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The late 19th century witnessed an expanding belief in sport as useful recreation and as a mean of interconnectivity between people and nations, while in industrialized societies equipment was standardized, local and national organizations were set up to govern play, and a doctrine of character-building declared sports to be a necessary endeavor for men. The revival of the Olympics in 1896 and the blossoming U.S. intercollegiate athletic system boosted many forms of amateur, or unpaid sports at the same time that professional sports (such as baseball, boxing, and bicycle racing) drew large numbers of spectators. Sports that were traditionally played only in specific countries became by legislative act or general acceptance, national sports, like baseball in the United States, bullfighting in Spain and Mexico, cricket in England, and ice hockey in Canada.
During the 20th century, sports took on an increasingly international flavor aside from the world championships for individual sports, like soccer's World Cup, large-scale international meets, such as the Pan-American Games and the Commonwealth Games, were inaugurated. Sports have correspondingly become increasingly politicized, as the boycott of the 1980 Moscow games by Western nations has shown, or the retaliatory boycott of the 1984 Los Angeles games by Soviet-bloc nations, an exchange brought on by Soviet actions in Afghanistan.
Despite the difficulties that rose over the past, sport events are considered today a great opportunity for individual countries to promote their cultures, politics and trade. The new terms of globalization and international relations came into the scene of economic evolution and affected sport's politics, regulations, communication and society as a whole, by using sports mass acceptance as a dominant tool for international negotiations and cultural exchange.
Jonathon Hardcastle writes articles on many topics including
Sports,
Games, and
Cooking
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