With a new year rolling around, the sporting worlds begin a fresh new campaign to kick off their seasons. As well as the fierce competiveness that naturally accompanies such activities, sports can inspire bonding between their fans who dedicate their leisure time to watching their favourite sports stars. It’s no surprise that alongside Rio’s 2016 Olympics, global sports are developing more media coverage and growing in that spotlight they deserve. Here’s a list of a few professional sports that you may never have contemplated following, and why 2016 is the time to start.
1. Tennis Perhaps the most widely covered of the three in this article, tennis is by no means as mainstream as people assume. The Big Four Grand Slams (Australian Open, Roland Garros, Wimbledon and US Open) may get a little spotlight on the news and take up some day-time TV and radio but tennis is bigger than ever in the upcoming 2016 campaigns.
British tennis demonstrated a phenomenal run in 2015. The team winning the Davis Cup title in December last year (the first time the national team has won since 1936), Andy Murray securing his highest ranked position of World No. 2 to date, new senior players such as Kyle Edmund becoming big on scene by pushing World No. 16 David Goffin to a phenomenal five-set match, not to mention tennis dominating at the British Sports Personality of the Year Awards. British tennis is now primed for a fantastic year ahead in 2016.
However, tennis remains minimally aired in the UK (unless you have the money for a Sky Sports package). The year-long ATP campaigns and small-scale tournaments are not televised in the UK like they are in other countries. It would probably surprise you to hear that there has already been a tournament championship played with Serbian Viktor Troicki defeating Bulgarian Grigor Dimitrov in the Apia International Sydney competition mid-January. Tennis falls in comparison to the mainstream coverage of other popular sports such as men’s football, there are more players than just Novak Djokovic, Andy Murray and Serena Williams out there and therefore deserves more of a following.
With the Australian Open reaching its finals this weekend (30th& 31st January), it’s not too late to join the tennis following for what’s expected to be a ground-breaking year in this sport’s history.
2. Gymnastics
Gymnastics is a rapidly growing international sport. Whist Russia, China, Japan, Romania and the United States have dominated the sport for the past few decades, Great Britain’s team and individual competitors are swiftly storming the scoreboards.
Recent performances at the World Championships, hosted in Britain’s very own Glasgow this past winter, beautifully demonstrated the skills of our up and coming gymnasts. The talent shown by this country since the London Olympics goes even further than the legacies left by Beth Tweddle and Louis Smith. Both our women’s and men’s teams managed to qualify for the 2016 Rio Olympics after outperforming the Russian and Chinese teams – the reigning Olympic champions – with bronze and silver medals respectively. Max Whitlock, only 23, found himself contending with A-list sporting names such as Jessica Ennis-Hill and Mo Farah for the British Personality of the Year and fellow gymnasts Claudia Fragapane and Ellie Downie found themselves dominating the Junior British Personality of the Year Awards at only 16 years of age.
Whilst the scoring system for gymnastics may be unique compared to typical sports, the obvious talent demonstrated ranging from strength to balance to flexibility to elegance, makes gymnastics stand out from its sporting competitors. British gymnastics is set to storm the world at Rio and beyond – you’d be a fool to miss such remarkable talent.
3. Archery
Contrary to popular belief, extraordinary archery skills aren’t unique to Katniss Everdeen, Robin Hood and Legolas. Professional archery is a widely unexplored sport that definitely needs your attention this year.
Archery is perhaps the most unusual sport on this list and is by no means as simple as point and shoot. Competition conditions range between specialist bows such as recurve and compound, and from outdoor and indoor competitions. All conditions require different skills and whilst patience is a necessary quality for this sport that does not mean it lacks excitement.
In qualifications, Korean archer Park Sehui set a new women’s recurve world record (594/600) and both the 2016 women’s and men’s recurve semi-finals for the Indoor Archery World Cup held in Nimes, France saw tantalisingly close matches for the No.1s (Park and Brady Ellison) as they were taken to tie-break one-arrow shoot outs. Britain even produced a finalist in the Junior Competition. Bryony Pitman may have lost out on a gold medal by the skin of her teeth but only after trailing behind French competitor Melanie Gaubil by one point by the end of each set.
Triumphant efforts and valiant pushes demonstrate that British archery is slowly becoming a strong sport in its own right. All sporting legends start somewhere and though archery is fairly recent in the public eye of popular sports, I’d encourage you to keep an eye on the new generation of archers; you may see them dominating competitions in the near future.
Edited by Sarah Holmes
Sources:
Tumblr.com: http://karasgymnastics.tumblr.com/image/136984850075
Zachancell Blog: http://blog.zachancell.com/uo-tennis/
Archery360: http://www.archery360.com/category/fitness-nutrition/
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