Sportsin60

Your sports world.
In sixty seconds.

THE DAILY EDITION

SPORTSIN60 · HISTORY

When sports began

A timeline of the moment each game became a sport we still recognize — first rules, first championship, or first recorded contest. Folk versions often came earlier.

Ancient world

  1. c. 3000 BCE

    Wrestling

    Tomb art in Egypt and Mesopotamia shows grappling as contest and ritual — among the oldest sports we can still point to.

  2. 776 BCE

    Athletics

    The first recorded Olympic Games at Olympia open with a foot race. Running, throwing, and jumping become a public calendar, not just training for war.

  3. 688 BCE

    Boxing

    Fist fighting joins the ancient Olympics. The ring and the gloves come later; the idea of a judged bout is already there.

  4. c. 600 BCE

    Polo

    A cavalry game on the Persian plateau. Kings play it as sport and as a way to keep a horse army sharp.

First written rules

  1. 1457

    Golf

    Scotland’s parliament bans “golfe” because too many people are playing instead of practicing archery. St Andrews and the first printed rules follow in the centuries after.

  2. 1744

    Cricket

    The Laws of Cricket are written down in London. Village games had been around for generations; now there is a code the whole country can argue about.

The 1800s boom

  1. 1845

    Baseball

    New York’s Knickerbocker Club writes the rules that turn a sandlot game into baseball — bases, three strikes, and a diamond.

  2. 1863

    Soccer

    The Football Association meets in London and bans handling the ball. Association football splits from rugby and becomes the world’s game.

  3. 1869

    Football

    Rutgers beats Princeton in the first college football game. Yale’s Walter Camp later draws the line of scrimmage that makes American football its own sport.

  4. 1871

    Rugby

    The Rugby Football Union forms after years of schools playing by different handling codes. The try, the scrum, and the oval ball get a home.

  5. 1875

    Hockey

    Indoor ice hockey is played at Montreal’s Victoria Skating Rink. A puck replaces the ball so the windows survive — and a Canadian winter sport is born.

  6. 1877

    Tennis

    Wimbledon stages the first championships on grass at the All England Club. Lawn tennis, patented a few years earlier, now has a fortnight the world still watches.

  7. 1891

    Basketball

    James Naismith nails peach baskets to a Springfield gym balcony so students can play indoors in winter. Dribbling and cutting the bottoms out of the baskets come later.

  8. 1894

    Motor racing

    Paris to Rouen is the first organized auto contest. The cars are new; the urge to see which one is fastest is not.

  9. 1895

    Volleyball

    William Morgan invents Mintonette in a Massachusetts YMCA — a gentler indoor game than basketball. It is soon renamed volleyball.

Modern championships

  1. 1903

    Cycling

    The first Tour de France turns bicycle racing into a three-week national epic. Road racing had started in the 1860s; now it has a myth.

  2. 1950

    Formula 1

    The World Championship begins at Silverstone. Grand Prix racing had decades behind it; Formula 1 gives it a season, a points table, and a name.

Still being invented

  1. c. 1958

    Skateboarding

    California kids bolt roller-skate trucks to wooden boards when the surf is flat. Sidewalk surfing becomes its own sport — parks, contests, and a later Olympic debut.

  2. 1965

    Pickleball

    On Bainbridge Island, Washington, Joel Pritchard, Bill Bell, and Barney McCallum invent a backyard game with ping-pong paddles, a wiffle ball, and a lowered net. It is now one of the fastest-growing sports in North America.

  3. 1965

    Snowboarding

    Sherman Poppen screws two skis together for his daughter and calls it the Snurfer. Jake Burton Carpenter later turns the toy into a contest sport the Olympics will take in 1998.

  4. 1968

    Ultimate

    Students at Columbia High School in New Jersey write rules for a self-officiated disc game. Ultimate spreads across college quads with one unusual law: the spirit of the game.

  5. 1969

    Padel

    Enrique Corcuera builds a walled court at his home in Acapulco and mixes tennis with squash. Padel spreads through Spain and Argentina, then the rest of the world — same scoring as tennis, played inside a cage.

  6. 1971

    BMX

    Kids in Southern California race Schwinn Sting-Rays on dirt tracks, copying motocross. Bicycle motocross gets a sanctioning body, a jump style, and an Olympic berth in 2008.

  7. 1974

    Triathlon

    The San Diego Track Club stages a swim-bike-run as a break from the usual. Ironman Hawaii follows in 1978; the Olympics add the triathlon in 2000.

  8. 1976

    Mountain biking

    Marin County riders bomb fire roads on clunkers in the Repack races. Fat tires and gears for dirt become a global sport, then an Olympic one.

  9. 1993

    MMA

    UFC 1 in Denver asks which martial art wins in a cage. Mixed martial arts turns that experiment into a scored sport with weight classes, rounds, and a world audience.

  10. 1996

    Beach volleyball

    Two-a-side on sand had been a California beach game for decades. Atlanta 1996 puts it on the Olympic program and makes it a sport with a global tour.

  11. 1997

    Esports

    Quake’s Red Annihilation tournament pays a Ferrari to the winner and treats a video game like a spectator sport. Arenas, leagues, and world championships follow.

  12. 2008

    Spikeball

    Roundnet — better known as Spikeball — is commercialized as a trampoline net and a ball for four players. Beach volleyball energy, no sand required.

Years are widely cited turning points, not the only time people played the game.