Countdown to the Football World Cup in Brazil!

Football fans

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The 20th FIFA World Cup will be held in Brazil from 12 June to 13 July 2014. It is an international men's football tournament held every four years.

It will be the second time that Brazil has hosted the competition, the previous being in 1950. This is the fifth time the tournament will be staged in South America.

A total of 64 matches are to be played in twelve cities across Brazil in either new or redeveloped stadiums.

Spain is the defending champion, having won its first world title by defeating the Netherlands 1–0 in the 2010 final.

Click HERE to watch a BBC video on Nelson Paviotti!

Football ("soccer" in American) sometimes brings out the best in people. Nelson Paviotti, who is a lawyer, lives in Campinas, Sao Paulo. He is the biggest fan of his national team: Brazil. For the past twenty years, he has only worn outfits consisting of the colours of the Brazilian national flag because he promised to only wear these colours if Brazil won the world cup in 1994. He has of course decorated his home especially for the upcoming 2014 World Cup in Brazil…

Questions:

1. What do you think of Nelson’s fanaticism?
2. Which national team do you support and which nation do you think will win the 2014 World Cup?
3. How big a sports fan are YOU?!

Assignment 1:

Give a one-minute oral presentation on an aspect of Brazil that really interests you (its history, geography, social mix, leading figures, religious practices, customs, sporting legends, or recent social unrest, etc.).

Assignment 2:

Write a comment to this blog giving your World Cup predictions.

Assignment 3:

Write a comment to this blog giving your opinion of the 2014 World Cup (matches, players, results, supporters, organization, etc.).

Diana Nyad... une naïade!

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Swimmingly...

Does Phelps need help?

Recent improvements in performances are mainly due to the athletes’ equipment. Restrictions have been taken in some sports on the use of this new kit; that way, improved results will be reached due to the efforts of the athletes, not because of the high tech gear.

Swimmers’ wetsuits in particular have had radical improvements made to them. On 12^th  February 2008, just before the Olympics in Beijing, Speedo put its new competitive swimsuit on sale: the LZR Racer, which FINA approved. Thanks to NASA and the Australian Institute of Sport, Speedo designed the LZR Racer as the first fully “ultrasonically welded” swimsuit. Ultrasonic welding is a fast and inexpensive assembly technique for materials like plastic. It reduces the muscle oscillation and vibration of the skin of the swimmer during his race. Experiments show that this swimsuit decreases by 5% the drag of the swimmer and his oxygen consumption. This obviously results in improved performance time: a year after the release of this swimsuit, 108 world records were broken (e.g. the Frenchman Alain Bernard beat the world 100m and 50m freestyle records wearing the LZR at the European Championships in Eindhoven). Almost all the swimmers wore the LZR Racer during the Olympics Game in 2008...  

Swimsuits that are completely covered in polyurethane appeared in 2009; these give the swimmer better flotation and also decrease water resistance. This organic molecule is a urethane polymer. Urethane is characterized by the reaction of an iso-cyanate and an alcohol molecule.

The Jacked is the swimsuit which has overtaken the LZR Racer’s ability to improve the swimmer’s technique. It is composed of polyurethane while the LZR Racer is just ultrasonically welded. Using Jaked, French swimmer Frederick Bousquet, swam in less than 21 seconds the 50 m freestyle in April 2009 at the French Championship.

In light of the incredible results of the new swimsuits, a lot of swimmers used the polyurethane swimsuits such as the Jacked and Arena x-glide during the 2009 world championships, in Rome ; the result was that a lot of records were easily broken thanks to those revolutionary swimsuits. The Jaked combination created controversy when it appeared. Bob Bowman, the coach of Michael Phelps (greatest swimming champion of all time) declared : "It took me five years to get Michael from 1:46 to 1:42 on 200m freestyle, and this guy has done it in 11 months (talking about German swimmer Paul Bidermann who beat the world 200m freestyle record). That's an amazing training performance. I'd like to know how to do that…"

Following the 2009 world championships, FINA decided to ban integral swimsuits. Since then, swimmers, at all levels, are only allowed to wear non-polyurethane jammers during competitions. The controversy continues however; recently, an Arena jammer swimsuit was also banned…

Article by Antoine Jourdet, Massillon

Scotland the Brave!

Wimbledon highlights: click HERE!

Sport for all?

 

Within the next three years, Brazil will host two major events: the FIFA World Cup in 2014 and the Rio Olympic Games in 2016. This shows that Brazil has truly become an emerging nation. It now has the strongest economy in Latin America, and the world’s seventh. It will probably become one of the five largest in the world in the decades to come. Its current GDP per inhabitant is $10,200 which puts Brazil in 64th position according to World Bank data.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-19249588

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-19206308

However, since 2010, according to the United Nations, more than 10,000 slum-dwelling families have been displaced because of the upcoming events. The slums are simply razed to the ground to make room for parking lots, the Olympic village, media centers, etc. Some people have been relocated, but only in cities dozens of kilometers from their place of work. The political leaders of Rio believe that "these slums devalue the city, causing esthetic and environmental damage". Since Eduardo Paes, the mayor of Rio, brought back the Olympic flag from London, Brazil has become the focus of the world’s attention. Paes is hoping the Olympics will help get him reelected. None of the evicted residents of the favelas, none of whom can even afford the ticket prices for the Olympics, is likely to vote for him…

Article by Pierre Laubry and Maxence Houdelot

Born to run!

Click HERE to start running!

There are no football hooligans in North Korea!

Click HERE to read the article from the BBC!