China hosts World Games under the gaze of pandas

The 2025 World Games will take place from August 7 to 17, 2025, in Chengdu, China, and will bring together approximately 5,000 athletes from more than 100 countries competing in 34 sports and 60 disciplines.

The World Games are a multi-sport event, bringing together disciplines not included in the Olympic Games program. The first edition took place in 1981 in Santa Clara, United States.

After Birmingham, an American city in Alabama, which hosted these World Games in 2022, it is now the turn of the city of Chengdu, China, to organize the event. The mascots of these World Games are Jin Zai, a golden monkey, and Shu Bao, a giant panda. Indeed, Chengdu is nicknamed "the city of hibiscus" and is home to a major panda research center.

The unique feature is that athletes compete in sports that are sometimes little known to the public, such as drone racing, duathlon, cheerleading, tug-of-war, fistball, and korfball.

But there are also more traditional sports such as archery, billiard sports like snooker or carom, dance sports, kickboxing, frisbee and even underwater sports.

(MH with MaSi - Source : Marca - Photo : © Unsplash)