National Sports From Around The World

Many countries have unofficial national sports, such as football in the UK or rugby in New Zealand.
Only around 13 countries have official national sports,
and these are sometimes very different from their most popular sports.

For example, the official national sport of Argentina is an unusual sport called pato (1).
Pato is a bit like basketball, because the players try to throw a ball through a hoop to score a goal.
The big difference between pato and basketball is that in pato, the players must ride horses.
The ball has handles, so it is easy to hold, but it’s also easy for other players to pull it away from you.
It can be dangerous because players can fall under the feet of the horses.
The winner is the team with most goals at the end of six eight-minute periods.

In kabaddi (2), the national sport of Bangladesh, there are two teams, one on each side of a field.
The teams take turns to send a player, called a raider, to the other side of the field. To score a point,
the raider must touch a player on the other side and then get back home to his side. He has to be quick,
because he can’t breathe when he’s on the other side of the field, and he has to say “kabaddi,
kabaddi” again and again during a raid to show that he isn’t breathing.
If a raider breathes before he gets home, the other side gets a point.
It’s difficult for the players on the other side. They must hold hands with each other,
which means it’s harder for them to get away from the raider. If they don’t hold hands,
the raider’s side gets a point. The team with the most points at the end wins.

Canada has two national sports, ice hockey in the winter and lacrosse (3) in the summer.
In modern lacrosse, there are ten players on each team. The players use a stick to catch,
carry and throw the ball and to score as many goals as possible. The game started around 1,500 years ago,
when there were between 100 and 1,000 players in each team-
and the games could continue for two or three days!