Dear Sports Fan,
When and how did the Asian Games start and how are they different from the Olympics?
Thank you,
Jeehae
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Dear Jeehae,
The Asian Games are a lot like the Olympics. They’re held every four years and they are an international multi-sport event. Right now they are happening in Incheon, South Korea, where they will continue until October 4. They vary from the Olympics mainly because they only welcome competitors from Asian countries instead of the whole world. They also have some very interesting different sports.
According to Wikipedia, the Asian Games were born after World War Two out of a desire to find a non-violent way of expressing “Asian dominance.” The first games were held in 1951 in New Delhi and consisted of fifty seven events in six sports: “Athletics, aquatics—broken into diving, swimming, and water polo disciplines—basketball, cycling—road cycling and track cycling—football, and weightlifting” although there was also a non-medal event that crowned the “Mr. Asia of 1951” based on “physical development, looks, and personality”. From the beginning, the competition was modeled on the Olympics. People even called the first Asian Games the, “First Asiad” similarly to how an Olympics may be called the “14th Olympiad” or “26th Olympiad.”
The Asian games are not alone in being an Olympic-like international sports event restricted to some smaller group. There are many other similar events, including the Francophone games, the All-Africa Games, and the Islamic Solidarity Games. There’s even a Bolivarian Games for “countries liberated by Simón Bolívar.” There are 45 countries eligible to compete in the 2014 Asian Games and all have sent teams. The two biggest teams are the Chinese with 894 participants and South Korea with 883. The smallest are Brunei with 11 and Bhutan with 16. Saudi Arabia is the only country not to send any women as part of their team.
One of the key differences between the Asian Games and the Olympics are the inclusion of some sports more popular in Asia than in the rest of the world. Here are some examples:
- Wushu — a form of martial arts that includes a solo performance judged sort of like figure skating and an opponent based sparring component.
- Soft tennis — which is just like tennis but played with (wait for it…) “soft rubber balls.”
- Sepak takraw — which is Volleyball with a woven rattan ball where players are not allowed to use their hands, just like in soccer.
- Kabaddi — a sport that sounds totally fascinating to me. It seems to be a combination of capture the flag, tag, wrestling, and holding your breath.
If you’re anything like me, or even if you’re not, you might be wanting to watch some of this now, especially the Kabaddi! I can’t quite tell if you can watch events live anywhere (and even if you could, you’d have to wake up in the middle of the night to do so from the United States,) but you can get highlight packages at eversport.tv. The official website for the 2014 Asian games is here and you can also follow them on Twitter.
Happy rooting,
Ezra Fischer