New Zealand Vacations

Sports in New Zealand

The range of sports played in New Zealand reflect to a large extent its British colonial heritage. Some of the most popular sports in New Zealand, namely rugby, cricket and netball are primarily played in British Commonwealth countries.
New Zealand's most popular sports are rugby (primarily rugby union but also rugby league), soccer, cricket, and netball (the top ranking female sport by participation); golf, tennis, rowing and a variety of water sports, particularly sailing. Snow sports such as skiing and snowboarding are also popular. Equestrian sports are highly popular especially with women and participation numbers begin to overhaul rugby and other contact sports in older age groups.

Some care needs to be taken when interpreting it. For example, 'Top Sports and Physical Activities' gives Rugby Union as the fifth most popular sport for New Zealand adult men with 137,100 participants, and soccer as twelfth most popular with 83,800. Neither Rugby Union nor Soccer appear in the top 15 sports for adult women. On the other hand 'Participation in Sport' states that 158,100 New Zealand adults participated in Rugby Union in the previous 12 months, and 143,300 New Zealand adults participated in Soccer. A difference in 60,000 seems quite large.

The top 5 sports played by boys (5-17) in clubs are:
Soccer (17%)
Rugby Union (16%)
Swimming (14%)
Cricket (8%)
Hockey (8%)

The top 5 sports played by girls (5-17) in clubs are:
Swimming (17%)
Netball (13%)
Horse riding (10%)
Tennis (8%)
Soccer (6%)

The top 5 sports played by men are:
Golf (26%)
Cricket (15%)
Tennis (14%)
Touch football (14%)
Rugby union (11%)

The top 5 sports played by women are:
Netball (11%)
Tennis (10%)
Golf (9%)
Touch football (7%)
Skiing (7%)

Rugby union
Rugby is not class bound in New Zealand, as in the United Kingdom where it is often associated with middle and upper classes. Many New Zealanders associate it with their national identity, and it has the largest spectator following of all sports in New Zealand. Rugby may crudely be said to occupy the place occupied by soccer in most other countries.
New Zealand's national rugby team, the All Blacks, has the best winning record of any national team in the world. The All Blacks traditionally perform a haka—a traditional Maori challenge—at the start of international matches. This practice has been mimiced by several other national teams, notably the national rugby league team and the basketball teams.
Outside of test matches, there are two widely followed competitions:

• The National Provincial Championship (NPC) involves only New Zealand teams and occurs mainly during the winter months.

• The Super 12, which will become the Super 14 in 2006, is a more recent competition involving teams from New Zealand, Australia and South Africa.

Cricket
Cricket is the highest profile summer sport in New Zealand. The national competition is not nearly as widely followed as the case with rugby, but international matches are watched with interest by a large proportion of the population. Historically, the national cricket team has not been a successful as the national rugby team. New Zealand played its first test in 1930 but had to wait until 1956 to win its first test. The national team began to have more success in the 1970s and 1980s. New Zealand's most famous cricketer, the fast bowler Richard Hadlee who was the first bowler to take 400 wickets in test cricket, came from this era.

Olympic Games
The country is internationally recognised as achieving extremely well on a medals-to-population ratio at Olympic Games and Commonwealth Games. See, for example, New Zealand Olympic medalists and New Zealand at the 2004 Summer Olympics.

New Zealand's most celebrated Olympian is probably middle distance runner Peter Snell, who three gold medals and broke several world records during the 1960s.

Yachting, America's Cup
Auckland hosted the last two America's Cup regattas (2000 and 2003). In 2000, Team New Zealand successfully defended the trophy they won in 1995 in San Diego, but in 2003 they lost to a team headed by Ernesto Bertarelli of Switzerland whose Alinghi was skippered by Russell Coutts, the expatriate Kiwi who helmed the victorious Black Magic in 1995 and New Zealand in 2000. Coutts and Brad Butterworth, along with several other Team New Zealand members, defected to Bertarelli's Alinghi team, taking with them a wealth of experience that allowed the new team to win the America's Cup on the first challenge. Coutts has since been dismissed from the Alinghi team; he fought a court battle with Bertarelli to allow him to sail in the 2007 America's Cup contest in Spain, but reached a settlement that will keep him out of that contest.

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• New Zealand
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This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Sports in New Zealand ".