DRIFTING

A driving technique and to a motorsport where the driver intentionally over steers, causing loss of traction in the rear wheels through turns, while maintaining vehicle control and a high exit speed. A car is drifting when the rear slip angle is greater than the front slip angle prior to the corner apex, and the front wheels are pointing in the opposite direction to the turn (e.g. car is turning left, wheels are pointed right or vice versa), and the driver is controlling these factors. As a motor sport, professional drifting competitions are held worldwide. Drift racing challenges drivers to navigate a course in a sustained sideslip by exploiting coupled nonlinearities in the tire force response. Drifting competitions are judged based on line, angle, speed, and show factor. Line involves taking the correct line, which is usually announced beforehand by judges. The show factor is based on multiple things, such as the amount of smoke, how close the car is to the wall or designated clipping point, and the crowd's reaction. Angle is the angle of a car in a drift, speed is the speed entering a turn, the speed through a turn, and the speed exiting the turn; faster is better.

SURFING

Surfing is the act of riding down a breaking wave, gathering speed from the downward and forward movement. Most commonly, the term is used for a surface water sport in which the person surfing moves along the face of a breaking ocean wave (the "surf"). However, surfing is not restricted to saltwater, but can sometimes take place on rivers, using a standing wave. This event was created in the 1700's where European travelers in Tahiti used planks of wood. Two major subdivisions within contemporary stand-up surfing are long boarding and short boarding, reflecting differences in surfboard design and riding style. The art of surfing was first observed by Europeans in 1767, by the crewmembers of the Dolphin at Tahiti. Later, Lieutenant James King, wrote about the art when completing the journals of Captain James Cook upon Cook's death in 1779. When Mark Twain visited Hawaii in 1866 he wrote “In one place we came upon a large company of naked natives, of both sexes and all ages, amusing themselves with the national pastime of surf- bathing.”

GO KARTS

Go karts were first created in the United States in the 1950s with the majority of historians crediting Art Ingels as the inventor. He built his first go kart in California in 1956 and it was during this post-war period where airmen raced these go karts as a way to pass the time. They are usually raced on scaled-down circuits. Karting is commonly perceived as the stepping stone to the higher and more expensive ranks of motorsports. Karts vary widely in speed and some can reach speeds exceeding 160 miles per hour (260 km/h),while go-karts intended for the general public in amusement parks may be limited to speeds of no more than 15 miles per hour (24 km/h). A KF1 kart, with a 125 cc 2-stroke engine and an overall weight including the driver of 150 kilograms has a top speed of 85 miles per hour (137 km/h). It takes a little more than 3 seconds to go from 0 to 60 mph with a 125 cc shifter kart (6 gears), with a top speed of 115 miles per hour (185 km/h) on long circuits.

F1

Formula One was first defined in 1946 by the Commission Sportive Internationale (CSI) of the FIA, forerunner of FISA, as the premier single seater racing category in worldwide motorsport. It was initially known as Formula A, but the name Formula One was widely used early on and became official in 1950.In 1950, as an answer to the Motorcycle World Championships introduced in 1949, the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) organized the first ever official World Championship for Drivers using the Formula One rules. The organization of the championship, to be held across six of the 'major' Grands Prix of Europe, plus the Indianapolis 500, was a mere formalization of what had already been developing in Grand Prix racing during the previous years. It was the Italian teams of Alfa Romeo, Ferrari, and Maserati which were best positioned to dominate the initial years of the championship. Other national manufacturers – such as the French manufacturer Talbot or the British effort BRM – competed, although less successfully. A number of private cars also took part in local races.

RALLY

Rallying is a form of motor competition that takes place on public or private roads with modified production or specially built road-legal cars. This motorsport is distinguished by running not on a circuit, but instead in a point-to-point format in which participants and their co-drivers drive between set control points (stages), leaving at regular intervals from one or more start points. Rallies may be won by pure speed within the stages or alternatively by driving to a predetermined ideal journey time within the stages. The term "rally", as a branch of motorsport, dates from the first Monte Carlo Rally of January 1907. Until the late 1920s, few if any other events used the term. Rallying itself can be traced back to the 1894 Paris-Rouen Horseless Carriage Competition (Concours des Voitures sans Chevaux), sponsored by a Paris newspaper, Le Petit Journal, which attracted considerable public interest and entries from leading manufacturers. Prizes were awarded to the vehicles by a jury based on the reports of the observers who rode in each car; the joint winners were Panhard et Levassor and Peugeot.

BADMINTON

Badminton gets its name from Badminton House in Gloucestershire, England — the home of the Duke of Beaufort, where the sport was played in the last century. Before Badminton House, there was a game called poona (a game played by British army officers stationed in India). Before poona, there was jeu de volant played on the European Continent, before that, battledore and shuttlecock, and, before that, Ti Jian Zi — as you can see, it’s not easy tracking the lineage of the sport we now call badminton! The origins of badminton date back at least two thousand years, a surprisingly long history for one of the Olympics’ newest sports! Worldwide popularity for the sport surged only after badminton’s Olympic debut at Barcelona in 1992. The first major tournament was the Thomas Cup (world men’s team championships) in 1948.

CARROM

The word "carrom" probably originates in Timor in south east Asia. From there it travelled with the Portuguese who found it to be a convenient description for the Malabar coast of India. It is also the name of a particularly delicious fruit (star fruit) and by the late eighteenth century the English speaking world was familiar with the word in the context of the game of 'carrom billiards', a game played on a snooker type table without pockets. A little more time passes and the word 'carrom' becomes prominent in English usage, thanks to the growing popularity of billiards, to mean 'hitting one thing on to another'. More time passes and the word 'carrom' becomes the now more familiar 'canon' in English usage . By the time 'canon' was in usage in English 'carom' was becoming the standard name for a variety of games that form the basis of this book.