奥运会体育项目
The World's Fastest Racket Sport: Badminton 羽毛球
As far back as the 5th century BC, the Chinese were playing Ti Jian Zi, or shuttle-kicking, a game played with the feet. The shuttlecock was there, but it remains unclear whether it led to the game of battledore and shuttlecock that arose about five centuries later in China, Japan, India and Greece. The battledores were the early versions of today's racquets. By the 1600s, battledore and shuttlecock had developed into a popular children's game. It soon became a favourite pastime of nobles and the leisured classes of many European countries, becoming known as "jeu de volant" on the continent.
Badminton was contested as a demonstration sport during the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich. It debuted as a full medal sport in 1992 at Barcelona. Men and women compete at the Olympics in both singles and doubles, and the events have been dominated by Indonesia, China, and Korea. It is recorded that the fastest speed of badminton is 332 kilometres per hour which is made by Chinese double men's players Fu Haifeng.
racket: 名词，文中解释为“球拍”。它还可以作为动词表示“过着花天酒地”的生活。
battledore and shuttlecock: 板羽球游戏
racquet: 名词，球拍游戏。
pastime: 名词，娱乐，消遣
debut: 名词和动词，解释为“初次登场，亮相”。
The World's Crazy Sport: Soccer 足球
Game in which two 11-member teams try to propel a ball into the opposing team's goal, using any part of the body except the hands and arms. Only the goalkeeper, when positioned within the penalty area in front of the goal, may use hands and arms. The game's first uniform set of rules was put in place in 1863, when England's Football Association was created. Professional leagues began appearing in the late 1880s, first in England and then in other countries. The Fédération International de Football Association (FIFA) was founded in 1904, and has hosted the World Cup every four years since 1930. Football has been included in the Olympic Games since 1908. Now played on all continents in over 150 nations, with over 40 million registered players, it is the world's most popular ball game.
propel: 及物动词，解释为“推进”。常用词组“propel sb. to do sth.”,意为 “促使某人做某事”。
penalty area: 罚球区
registered player:注册球员 register作为动词时用于短语 “register with sb. or sth.”,意为“到…注册，登记”
Weightlifting 举重
An ancient sport as old as mankind, embodying the most direct manifestation of human strength, weightlifting has not only flourished, but developed into a modern sporting discipline for the 21st century. The apparent simplicity of lifting the barbell from the ground and over the head in one or two movements is deceiving. Weightlifting requires a combination of power, speed, technique, concentration and timing.
Super heavyweight lifters normally claim the title of World's Strongest Man or Woman. However, kilo per kilo, the lightest weightlifter is often the strongest.
Men's weightlifting was on the programme of the first modern Olympic Games in Athens in 1896, and women participated for the first time ever at the Olympic Games in Sydney in 2000.
Lifters perform two types of lifts - the snatch and the clean and jerk. In the snatch, they lift the bar to arm's length above their head in one movement. In the clean and jerk, they lift the bar to their shoulders, stand up straight, then jerk the bar to arm's length above their head. Lifters are allowed three attempts at each lift, and their best snatch and best clean-and-jerk figures are added to determine the winners.
embody: 动词，包含，体现。
manifestation: 名词，具体表现。其动词形式为manifest
Barbell: 杠铃
snatch: 抓举
Clean and jerk: 挺举
A Small Ball Creates a stir: Table Tennis 乒乓球
Table tennis developed in the late 19th century, although its origins are not well documented. It is usually considered to be of English origin, and is described as a "miniature" tennis that was played indoors in the 1880s and 1890s. The rules of the game were codified in 1922 by a Cambridge University student, Ivor Montagu (1904-1984).
In January 1926, five nations - Austria, England, Germany, Hungary, and Sweden - met to form the International Table Tennis Federation. The World Championships began in the same year.
The sport is widely practiced throughout the world. Table tennis made its Olympic debut as a full medal sport during the Olympic Games in Seoul. It was never contested at the Olympics as a demonstration sport. Since the late 1950s, the Chinese have been by far the dominant country in table tennis.
There are four table tennis events on the Olympics programme: singles and doubles for men and women. The mixed doubles event is not held at the Olympics, but it has been an event at the World Championships since 1926.
stir: 名词，文中解释为“轰动”。作为动词时，可解释为“搅拌”， 还有一个固定短语 stir up trouble, 意为“挑衅”。
document：动词，文中意为“得到证明”。通常作名词，意为“文件”。
miniature: 形容词，文中解释为“微型的”。还可作名词，意为“缩小的模型，缩影”等。
codify: 动词，意为“法律化”。还可译为“编码”。
