Sports A
The first Paris–Rouen race occurred in 1869; the Tour de France was inaugurated in 1903. The big success of the latter impressed the Giro d’Italia and a number of other long-distance races. Football is the world’s most popular ball recreation, but, wherever American economic and tradition influence has been dominant, the attraction to baseball, basketball, and volleyball has tended to exceed that to football. Moreover, if numerous terra-cotta figures could be trusted as evidence, polo was additionally performed by aristocratic Chinese ladies. Cultural variation amongst black Africans was far larger than among the Arab peoples of the northern littoral. Ball video games had been rare, but wrestling of 1 type or one other was ubiquitous. For the Nuba of southern Sudan, ritual bouts, for which men’s bodies were elaborately decorated as well as rigorously trained, were the first supply of male standing and prestige. The Tutsi and Hutu of Rwanda have been among the peoples who staged con