1) Установите соответствие между заголовками 1 — 8 и текстами A — G. Используйте каждую цифру только один раз. В задании один заголовок лишний. 1. Crazy but safe
2. An eager fan
3. Everybody wins
4. Mutual success
5. The oldest sport
6. The roots of skating
7. A record breaker
8. Very dangerous
A. People have been skating since the 9th century but the first skates were rather unusual — they were made of animal bones. The earliest bone skates were found in a lake in Sweden. Wooden skates appeared in the 14th century. Iron skates were introduced in the 17th century. The first steel skates were sold in the 1850s. So skating has long been a means of travel in the countries with long cold winters, such as Norway, Sweden, Russia, Finland and Holland. In the 18th century skating became not only a means of travel but also a popular sport.
B. Want some more strange facts? How do you travel and how many kinds of transport do you know? A British woman has travelled from the top to the bottom of Britain using 73 kinds of transport. During her six-week trip she used a dog sled, a canoe, an ambulance, a bicycle, a camel and even a lawn mower. Other transport types included a wheelbarrow, stretcher, shopping trolley, and stilts.
C. Five years ago a Dutch architect built a very unusual house in Africa. It’s shaped like a football. ‘Maybe I am crazy but I have a passion for football,’ he says. He built his house in Malawi because he just likes Africa and would like to stay on the continent forever. Standing on a three-metre-tall brick wall, the architect’s house has become a popular tourist attraction.
D. Zorbing is a new exciting sport. It’s popular in New Zealand, Australia and many other countries. A zorb itself is a huge plastic ball (3-3,5 metres tall) which contains another ball. There is a small entrance hole so you can squeeze into the smaller ball. The ball rolls down the hill and so do you. A zorb can reach up to 50-60 km an hour when it’s rolling down. All people from children to their grandparents can do it. Kids are usually braver than their parents. The adults usually worry a lot and scream loudly though they understand perfectly well that there is a cushion of air between them and the ground, which will protect them.
E. Street hockey is fast and fun, and you don’t need any ice. It’s popular in the USA because you can play it all year and in lots of places: car parks, basketball courts, empty streets. You wear tennis shoes, not ice skates. And you can use a ball or a puck. But the tactics and rules are similar. Professional ice-hockey teams sponsor street hockey for young people. So the teens get great equipment and uniforms. And the ice-hockey teams get future fans.
F. Historians found many facts that running, jumping and throwing had been held in many ancient countries: Egypt, Assyria and of course, Greece. Ancient Olympic games included mostly athletic events. It’s a well-known story about marathon running when a man covered more than forty kilometers, running to tell the people about their victory.
G. In show jumping a horse and a rider must jump several different fences and water pits in a certain period of time. The fences are made of wooden bars and other materials. If the horse knocks down the bars or lands in water, or refuses to jump, or falls — all these are penalized. Also, if a rider does not start within one minute after the signal, he loses the right to compete further.