As a player, Lang Ping brought honour and glory to her country. As a coach, she    1     (lead) the China women’s volleyball team to medals at world championships and the Olympics. As     2    person, Lang Ping is loved by fans at home and abroad. When the Chinese team was preparing for the 2015 World Cup, her     3    (determine)was tested. The team     4     Lang Ping had built was falling apart. One of the     5     (good) players had been    6    (bad) injured, and the team captain had to leave because    7    heart problems.     8     (lose) two important players was a big challenge,     9       Lang Ping did not lose heart. She had faced difficulties before, and she knew that her young players could win       10     they worked together as a team. Two weeks later, they were world champions! Then in 2016, Lang Ping led her volleyball team to Olympic gold in Brazil.

It’s never easy for    1    Asian 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 (短跑运动员) 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.

More impressively, a Chinese athlete    6    (achieve) a milestone in 2004,    7    Liu Xiang won a gold medal in Athens in the 110m hurdles. Inevitably (不可避免地), Su is compared 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 many major world    10    (competition)” he said.

Stephen’s grandfather built a simple basket by attaching a piece of plastic to a telephone pole along a narrow dirt road,     1     was near the small town of Grottoes. Stephen spent many childhood hours playing on this     2    (mud) basketball court, where he learnt to be creative and flexible as a player. The bumps and rocks that lined the road under the basket caused the ball to bounce in all directions,     3     which Stephen learnt to know where the ball     4    (go) and shoot with great accuracy.

    5    , Stephen was thought by many people to be too weak and too short     6    (follow)in his father’s footsteps. But he didn’t give up because     7    (play) basketball was his dream. He finally ended up playing college ball at a small, little-known school. His     8    (create) and perseverance made him Davidson’s star player.

He performed beyond everyone’s     9    (expectation) with his accurate shooting and continuous efforts. After receiving the Most Valuable Player award for two years in a row, Stephen explained his philosophy: What he wanted to do was just be himself. Inspiring others to believe in     10    (them), he showed that anything is possible through his self-belief, hard work and perseverance.

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 the    2    (invent) 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    (one) game. It was quite different from the basketball games of today. It had nine players on each team, and footballs    7    (use) instead of basketballs. Soon after, the game changed to five players on each side,    8     (play) special “basketballs” on the court.

    9    (unfortunate), 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.

Thousands of fans lined up in the middle of the night to get a glimpse of the Argentina soccer team that won the 2022 World Cup finals ahead of    1    is scheduled to be a day of celebrations in Buenos Aires.

Members of the team,     2    (lead) by captain Lionel Messi, were all smiles as they stepped down from the plane in Ezeiza. They were welcomed by rock band La Mosca singing Muchachos,     3    song that was written by a fan to the tune of an old song by the band. The    4    (fresh) crowned champions of the world boarded an open-top bus and some of them could    5    (see) singing the words to Muchachos.

The bus moved at a snail’s pace as fans surrounded the bus on a highway, eager    6    a glimpse of the players. The players slept at a hotel for a few hours before    7    (board) a bus later on Tuesday to head to the Obelisk, the landmark of Buenos Aires after the team won the country’s third World Cup, and    8    (it) first since 1986.

The World Cup and the success has brought much-needed good news for a country where almost four-in-10 people live in    9    (poor) because of economic depression for years.

President Fernandez said, “Let the happiness that    10    (unite) Argentina with so many countries in the world serve as an example: Our societies need unity and peace.”

Both Paul and I were huge fans of the NBA, and we used to play on the court     1    was next to our building. Paul’s favourite player     2    (be) Tyrone Bogues, who was only 1.6 metres tall, which made him the     3    (short) player ever in the NBA. Paul was only 1.6 metres tall too, and he used Bogues as his     4    (inspire), practising very hard. Although Paul tried     5    many times for making our school basketball team, our coach was not so sure, so Paul was still usually on     6    bench, which was really tough on him.

Our team was playing our main competitors this week. During the competition, a player and I crashed     7    each other and my knee hurt badly, which made me give up the game. The last quarter was about     8    (begin), and my team was behind by 10 points. With our team’ suggestion, our coach permitted Paul to play the game. All the extra hours that Paul had spent     9    (practise) alone paid off. He made shot after shot. When the game ended, our team had won by 2 points. Because of his excellent performance, Paul     10    (praise) by his coach and earned his place on the team.