Sport in Slovakia is influenced by its climate and geography; popular summer sports include soccer, tennis, volleyball, swimming, cycling and hiking, popular winter sports include skiing and snowboarding. The most watched sports in Slovakia are soccer, ice hockey and tennis. The country features a typical post-Eastern Bloc system, where sport is being financed primarily from the state budget. In 2012, the state will pay 30,402,634 euro to over 7,500 different sporting clubs.
Internationally, the most successful sport in Slovakia is ice hockey where currently, as of 2012, the country is ranked as the sixth best team in the world by the IIHF World Ranking.
Read more about Sport In Slovakia: History, Description, Slovak Sports in World Rankings
Famous quotes containing the words sport in and/or sport:
“Sport in the sense of a mass-spectacle, with death to add to the underlying excitement, comes into existence when a population has been drilled and regimented and depressed to such an extent that it needs at least a vicarious participation in difficult feats of strength or skill or heroism in order to sustain its waning life-sense.”
—Lewis Mumford (1895–1990)
“Sweet Auburn, loveliest village of the plain,
Where health and plenty cheered the labouring swain,
Where smiling spring its earliest visit paid,
And parting summer’s lingering blooms delayed,
Dear lovely bowers of innocence and ease,
Seats of my youth, when every sport could please,
How often have I loitered o’er the green,
Where humble happiness endeared each scene.”
—Oliver Goldsmith (1730?–1774)