Sport
Main article: Sport in AustraliaMany Australians are passionate about sport, and it forms a major part of the country's culture, particularly in terms of spectating, but also in terms of participation. Cricket is popular in the summer, and football codes are popular in the winter. Some strong Australian traditions, such as grand finals and footy tipping are shared across all codes.
The sporting successes of Australians at elite levels in such events as the Olympic Games, Commonwealth Games, World Cup competitions in cricket, rugby union, rugby league, field hockey, netball, and major tournaments in tennis, golf, surfing, and other sports are a source of great pride for many people in Australia. Leading sportspeople such as Don Bradman, Dawn Fraser, and Cathy Freeman last in the cultural memory of Australia for decades and are accorded high civilian honours and public status.
Read more about this topic: Culture Of Australia
Famous quotes containing the word sport:
“For generations, a wide range of shooting in Northern Ireland has provided all sections of the population with a pastime which ... has occupied a great deal of leisure time. Unlike many other countries, the outstanding characteristic of the sport has been that it was not confined to any one class.”
—Northern Irish Tourist Board. quoted in New Statesman (London, Aug. 29, 1969)
“Every American travelling in England gets his own individual sport out of the toy passenger and freight trains and the tiny locomotives, with their faint, indignant, tiny whistle. Especially in western England one wonders how the business of a nation can possibly be carried on by means so insufficient.”
—Willa Cather (1876–1947)
“Rabelais, for instance, is intolerable; one chapter is better than a volume,—it may be sport to him, but it is death to us. A mere humorist, indeed, is a most unhappy man; and his readers are most unhappy also.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)