Unit 6 The Spirit of Sports
Expansion 6
Exercise 2
Tony is with me today in our studio.
He is a retired national gymnast.
He had been a successful gymnast
and had won a lot of medals.
Now he is a coach in a primary school.
He likes gymnastics so much that
he wants to help more children learn it.
Today,he is here to talk to our listeners
about his sport.
Tony, many people like watching the gymnastics
event during all kinds of games.
It's a sport that requires strength,
skills and art.
But many people aren't quite sure
about the rules of the sport.
Could you tell our listeners something
about the gymnastics events at the Olympics?
Exercise 3
First of all, Olympic gymnastics are divided
into two types,
artistic and rhythmic.
Both men and women compete in the artistic
event,and only women compete
in the rhythmic event.
Could you explain to our listeners
the main differences between the artistic
and rhythmic gymnastics?
Certainly.
As I said earlier,both men and women
compete in artistic gymnastics
and they use different types of equipment.
Men compete in six different events
and women compete in four.
Do gymnasts compete in teams
or in individuals in the artistic event?
Both teams and individuals compete
in the artistic event.
I see.
Many people love watching gymnastics,
but they find the scoring
difficult to understand.
How does the scoring work?
Scores are given based on the difficulty of
the routine and the performance of the gymnast.
Then their scores are added up to
give a final score.
The team with the most points wins.
Now, what about rhythmic gymnastics?
This event is only for women
and it combines gymnastics and dance.
And could you tell me
if this is an individual or team event?
It's both.
Individuals and teams perform a routine
according music with different objects,
like a ball or a rope.
How do you know who the winner is?
The judges score the individuals
and teams for the difficulty of the routine
and how artistic it is.
The person or team with the highest score wins.
Thanks Tony for taking the time to
come to our studio.
Let's go now to the artistic gymnastcs events
in Athens...
Roundup 6
Exercise 2
At the 2004 Olympics, Liu Xiang won the gold
medal in the men's 110 meters hurdles
with a world-record time of 12.91 seconds.
This was a unbelievable success because China
had only won one men's athletics medal before-
Zhu Jianhua's bronze medal in the high jump
in Los Angeles in 1984.
A Chinese male athlete had never won
an Olympic gold medal before.
Xing Huina achieved another notable success
in Athens when she won the gold medal in the
women's 10,000 race with a personal best time
of 30 minutes 24.36 seconds.