(Newswire.net — January 30, 2020) —
Sports have always been a vital part of the African continent and recently, Africa is gaining more traction and success in these fields. Let’s go over some of the most popular sports in Africa.
Football
Africa loves football like mobile betting in this sport too. The sport came to Africa in the late nineteen century when the colonialists brought it. The popularity of football can be seen in its simplicity since all that is needed is a ball and no further investments are required. Therefore, this sport has found its way across the entire continent rather quickly. Currently, African football is becoming stronger and there have been numerous world-known African football players. A first FIFA World Cup on the African continent occurred in 2010 in South Africa.
Athletics
At the 1908 Olympic Games, Reggie Walker, a South African runner won the gold medal. This labelled athletics as a very popular sport in Africa. As African countries started gaining independence from the European colonizers, they started to become a part of the international athletics stage. Athletics is one of the sports that really pushed Africa in the international spot. Kenya and Ethiopia have a lot of famous runners and even World Record holders such as David Rudisha who hold the record for 800-meters race.
On the IAAF All-Time Medal Table on World Championships, Kenya holds the second place with 151 medals and Ethiopia is 6th with 85 medals.
Wrestling
Wrestling dates back over three thousand years in Nubia. It is very popular in Western Africa. In Senegal, wrestling is the number one sport even ahead of football. Since Senegal is also quite popular in West Africa, their wrestling is popular in neighbouring countries too. The sport originated a long time ago in the rural areas where farmers would wrestle for fun and when there was no rain, they would go to cities looking for jobs. The people from the city were willing to pay them to watch wrestling and bet on it.
Rugby
Rugby is very popular in the former British colonies such as South Africa. The sport emerged in 1995 in South Africa when the post-apartheid country won the World Cup and Nelson Mandela, who became a symbol of all that is good, wore a shirt with a number 6 for Francois Pienaar, the white South African player to decrease racial tensions.