the Student Union

3 . At age 83, Barbara Humbert dreams of taking part in next year’s “Marathon for All” race at the Paris Olympic Games. It is the first ______of its kind, allowing amateur(业余) athletes to run the same race path as the Olympic marathon athletes. Humbert has a history of success, which shows she could ______some runners half her age.

Unlike your ______great-grandmother, the German-born Frenchwoman runs 50 kilometers a week. She has ______in many marathons and has the medals to show for it. “It’s ______to have the Olympics in my homeland,” said Humbert, “It would be a ______for my 60th marathon.”

However, Humbert is ______whether she will receive the paper for admission to the race, as the number for the Marathon for All will be ______to 20,024. Humbert’s husband Jacques is a big supporter, helping where he can. He is waiting to hear from the sports official about the ______for his wife to be allowed to enter the race.

Many ______hang in the entrance of Barbara and Jacques’s home. They ______Barbara of all the races she has taken part in, from Athens to Boston and many other cities. She figures out that she has ______ about 8,000 kilometers in those races.

Humbert wants others to ______in her footsteps. She said of running, “It gives you balance. You run, you empty your head, you feel ______ relaxed afterwards.” Barbara is planning for more races ______ just staying on what has been achieved.

8 . 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.