly. With all of the______ left in me, I got on my hands and knees and crawled (爬), inch by inch, across the finish line. Voices, both______ and familiar, cheered me on. They gave me the courage to keep ______ until the very end.

The ______ were there in seconds, but my eyes searched the crowd for him. There was only one person I wanted to talk to. I whispered, “I’m so sorry, Dad, I’m so sorry I ______ you.” He looked at me, saying, “You could never disappoint me. Sometimes these things just______. All that matters is that you did your best.”

“But we worked so hard. What about our dream?” He ______over for my hand and said, “Don’ t you know that you are my dream and it has come true?”

It wasn’t long before my running shoes were back on, marking a______ path for my journey. I learned that all of the miles, the tears, the sweat, and the pain my dad and I ______ together were not for a race. What I realized, though, was that to him, I was the greatest prize he had ever won.

4 . Sport is very popular in England. In other words, lots of English people like the idea of sport. A lot watch sport on TV. But the number who take part in sport is quite small.

On the whole, English people prefer to be fat rather than thin.

The most popular sport in England is football. Football is played on Saturday afternoon in most towns and the supporters of a certain team will travel from one end of the country to the other to see their team play. There are four divisions(级别) of the football league. Not Surprisingly, the best teams are in the first division. But the best supporters are often in the fourth division. You have to be a good supporter to watch the fourth division football!

Many other sports are also played in England, such as golf, in which you try to knock a ball into a hole; basketball, in which you try to get a ball through a net; tennis, in which you try to hit a ball so that your opponent(对手) can not hit it. As you see, if the ball had not been invented, there would have been no sport.

Actually, that is not quite true. Athletics(田径)isn’t played with a ball, nor horse racing. Perhaps that is why they are not as popular as football!

5 . Teenagers’ fitness is now a major concern，and physical exercise is very important. It reduces stress and improves fitness. Exercise makes your body strong，and helps you to keep the right body weight. Sports scientist Dr. Helen Lopez offers the following advice to teenagers：“First，you need to find out your present level of fitness. Then you can design a programme that will help you become healthier.”

Dr. Lopez suggests that there are three levels of fitness that need a change of lifestyle.“Overweight”means that the person gets very little exercise and often has a serious weight problem. “Inactive” means that the person does not join in many physical activities，but is not seriously overweight.“Active”refers to people who take part in sports and other physical activities，but do not have a high fitness level.

According to Dr. Lopez，overweight teenagers should work out to keep healthy.“Ride a bike，play volleyball or basketball for a while，and go for a twenty­minute walk each day. All these will help to burn calories.”Inactive teenagers should do similar activities, but add some bending and stretching exercises, such as push­ups and sit­ups, starting with twenty of each a day.“Inactive people can take a little more exercise than overweight people because their bodies are stronger，”Dr. Lopez said. The same rule applies to active teenagers.

Dr. Lopez suggests one hour a week or more on running and other forms of intensive exercise，together with fifteen minutes a day spent on stretching and bending activities.“These are really important in order to prevent injuries,” Dr. Lopez said. Some weight­training and other body­strengthening exercises could also be planned in the programme in order to increase the person’s strength.

6 . All over the world people enjoy sports. Sports help to keep people healthy and happy, and to live longer.     1    They buy tickets or turn on their TVs to watch the games. Often they get very excited when their player or team wins.

    2    Football, for example, has spread around the world. Swimming is popular in all countries near the sea or in those with many rivers. What fun it is to jump into a pool or lake, whether in China, Egypt or Italy!     3    Think how many lovers to skate or ski in Japan, Norway or Canada.

Some sports or game go back thousands of years, like running or jumping. Chinese Kungfu, for example, has a very long history. But basketball and volleyball are rather new. Neither one is a hundred years old yet.     4    Water-skiing is one of the newest in the family of sports.

People from different countries may not be able to understand each other, but after a game together they often become good friends.     5    One learns to fight hard but fight fair, to win without pride and to lose with grace.

9 . How does a person become an Olympic champion—someone capable of winning the gold? In reality, a combination of biological, environmental, and psychological factors, as well as training and practice, all go into making a super athlete.

