Introduction to the Universiade

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FISU is an international university sports Federation that organizes Universiade which is an international sports event. This event comprises three primary competitions that include the world University championships, the Winter Universiade, and the summer Universiade. Let’s find out more about Universiade.

At the beginning of the 1920s, the planning for the Universiade was initiated. By the end of 1923, in Paris, the world University Sports Congress was organized. During this event, Congress had a meeting and decided to organise the International Universities’ games for the first time the next year.

The next year, the international universities’ games were organized for the first time in Warsaw. And this included three events namely fencing, swimming, field and track. However, the Games was organised every now and then. By the end of 1939, 8 sessions were held in total.

After 1939, the game was not organized because of World War 2. Once again, the games were resumed after 8 years in 1947. Since 1951, things changed on the international level, which resulted in the division of games into the west and the East.

In the west, the event was named International Student Sports Games. On the other hand, it was named Youth Student Sports Games, in the East. It is important to note that each camp had its own games.

First Event

In Italy, the first Universiade was organized in 1959. From more than 40 countries, 985 athletics took part in the games. Since then, the event had been organised every couple of years. Interestingly enough, the Universiade had been organised 20 times by 1999.

Officially, the competition included many games such as volleyball, basketball, tennis, fencing, gymnastics, water polo, diving swimming, and track and field. However, the host country had the liberty to add more games. For instance, Bulgaria decided to include wrestling to the list of games. Similarly, Mexico included football and Japan included judo.

The Development Process

In Chamonix, France, the winter Universiade was organized in 1960. In the beginning, the Winter Universiade and the Summer Universiade were organised every couple of years. However, they have been organised on an annual basis since 1981.

By 1999, there had been 19 sessions of the Winter Universiade. They included a lot of games such as Snowboarding, Nordic Biathlon, ice Hockey, winter biathlon, platform skiing, Cross Country skiing, alpine skiing, figure skating, track speed skating, and speed skating, just to name a few.

The Participation of China

During the first Universiade, China took part in some of the track and field games in 1959. For the next couple of years, china decided not to send any delegation. However, China was a full member of the organization in 1975. Since 1977, china has been part of the university events.

Popularity

Since the Universiade is the largest comprehensive sports event after the Olympics, it is popular all over the world as far as importance is concerned. Therefore, it has been rising in popularity since 1959. And great athletes have been taking part in these sports from different countries of the world.

Since 1960, athletes have broken 18 world records in swimming and track and field. These World Records were set in summer universities.

So this was an introduction to the Universiade. Hope you enjoyed reading this article.

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Source by Dong Wong