Baseball hits China
Plus a football club refusing to sacrifice its history and South African boxing.
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| Baseball is trying to tap into the lucrative Chinese market |
Most sports see China as a lucrative untapped market, and baseball is one of those that wants a piece of the action.
So before the start of the Major League season, two professional American clubs played a showpiece game in china.
It may have raised the sports profile in the middle kingdom, but it did not quite go to plan.
Melissa Chan reports.
FC St. Pauli
Football was traditionally a release for the working classes but now the likes of Abramovich, Glazer and Shinawatra – have transformed the sport into a ‘Billionaire’s playground’.
The gulf separating the haves and the have nots appears to be widening, yet one German club is refusing to sacrifice its history as the price for victory.
Sportsworld’s Carrie Brown went to find out more.
Venda boxing
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| Successful fighters gain hero-status in their villages |
The rules are simple – two fighters with bare fists do battle until one is knocked out or surrenders.
The Venda are a little known people from South Africa. For at least 300 years their young men have had the opportunity to prove themselves as warriors in a traditional fighting competition – Venda boxing.
Fighters like “killer” hold hero-status in their home villages.
Al Jazeera’s Rahul Pathak has more.
Everest explorer
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| Lebanese explorer Maxime Chaya tells his story |
Last week’s Sportsworld featured athletes competing in a marathon at the North Pole – literally the top of the world.
It is a place which many adventurers see as their ultimate goal.
Lebanese explorer Maxime Chaya is preparing to ski there next year.
He has already skied to the South Pole, conquered the seven peaks and become the first Lebanese to climb Mount Everest. This is his story.
This episode of Sportsworld airs from Monday, April 14, 2008
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