The World Games are an international multi-sport event comprising sports and sporting disciplines that are not contested in the Olympic Games. They are usually held every four years, one year after a Summer Olympic Games, over the course of 11 days. The World Games are governed by the International World Games Association, under the patronage of the International Olympic Committee.
Singaporeans participate in a wide variety of sports for recreation as well as for competition. Popular sports include football, swimming, track and field, basketball, rugby union, badminton, table tennis, and cycling. Many public residential areas provide amenities like swimming pools, outdoor spaces and indoor sport centres, with facilities for badminton, table tennis, squash among others.
Duff Gibson is a Canadian skeleton racer who competed from 1999 to 2006. He was born in Vaughan, Ontario. His father was born on December 13, 1937. At the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, He won the gold medal in the men's skeleton, narrowly beating out his teammate Jeff Pain. With his victory, the 39-year-old Gibson surpassed ice hockey player Al MacInnis as the oldest gold medalist in Canadian Winter Olympic history. More significantly, Gibson became the oldest individual gold medallist in the history of the Winter Games, a record previously held by Norway's Magnar Solberg, who was 35 when he won the gold medal in the 20 km individual biathlon event at the 1972 Winter Olympics in Sapporo; he held the record until Ole Einar Bjørndalen won gold at the 10 km biathlon sprint aged 40 at the 2014 Sochi Olympics. He retired immediately following the 2006 Games in Turin.
Judo was first included in the Summer Olympic Games at the 1964 Games in Tokyo, Japan. After not being included in 1968, judo has been an Olympic sport in each Olympiad since then. Only male judoka participated until the 1988 Summer Olympics, when women's judo was organized as a demonstration sport. Women judoka were first awarded medals at the 1992 Summer Olympics.
Mellisa Hollingsworth is a retired Canadian athlete who competed from 1995 to 2014. She won the bronze medal in the women's skeleton event at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin.
The 1989 World Games, commonly known as Karlsruhe 1989, were the third edition of the World Games, an international multi-sport event. This edition was held in Karlsruhe, West Germany.
Canada, represented by the Canadian Olympic Committee (COC), competed at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, China, from August 8 to 24, 2008. Canadian athletes had competed in every Summer Olympic Games since 1900 with the exception of 1980, which were boycotted in protest of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Canada sent 332 athletes in 25 sports, the seventh largest team at the games and Canada's largest since 1988. Canada did not send a team in handball, volleyball or basketball. Kayaker and 2004 Summer Olympics gold medalist Adam van Koeverden was the flag bearer at the opening ceremonies; Karen Cockburn bore the flag at the closing.
María Isabel Urrutia Ocoró is a former weightlifter, athlete and politician from Colombia. She won the first ever gold medal for Colombia at the Summer Olympic Games.
Kosovo made its Olympic debut as a member state in 2016. Its team is organized by the Olympic Committee of Kosovo (OCK), created in 1992 and recognized by the International Olympic Committee on 9 December 2014. It won its first medal in its debut appearance in 2016, when judoka Majlinda Kelmendi took gold in the women's -52 kg category. In the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, Nora Gjakova won gold in the women's judo -57 kg class, and Distria Krasniqi won gold in the women's judo -48 kg class.
France sent a team of 323 athletes to the 2008 Summer Olympics.
The 2008 Beijing Wushu Tournament was a wushu competition which was held from August 21 to 24, 2008 at the Olympic Sports Center Gymnasium in Beijing, China. The tournament was organised by the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games (BOCOG), the International Wushu Federation (IWUF), and the Chinese Wushu Association (CWA), and was held in tandem with the 2008 Summer Olympics.
Evgeny Alexandrovich Chigishev is a former Russian weightlifter.
Men's and Women's Artistic gymnastics have been contested at the Pan American Games since the 1951 edition. In 1987, Rhythmic gymnastics was introduced. In 2007, Trampoline gymnastics was added to the program.
The bodybuilding events at the 2009 World Games in Kaohsiung occurred between 18 and 19 July. 40 athletes from 17 nations participated in the tournament. The bodybuilding competition took place in Kaohsiung Cultural Center Jhihde Hall. The competition included both men's and women's events among seven different weight categories. It was conducted by the International Federation of BodyBuilding & Fitness.
This is the all-time medal table of the World Games as of the 2022 edition. In the history of the games, Russia has led the total medal count four times, and Italy three times. The United States have claimed that honor twice, while Germany also led the overall count twice in 1993 and in 2022. Ranked by gold, then silver, then bronze:
The World Games sports comprise all the sports contested in The World Games. Starting in Birmingham 2022, there was no distinction between official and invitational sports. José Perurena, IWGA President, stated, "In Birmingham, for the first time, invitational sports were no longer presented separately but were also part of the official programme." This is now The World Games policy.
Navab Nassirshalal is an Iranian retired weightlifter who won a gold medal in the men's 105 kg event at the 2012 Summer Olympics. He began weightlifting at the age of 15 and has also won a bronze medal in the 94 kg class snatch at the 2007 Asian Weightlifting Championships, silver in the 94 kg clean and jerk and bronze overall at the 2009 edition, and gold in the 105 kg category in 2012.
Medal events in both men's (4) and women's (2) bodybuilding were included in World Games I. They were held on July 30–31, 1981, at the San Jose Center for the Performing Arts in San Jose, California. The 1981 Games were the first World Games, an international quadrennial multi-sport event, and were held in California's Santa Clara Valley. In the bodybuilding competition, the preliminary rounds featured two-on-two competition. Point scoring was based on mandatory posing and optional posing determined by the athlete. 26 of the countries at these Games participated in bodybuilding, making it one of the most represented sports.
Jamaica competed in the 2019 Pan American Games in Lima, Peru from July 26 to August 11, 2019.
Ivory Coast, also known as Côte d'Ivoire and officially as the Republic of Côte d'Ivoire, competed at the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo. Originally scheduled to take place from 24 July to 9 August 2020, the Games were postponed to 23 July to 8 August 2021, because of the COVID-19 pandemic. It was the nation's fourteenth appearance at the Summer Olympics.
Andreas Münzer (AUT)
Francois Gay (SUI)
Wayne GRADY (USA)
Thorne Henderson (CAN)
Mirosław Daszkiewicz (POL)
Markus Vollert (GER)
Dong-Ki Han (KOR)
Daniel Ocussieu (FRA)
Alfonso Gomez (ESP)
Claudia Montemaggi (ITA)
Kay Caseley (GBR)