Perhaps the most important factor involved in becoming an elite athlete is genetics. Most Olympic competitors are equipped with certain physical characteristics that differentiate them from the average person. Take an elite athlete’s muscles, for example. In most human skeletal muscles (the ones that make your body move), there are fast-twitch fibers and slow-twitch fibers. Fast-twitch fibers help us move quickly. Olympic weightlifters, for example, have a large number of fast-twitch fibers in their muscles—many more than the average person. These allow them to lift hundreds of kilos from the ground and over their heads in seconds. Surprisingly, a large, muscular body is not the main requirement to do well in this sport. It is more important to have a large number of fast-twitch fibers in the muscles.

The legs of an elite marathon runner, on the other hand, might contain up to 90 percent slow-twitch muscle fibers. These generate energy efficiently and enable an athlete to control fatigue and keep moving for a longer period of time. When we exercise long or hard, it’s common to experience tiredness, muscle pain, and difficulty breathing. These feelings are caused when the muscles produce high amounts of lactate(乳酸) and can’t remove it quickly enough. Athletes with many slow-twitch muscle fibers seem to be able to clear the lactate from their muscles faster as they move. Thus, the average runner might start to feel discomfort halfway into a race. A trained Olympic athlete, however, might not feel pain until much later in the competition.

For some Olympic competitors, size is important. Most male champion swimmers are 180cm or taller, allowing them to reach longer and swim faster. For both male and female gymnasts, though, a smaller size and body weight mean they can move with greater ease, and are less likely to suffer damage when landing on the floor from a height of up to 4.5 meters.

Some athletes’ abilities are naturally enhanced by their environment. Those raised at high altitudes in countries such as Kenya, Ethiopia, and Morocco have blood that is rich in hemoglobin(血红素). Large amounts of hemoglobin carry oxygen around the body faster, enabling these athletes to run better. Cultural factors also help some athletes do well at certain sports. Tegla Loroupe, a young woman from northern Kenya, has won several marathons. She attributes some of her success to her country’s altitude (she trains at about 2,400 meters) and some to her cultural background. As a child, she had to run ten kilometers to school every day. “I’d be punished if I was late,” she says.

Although genetics, environment, and even culture play a part in becoming an elite athlete, training and practice are needed to succeed. Marathon runners may be able to control fatigue and keep moving for long periods of time, but they must train to reach and maintain their goals. Weightlifters and gymnasts perfect their skills by repeating the same motions again and again until they are automatic. Greg Lougains, winner of four Olympic diving gold medals, says divers must train the same way to be successful: “You have less than three seconds from takeoff until you hit the water, so it has to be reflex. You have to repeat the divers hundreds, maybe thousands, of times.” Training this way requires an athlete to be not only physically fit but psychologically healthy as well. “They have to be,” says Sean McCann, a sports psychologist at the Olympic Training Center in the U.S. “otherwise, they couldn’t handle the training loads we put on them. Athletes have to be good at setting goals, generating energy when they need it, and managing anxiety.”

How do athletes adjust to such intense pressure? Lougains explains how he learned to control his anxiety during a competition: “Most divers think too much…,” he says. “They’re too much in their heads. What worked for me was humor. I remember thinking about what my mother would say if she saw me do a bad dive. She’d probably just compliment me on the beautiful splash.”

10 . People believe that climbing can do good to health. Where can you learn the skill of climbing then? If you think that you have to go to the mountains to learn how to climb, you’re wrong. Many Americans are learning to climb in city gyms. Here, people are learning on special climbing walls. The climbing wall goes straight up and has small holding places for hands and feet.

How do people climb the wall? To climb need special shoes and a harness around your chest to hold you. There are ropes tied to your harness. The ropes hold you in place so that you don’t fall. A beginner’s wall is usually about 15 feet high, and you climb straight up. There are small pieces of metal that stick out for you to stand on and hold on to. Sometimes it’s easy to see the new piece of metal. Sometimes, it’s not. The most difficult is to control your fear. It’s normal for humans to be afraid of falling, so it’s difficult not to feel fear. But when you move away from the wall, the harness and the ropes hold you, and you begin to feel safe. You move slowly until you reach the top.

Climbing attracts people because it’s good exercise for almost everyone. You use your whole body, especially your arms and legs. This sport gives your body a complete workout. When you climb, both your mind and your body can become stronger.