Sports Facts for Kids
Fun facts from the world of sports
Olympic gold medals are not made of solid gold! They are actually made mostly of silver and only plated with about 6 grams of gold. The last time pure gold medals were given out was at the 1912 Stockholm Olympics.
Basketball was invented in 1891 by Dr. James Naismith using two peach baskets nailed to a gym balcony. Players had to climb a ladder to retrieve the ball every time someone scored because the baskets had no holes in the bottom!
At Wimbledon, tennis balls are changed every nine games because they gradually lose their bounce as the felt wears down. A total of about 54,000 balls are used at each Wimbledon tournament.
The original FIFA World Cup trophy, called the Jules Rimet Trophy, was stolen in England just four months before the 1966 World Cup. A dog named Pickles sniffed it out wrapped in newspaper under a garden hedge!
Butterfly is the second fastest swimming stroke after freestyle, but it is the most physically demanding. Swimmers using butterfly burn nearly twice as many calories per minute as those using backstroke.
At the 1976 Montreal Olympics, Romanian gymnast Nadia Comaneci scored the first ever perfect 10 in Olympic gymnastics history. The scoreboard wasn't even set up to display the number 10, so it showed 1.00 instead!
A Test cricket match can last up to five full days, yet it can still end in a draw! The longest cricket match ever played lasted 14 days in 1939 and was still not finished.
The original rugby balls were made from inflated pig bladders covered in leather. The oval shape came about because pig bladders are naturally not perfectly round, which is why rugby balls are different from footballs.
Judo's name means 'gentle way' in Japanese, even though it involves throwing opponents to the ground. It was created in 1882 by Jigoro Kano, who believed the best way to win was to use your opponent's own strength and energy against them.
An NFL football has eight laces, which help quarterbacks grip and spin the ball to create a spiral. A properly thrown spiral can rotate at about 600 revolutions per minute, making it more accurate and aerodynamic.