History
The origin of this sport is tied to the decline of the ancient jeu de paume (jeu de paume au gant), ca. 1700. While the game evolved to the modern jeu de paume (with racquet, called real tennis in England) and eventually to tennis, rural alpine and pyreneean communities kept the tradition.
In the basque country the "pasaka" and "laxoa", local versions of the paume evolved to the peculiar style of the pilota: instead of playing face to face, with a net in the midfield, the basques began to fling the ball against a wall.
According the basque pilota historian Chipitey Etcheto, the first recorded matchs took place in Napoleonic times; it is believed that the game was close to currently rare specialty of "rebot".
The mid-19th century saw the explosion of the "pelota craze". The player "Gantxiki" is considered the original "father" of the chistera, the basket-shaped racquet which can propel the ball at incredible speeds, introduced around 1850.
The top champions of the end of the 19th century, like "Chiquito de Cambo" were immensely popular and the best paid sportsmen of their time. The first official competitions were organized in the 1920s, and led to the world championship in the 1950s.
Read more about this topic: Basque Pelota
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“A people without history
Is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern
Of timeless moments.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“In history the great moment is, when the savage is just ceasing to be a savage, with all his hairy Pelasgic strength directed on his opening sense of beauty;—and you have Pericles and Phidias,—and not yet passed over into the Corinthian civility. Everything good in nature and in the world is in that moment of transition, when the swarthy juices still flow plentifully from nature, but their astrigency or acridity is got out by ethics and humanity.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Anything in history or nature that can be described as changing steadily can be seen as heading toward catastrophe.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)