Sports & Games
Competitions, games and the athletes and history behind them.
Featured in Sports & Games
Start with these, then follow the links inside each article wherever they lead.
Olympic Games
The modern Olympic Games are a series of international multi-sport events. Considered among the biggest sporting events in the world, the Olympics are organised into distinct Summer and Winter Games, each featuring different sports.
Ancient Olympic Games
The ancient Olympic Games, or the ancient Olympics, were a series of athletic competitions among representatives of city-states and one of the Panhellenic Games of ancient Greece. They were held at the Panhellenic religious sanctuary of Olympia, in honor of Zeus, and the Greeks gave them a mythological origin.
Association football
Association football, commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 players who mostly use their feet to kick an inflated ball around a pitch. The objective of the game is to score more goals than the opposing team by moving the ball into the rectangular-framed goal which that team defends.
FIFA World Cup
The FIFA World Cup is an international association football competition among the senior men's national teams of the members of the Fédération Internationale de Football Association, the sport's global governing body. The tournament has been held every four years since the inaugural tournament in 1930, with the exception of 1942 and 1946 during and shortly after World War II. The reigning champion is Spain, who won their second title at the 23rd edition of the competition, the 2026 World Cup, by defeating the holders, Argentina.
Chess
Chess is a board game for two players, played on a square board consisting of 64 squares arranged in an 8×8 grid. The players, referred to as "White" and "Black", each control sixteen pieces: one king, one queen, two rooks, two bishops, two knights, and eight pawns, with each piece type having a different pattern of movement.
Go (game)
Go, Weiqi, or Baduk is an abstract strategy board game for two players in which the aim is to fence off more territory than the opponent. The game was invented in China more than 2,500 years ago and is believed to be the oldest board game continuously played to the present day.
Basketball
Basketball is a team sport in which two teams of five players each oppose one another on a rectangular court. Players compete with the primary objective of shooting a basketball through a hoop (a basket mounted to a backboard) at each end of the court.
Cricket
Cricket is a bat-and-ball game that is played between two teams of eleven players on a field, at the centre of which is a 22-yard pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two bails (small sticks) balanced on three stumps. Two players from the batting team, the striker and nonstriker, stand in front of either wicket holding bats, while one player from the fielding team, the bowler, bowls the ball toward the striker's wicket from the opposite end of the pitch.
Tennis
Tennis is a racket sport that is played either individually against a single opponent or between two teams of two players each (doubles). Each player uses a tennis racket strung with a cord to strike a hollow rubber ball covered with felt over or around a net and into the opponent's court.
Baseball
Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each, taking turns batting and fielding. The game occurs over the course of several plays, with each play beginning when a player on the fielding team, called the pitcher, throws a ball that a player on the batting team, called the batter, tries to hit with a bat.
Rugby union
Rugby union football, commonly known simply as rugby union or often just rugby, is a close-contact team sport that originated at Rugby School in England in the first half of the 19th century. Rugby involves running with the ball in hand.
Marathon
The marathon is a long-distance foot race with a distance of 42.195 kilometres, usually run as a road race, but the distance can be covered on trail routes.
Tour de France
The Tour de France is an annual men's multiple-stage road cycling race held primarily in France. It is the oldest and most prestigious of the three Grand Tours, which include the Giro d'Italia and the Vuelta a España.
Paralympic Games
The Paralympic Games or Paralympics is a periodic series of international multisport events involving athletes with a range of disabilities. There are Winter and Summer Paralympic Games, which since the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, South Korea, have been held shortly after the corresponding Olympic Games.
Sumo
Sumo is a form of competitive full-contact wrestling where a rikishi (wrestler) attempts to force his opponent out of a dohyō (circular ring) or into touching the ground with any body part other than the soles of his feet (usually by throwing, shoving or pushing him down). Sumo originated in Japan, the only country where it is practised professionally and where it is considered the national sport.
Martial arts
Martial arts are codified systems and traditions of combat. They are practiced for a number of reasons ranging from self-defense, street fighting, military, and law enforcement to non-violent exercising, ceremonial, competition; physical, mental, and spiritual development; entertainment; and to preserve the intangible cultural heritage of a nation.
Competitive swimming
Swimming is an individual or team racing sport that requires the use of one's entire body to move through water. The sport takes place in pools or open water.
Cycling
Cycling, also known as bicycling or biking, is the activity of riding a bicycle or other types of pedal-driven human-powered vehicles such as balance bikes, unicycles, tricycles, and quadricycles. Cycling is practised around the world for purposes including transport, recreation, exercise, and competitive sport.
