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Poland
Exciting sporting facts
The Past
Kylies and boomerangs
The word 'boomerang' puts everyone in mind of a curved
piece of wood that is thrown in such a way that it returns
- and, of course, it makes us think of Australia.
But there are many different kinds of boomerangs. The
hunting boomerang, the so-called Kylie, does not return
to the thrower. This is probably a good thing because
it could do quite a lot of damage! A Kylie weighed up
to one kilogram and could measure up to 1.3 metres in
length and 2 centimetres in thickness. Despite this,
it could be thrown over a distance of up to 200 metres.
Surprisingly, the oldest known Kylie wasn't discovered
in Australia, but in the Oblazowa Cave in the Polish
Carpathian Mountains. It dates back an amazing 23,000
years and was made from mammoth tusk! It weighs around
800 grams. Tests with a replica have shown that the
Polish Kylie is the real deal - its trajectory made
it ideal for hunting. When thrown from the hip, the
replica never went any higher than about 1.5 metres
and would almost certainly have hit an animal.
Despite the amazing find in Poland, Australia is still
regarded as the home of the boomerang because it was
there that boomerangs were most widely used and developed.
Native Australians used the lighter returning version
for games and possibly for a warm-up before using the
much heavier hunting boomerang. It was also used for
stirring up animals, which would then be killed with
the Kylie.
The Incredible
Extraordinary records
Ball artist
On 11 November, 1999, Jacek Guzowski 'kept a tennis
ball in the air with his feet for the longest time ever'
- 5 hours, 28 minutes and 59 seconds, to be precise.
His feet touched the tennis ball 35,000 times - an average
of 107 times per minute and 1.8 times per second.
International sporting events 2004
8 - 16 May: 57th Peace Race
This year, the Peace Race, a cycling event, starts in
the Belgian capital Brussels and continues through Germany
and Poland into the Czech Republic, where the contestants
are expected to arrive in Prague on 16 May. The 57th
Peace Race symbolically links the Eastern European countries
with the present EU member states, whom they will join
as full members this year.
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Things to do
Wszystkie dzieci skamieniale (Fossilised Children)
What you need:
A ball.
How to play:
All children stand in a circle.
One child stands in the middle and throws the ball in
the air.
From that point on, the other children must not move.
The child who throws the ball shouts: "All children
are fossilised". When the ball hits the ground,
everyone must freeze in the position they are in - as
if they were fossilised. If anyone moves, they are out.
The last child left in the game takes over from the
child in the middle.
Lis (The fox)
What you need:
A skipping rope - which is the fox's tail.
How to play:
All children stand in a circle not much further away
than the end of the rope.
The person leading the game stands in the middle and
holds one end of the rope in their hand.
The game begins when the person starts spinning around
with the rope.
All the other children must try to jump over the 'fox's
tail' without touching it.
At first, the rope is swung very low to the ground,
but the game gets harder as the rope is swung around
higher and higher.
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