Types of sports

In our article “Types of sports” you will learn about the variety of sports, as well as their international, national and group classifications.

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A sport is a particular kind of competitive activity that has evolved over time and develops as an independent discipline according to its own rules.

According to the world’s sports encyclopedias, there are more than 8,000 sports in the world. Of course, most of them have national affiliations and are not as popular around the world as Olympic sports.

Due to the annual growth of sports, each nation (country) is trying to create its own independent classification, which distributes them according to their popularity among the population. Russia is no exception, in our country there is “All-Russian Registry of sports”.

There are also international classifications. The most popular classifier is the IOC (International Olympic Committee). The IOC created its registry for the organization and holding of the Olympic Games, and the inclusion of a sport in the registry is based on certain criteria and rules. One of the criteria is its popularity (in at least 25 countries).

As for our All-Russian Registry of Sports, there are four sections for classification:

1. Recognized sports (17 types);
2. All-Russian sports (142 types);
3. National sports (8 types);
4. Military-applied and service-applied sports (22 types).

The total number of sports in WRBC is 189, and the disciplines are more than 5,000 (!). For example, a popular game in the world “Cricket” is in the section of recognized sports, because it is not popular in our country (the popularity in the world is ≈ 2.5 billion fans, 2nd place after soccer with 4 billion fans).

All over the world, sports are also classified into certain groups, which differ in the number of participants, their actions, qualities, degree of risk, use of technical means. Examples of classifications:

1. Gaming sports are active competitions whose main goal is to defeat an opponent. Gaming sports are divided into two subspecies:
   1. Individual, such as: “Darts“, “Golf.”
   2. Team sports such as: “Basketball”, “Football”.
2. Cyclical sports are essentially the repetition of monotonous movements aimed at movement. For example: “Short-track”, “Rowing”;
3. Martial arts are different types of martial arts and self-defense of different origins. For example: “Boxing”, “Hand-to-hand combat”;
4. Power sports are athletic disciplines that test a competitor’s strength by various methods. For example: “Kettlebell lifting”, “Bodybuilding”;
5. Extreme sports are sport disciplines characterized by high risk and high adrenaline levels. For example: “Mountaineering”, “Rock climbing”;
6. Complex-coordination sports are sports disciplines in which the leading role is given to the physiological abilities of the athlete to coordinate his or her movements qualitatively. For example: “Figure Skating”, “Synchronized Swimming”;
7. Technical sports are sports disciplines in which the main criterion is skill in operating a sporting technical apparatus. For example: “Aviation sports”, “Bullet shooting”;
8. Applied sports are sports disciplines, which are based on military and economic skills, and on which competitions are held. For example: “Military Sports Games”, “Orienteering“;
9. Cybersports are competitions on computer video games and can be either individual or collective. For example: “Dota 2”, “World of Tanks”, “FIFA”.

If we take a closer look at Olympic sports, they are divided into two types:

Winter Olympic sports

Summer Olympic sports

The Olympic roster is constantly being edited to remove obsolete sports from the roster, while the list is updated with more modern and popular sports. For example, already at the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles there will be only 28 sports. Excluded are such sports as Boxing, Weightlifting and Modern Pentathlon.

Recently intellectual sports have also been gaining popularity, as they are a great simulator for the mind. The Intellectual Games (World Mind Sports) are held under the auspices of the international association IMSA. In the foreseeable future the games are planning to get the Olympic status – the Intelimpian Games.

Intellectual sports

Changes of rosters take place on an annual basis in other organizations: international and national. The classification of sports fully reflects the diversity of our world, changes taking place in it, development and popularization of sports in general.