4 Olympic Sports Explained

The Avengers resident bowman Hawkeye’s recent Hollywood debut should sharpen the appeal of this 10,000-year-old sport rooted in hunting and war.

Rule School:

Archers are tasked with firing 72 arrows in timed phases of six each, with four minutes to shoot in each phase. The targets are placed 70 meters away and are separated into different point zones, with the small, center, gold ring being worth the most.

Watch out for: 

In the team competition, checkout the Robin Hoods and Maid Marians from South Korea. They already have a double three-peat going with both sexes owning gold since Sydney 2000. The Ladies stranglehold on the top of the Olympic podium dates back even further (Seoul '88), so, if they win in London, it'll be the gals seventh straight.

Take the light saber duel between Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader in The Empire Strikes Back, add a dash of Inigo Montoya’s gallant swordsmanship from The Princess Bride, and a pinch of the flirty sabre-rattling ripostes between Antonio Banderas and Catherine Zeta-Jones from The Legend of Zorro, remove all fear of suffering a severe injury, and bam! You’ve got Olympic fencing.

Rule School:

Points are awarded for each touch of a fencer’s opponent with their weapon. The first fencer to reach 15 points or be in the lead after regulation time is up is the victor.

While traditional fencing powerhouses in France, Hungary, and Italy may be a cut ahead of the competition, there are other nations that can handle a weapon. Oregon’s Mariel Zagunis became only the second American to win fencing gold in 2004 (the last being back in 1904) when she won the individual sabre event. She repeated the feat in Beijing four years later. Now 27 and at the top of her game, Zagunis will be gunning for her third straight gold.

A far cry from basement ping-pong (or wiff-waff, as the English called the game when they invented it originally), Olympic-caliber athletes must have lightening-fast agility and reaction time in order to slap, slice, and spin slam balls over the net with the velocity and movement of a Jonathan Papelbon splitter.

Service switches sides every two points and every one point once the score reaches 10-10. Games go up to 11 points, but can go much higher as competitors must be up by two points to seal the deal, and matches are decided in a best of seven series format.

China has cleaned up since table tennis was added to the Olympic slate in 1988, capturing 20 of the 24 gold medals up for grabs. 

Also known as European handball or Borden ball, it’s basically basketball played on an oversized court (40-by-20 meters) with a smaller ball, and goals instead of hoops. Scoring comes fast and furious in this very physical seven-on-seven pass, dribble, and shoot-it-past-the-goalkeeper-driven game. Scores balloon into the ballpark of 30-25 more.

While only the goalie is allowed in the crease territory, players can jump into the airspace of this area, as long as they begin their jump from outside the zone and chuck the ball before landing.

A European podium sweep is very likely on the men’s side, with only a handful of countries outside of the continent even in the field. Modern titans France, Iceland, and Spain, who finished in the top three spots in Beijing, are all in the mix. On the women’s side, keep an eye on Norway and South Korea.