The World Games in Kaohsiung 2009: Introduction

After Taipei, Kaohsiung is the second largest city in Taiwan and this year the city hosted the 2009 World Games. Beijing may have won the right to host the Olympic Games in 2008 but Kaohsiung won the bid for the World Games. Never heard of the World Games? Well, the World Games are held quadrennially in the years following the Olympic Games. These World Games are really a showcase for a variety of sports and athletic pursuits that aren't as popular as those that make up the Olympic Games. In some cases sports have migrated from one to the other Games over the years. In other cases some of the sports on the agenda of the 2009 World Games were included for the first time in either the Olympics or World Games. And what kind of lesser-known sports are we talking about? Here is a list I found at The International World Games Association website:

• Aikido
• Air Sports
• Archery
• Billiards
• Body-Building
• Boules Sports
• Bowling
• Canoe
• Casting Sport
• Climbing
• Dance Sport
• Fistball
• Flying Disc
• Gymnastics
• Handball
• Hockey
• Ju-Jitsu
• Karate
• Korfball
• Life Saving
• Netball
• Orienteering
• Powerlifting
• Racquetball
• Roller Sports
• Rugby
• Squash
• Sumo
• Surfing
• Tug of War
• Underwater Sports
• Water Ski

The majority of these titles are the names of the events although some are categories which can be further expanded upon. For example, Gymnastics is an umbrella term for five individual events: Acrobatic Gymnastics, Aerobic Gymnastics, Rhythmic Gymnastics, Trampoline Gymnastics, and Tumbling Gymnastics. If you've never heard of Tumbling Gymnastics, that's okay. Most people have probably never heard of the World Games. I only know of it because there was a Commodore 64 computer game based on it (although that computer game was more of a parody, including events like pillow-fighting and pogo-sticking).

While the World Games are relatively unknown compared with the behemoth that is the Olympic Games, they are gaining in popularity with every rendition enacted. Here is a table with a few pertinent statistics demonstrating the growth of the World Games since their inception:

The World Games in the Past

Year	City	Total Sports	Total Nations	Total Participants
1981	Santa Clara (USA)	18	n/a	1265
1985	London (GBR)	23	n/a	1550
1989	Karlsruhe (GER)	19	n/a	1965
1993	The Hague (NED)	25	69	2275
1997	Lahti (FIN)	30	78	2600
2001	Akita (JPN)	31	93	3200
2005	Duisburg (GER)	38	89	3400
2009	Kaohsiung (TPE)	31	105	4800

I found those statistics at the official World Games Kaohsiung 2009 website. Speaking of Kaohsiung, here's a picture of a Kaohsiung landmark:

At 347.5 metres the Tuntex Sky Tower is currently the second-tallest building in Taiwan after the Taipei 101. Interestingly the pronged design (there is a gap between the two bottom sections) was inspired by the Chinese character for 'tall' ['gao']. Personally, the idea of basing the shape of a skyscraper on a letter or a symbol seems like something straight out of a fictional movie or cartoon; for example, the evil overlord Zorg would live in a structure with the shape of a giant 'Z'. But the Tuntex Sky Tower certainly is distinctive.

The view of the 'Flying Dragon' - the World Games Main Stadium from the World Games MRT station (MRT stands for Mass Rapid Transit or Metropolitan Rapid Transit). Lots of trees here. Nice.

From the World Games MRT station you walk up the street toward the main stadium and in the centre of this photo is the tail end of the skeletal 'Flying Dragon'. I have no idea what that red twisty thing is. It could be an architectural rendering of an impression of flames, or a structure based on the triple-helic DNA structure that dragons might have. Or perhaps the organising comittee liked someone's architectural impression of a red twisty thing and so they had it constructed and stuck in the ground near the flying dragon. Maybe.

Nothing special about this photo. It's just a cool image. If I was feeling more pretentious I might tell you that this photo represents the other crucial aspect of the games - the 'they' in "If you build it they will come". But I had oatmeal for breakfast and so I'm not feeling particularly pretentious today.