Golf
Golf is a club-and-ball sport in which players use various clubs to hit a ball into a series of holes on a course in as few strokes as possible. The game was first played in the 15th century in Scotland, and as such, the country is often accredited as "the home of Golf".
Boxing
Boxing is a combat sport and martial art. Taking place in a boxing ring, it involves two opponents throwing punches at each other for a predetermined amount of time.
Formula One
Formula One is the highest class of worldwide racing for open-wheel, single-seater formula racing cars run by the Formula One Group and sanctioned by the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA). The FIA Formula One World Championship has been one of the world's premier forms of motorsport since its inaugural running in 1950 and is often considered to be the pinnacle of motorsport.
Ice hockey
Ice hockey, known simply as hockey in North America and parts of Europe, is a team sport played on ice skates, usually on an ice skating rink with lines and markings specific to the sport. It belongs to a family of sports called hockey.
Backgammon
Backgammon is a two-player board game played with counters and dice on tables boards. It is the most widespread Western member of the large family of tables games, whose ancestors date back at least 1,600 years.
Board game
A board game is a type of tabletop game that involves small objects that are placed and moved in particular ways on a specially designed patterned game board, potentially including other components, e.g. dice.
Royal Game of Ur
The Royal Game of Ur is a two-player strategy race board game of the tables family that was first played in ancient Mesopotamia during the early third millennium BC. The game was popular across the Middle East among people of all social strata, and boards for playing it have been found at locations as far away from Mesopotamia as Crete and Sri Lanka. One board, held by the British Museum, is dated to c.
Senet
Senet or senat is a board game from ancient Egypt that consists of ten or more pawns on a 30-square playing board.
Mancala
Mancala is a family of two-player turn-based strategy board games played with small stones, beans, marbles, or seeds, and rows of holes or pits in the earth, a board, or other playing surface. The objective is usually to capture all or some set of the opponent's pieces.
Video game
A video game, computer game, or simply game is an electronic game that involves interaction with a user interface or input device to generate visual feedback from a display device, most commonly shown in a video format on a television set, computer monitor, flat-panel display or touchscreen on handheld devices, or a virtual reality headset. Most modern video games are audiovisual, with audio complement delivered through speakers or headphones, and sometimes also with other types of sensory feedback (e.g., haptic technology that provides tactile sensations).
Jesse Owens
James Cleveland "Jesse" Owens was an American track and field athlete. He made history at the 1936 Olympic Games by winning four gold medals, setting individual Olympic records in each event, plus another as a member of the 400-meter relay.
Pelé
Edson Arantes do Nascimento, better known by his nickname Pelé, was a Brazilian professional footballer who played as a forward. Widely regarded as one of the greatest players in history, he was among the most successful and popular sports figures of the 20th century.
Serena Williams
Serena Jameka Williams is an American professional tennis player. She was ranked as the world No.
Usain Bolt
Usain St. Leo Bolt is a Jamaican retired sprinter.
Muhammad Ali
Muhammad Ali was an American professional boxer and activist. A global cultural icon, widely known by the nickname "the Greatest", he is often regarded as the greatest heavyweight boxer of all time.
Deep Blue (chess computer)
Deep Blue was a customized IBM RS/6000 SP supercomputer for chess-playing designed by computer scientist Feng-hsiung Hsu. It was the first computer to win a game, and the first to win a match, against a reigning world champion under regular time controls.
Mountaineering
Mountaineering is a set of outdoor activities that involves ascending mountains. Mountaineering-related activities include traditional outdoor climbing, skiing, and traversing via ferratas that have become sports in their own right.
Skiing
Skiing is the use of skis to glide on snow for basic transport, a recreational activity, or a competitive winter sport. Many types of competitive skiing events are recognized by the International Olympic Committee, and the International Ski and Snowboard Federation (FIS).
Guides in Sports & Games
The Olympic Games
From a religious festival in ancient Greece to the world's largest sporting event, and the politics that followed it.
The history of football
How a chaotic medieval village game became association football, the most popular sport in the world.
The history of chess
How a war game from India travelled through Persia and the Islamic world to Europe, and how computers changed it forever.
The science of exercise
What happens inside the body during exercise, how muscles and lungs adapt, and how much activity health bodies recommend.
The story of board games
From the Royal Game of Ur and senet to Go, backgammon and Monopoly, five thousand years of playing on a board.