World Games
The World Games are an international competition in sports that are not part of the competition program of the Olympic Games, but still have a high global distribution.
They are held every four years at different locations each year after the Summer Olympics. Host is the International Association for World Games ( IWGA ) under the auspices of the International Olympic Committee.
Although the World Games as the Olympic Games are an international sporting event and allow competition between the top athletes in the world take place, they are characterized by two features:
- Participating athletes are representatives of their sport and are selected by the relevant international sports federation and not of umbrella organizations in their home countries.
- It existing facilities are already used as venues for the competitions.
The event consists of selected sports that do have Olympic recognition, but are not part of the competition program of the Olympic Games. Parallel programs are offered at which the public can participate, in which case the general prevalence of each sport as well as the exchange between inhabitants and from around the world participating / visiting athletes and officials is the goal. In addition to official sports that are decided by the IWGA General Assembly, there is invitational sports, which are taken from the respective local host in the program (usually due to good chances of success of local teams or a hoped-for great spectator interest ).
History
In 1980, the World Games Council established by various international sports federations, whose sports waiting to be included on the Olympic competition program. The purpose of the event is to provide sports that are not represented at the Summer Olympic Games with a platform. 1981 saw the first official games held in Santa Clara (USA). Three years before the so-called Pre World Games in Seoul (Korea ) in 1978 discharged.
In 1996 was renamed the World Games in Council International World Games Association ( IWGA ). Since 2000, the games held under the patronage of the IOC.
The World Games were held twice so far in Germany. In Karlsruhe, the 1989.html">World Games 1989 in Duisburg World Games 2005, in which 3000 athletes speak in 40 non-Olympic sports that were played at 25 venues. On 17 March 2008 the IWGA under 20 competitors were the cities of Duisburg and Dusseldorf the bid to host the 2013.html">World Games 2013. On December 8, 2008, however, the city of Duisburg said the alignment of financial reasons again, whereupon Dusseldorf also withdrew the application.
Sports
Some of the sports were once olympic or were later to Olympic sports such as triathlon. Until recently, the staging of sports at the World Games was to be a prerequisite, later represented in the Olympics. Due to the self-imposed restriction on the IOC to have no more than 10,000 athletes participate in future Olympic games, new sports to Olympic competition disciplines such as 7- rugby at the Summer Olympic Games in 2016 but currently only in exceptional cases.
The World Games, it distinguishes between competitive sports and the invitation sports (formerly demonstration sports). Invitational sports are not included in official competition program of the IWGA (and are not of this requires), but take " invitation " of the respective host city to the World Games in part, such as the Japanese martial art Aikido ( is in the omitted competitions ).
The following sports were at the last World Games (2013 ) official sports: