Sport

Football and the FA Cup

Football is the UK's most popular sport, and its clubs compete for more than just a place in the league table. Each country of the UK runs its own domestic leagues, with the English Premier League drawing some of the finest players in the world and a huge following from overseas. English and other UK clubs also test themselves against continental opposition in the UEFA Champions League. On the international stage, England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland field separate national teams, and rivalry between rival clubs and their supporters runs deep in towns and cities across the country.

Alongside the league programme sits the FA Cup, a knockout competition organised by the Football Association that dates back to 1871, making it the oldest football competition in the world. Clubs from across the football pyramid enter, from small amateur sides right up to the biggest Premier League names, and the format means an unfancied team can, in principle, knock out a far wealthier one on a single afternoon. The final has been played at Wembley Stadium since the ground first opened in the 1920s, and lifting the trophy there each May remains one of English football's great occasions.

Cricket

Cricket began in England and has since spread to be played seriously across many countries, particularly former parts of the British Empire such as Australia, India and the West Indies. A single match, especially at Test level, can run for up to five days and still end without a winner, which surprises many newcomers to the game. Its unusual pace and its detailed rulebook are often said to capture something of the British approach to fair play, and several cricket expressions, such as calling an awkward situation a sticky wicket, have worked their way into everyday English.

The most celebrated fixture in the sport is the Ashes, a series of Test matches played between England and Australia. The rules of the game itself are set out by the Marylebone Cricket Club, generally known as the MCC, which is based at Lord's cricket ground in London and has acted as the guardian of cricket's laws since the eighteenth century.

Rugby union, rugby league and the Six Nations

Rugby took shape in England in the early nineteenth century and remains widely played and watched across the UK. The sport split into two separate codes, each with its own rules, clubs and international teams: rugby union and rugby league. England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland each field their own national sides in both codes, with Northern Ireland's rugby teams combining with the Republic of Ireland to represent the island of Ireland as a whole.

Rugby union's leading international competition is the Six Nations Championship, contested every year between England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, France and Italy. Rugby league, by contrast, is best known in England for its club competition, the Super League, which stands as the sport's top domestic tier.

Tennis and Wimbledon

Lawn tennis as we know it today took shape in England during the closing decades of the nineteenth century, and the first dedicated tennis club opened in Leamington Spa in 1872. The sport spread quickly from there, and Britain remains closely tied to its early development. The Wimbledon Championships, held every year at the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club in south-west London, grew out of that same period and is the tournament most linked with British tennis. It has a stronger claim than any other to being the birthplace of the modern game: it is the oldest tennis tournament still running anywhere in the world. Wimbledon is also one of the four Grand Slam events, alongside the Australian Open, the French Open and the US Open, and it stands apart from the other three because it is the only Grand Slam still played on grass courts, a surface that rewards a faster, more attacking style of play than the clay or hard courts used elsewhere.

Golf and the Open Championship

Golf as it is played today grew out of a game first recorded in Scotland in the fifteenth century, and the country still calls itself the home of the sport. St Andrews, on the Scottish coast, carries that title most directly and its Old Course is treated as golf's spiritual headquarters. The game is played socially and competitively across the UK, with courses open to the public as well as private clubs.

The Open Championship is the major tournament that grew directly out of this Scottish tradition. First played in 1860 at Prestwick Golf Club, it is the oldest of golf's four major championships and remains the only one held outside the United States, rotating each year among a small group of coastal links courses in Scotland, England and Northern Ireland. It is organised by the R&A, golf's governing body outside the United States and Mexico, and its winner receives the Claret Jug.

Horse racing and the Grand National

Horse racing has taken place in Britain since at least Roman times, and the sport has long enjoyed royal patronage, with racecourses now found right across the country. Royal Ascot, a five-day meeting in Berkshire regularly attended by the Royal Family, and the Scottish Grand National at Ayr are among the best-known fixtures, and Newmarket in Suffolk is home to the National Horseracing Museum.

The Grand National, run each spring at Aintree near Liverpool, is the most famous of all British races. It began in 1839 as the Grand Liverpool Steeplechase, when a horse called Lottery won the first official running of the event. The race is a demanding steeplechase over some thirty jumps completed across two circuits of the course, and obstacles such as Becher's Brook have become well known for the challenge they pose to horse and rider. Because of its size, unpredictability and long history, it draws attention from people who follow racing all year round and from many who do not.

Athletics, rowing and motor racing

Athletics covers running, jumping and throwing events, and the UK has produced world-class performers across all three. Sir Roger Bannister became the first person ever recorded to run a mile in under four minutes, in 1954, a feat that stood as one of British sport's defining moments long before the era of televised athletics. Modern British athletes have continued that tradition on the track, winning major titles at world and Olympic level in distance running, sprinting and multi-event competition.

Rowing has a long amateur tradition in Britain and remains a strong Olympic sport. The best-known fixture is the annual boat race on the River Thames between crews from Oxford and Cambridge universities, a contest watched by large crowds along the riverbank each spring. Beyond this student rivalry, British rowers have dominated at Olympic level for decades, winning medals consistently across both men's and women's events.

Motor racing has been part of British sporting life since the earliest days of the car. Racing first took place on British roads and circuits in 1902, and the country went on to become a centre of engineering expertise for the sport, building and developing much of the technology used in Formula 1 cars around the world. Britain hosts a Formula 1 Grand Prix every year, and several British drivers have been crowned world champion, including Damon Hill, Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button.

The Olympic and Paralympic Games

London has hosted the summer Olympic Games three times, in 1908, 1948 and 2012, making the UK the only country to have staged them on three occasions. The 2012 Games were centred on a new Olympic Park in Stratford, east London, and Team GB finished third in the medal table, its best result in over a century of competing.

The Paralympic Games grew out of work carried out in Buckinghamshire rather than from the Olympic movement itself. Ludwig Guttmann, a German-born doctor who had fled Nazi persecution and settled in Britain, took charge of the new spinal injuries unit at Stoke Mandeville Hospital during the Second World War. Convinced that sport aided recovery and confidence, he organised a small archery competition for injured ex-servicemen and women on 29 July 1948, the same day the London Olympics opened. This event, known as the Stoke Mandeville Games, grew year on year and became international during the 1950s. In 1960 the competition was held in Rome alongside the Olympic Games and is recognised as the first Paralympic Games, with around four hundred athletes from twenty-three countries taking part. London staged the Paralympics in 2012 alongside the Olympics, continuing the practice of holding both events in the same host city.

Famous British sportspeople and their achievements

Several individuals stand out in British sporting history for records or victories that remain part of national memory. Jackie Stewart, a Scottish racing driver, won the Formula 1 world championship three times. Bobby Moore captained the England football team that won the World Cup in 1966, the country's only tournament win, achieved on home soil. Ian Botham captained the England cricket team and set a range of Test batting and bowling records that stood for years. Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean won Olympic gold for ice dancing in 1984 and took four consecutive world titles. Steve Redgrave won a rowing gold medal at five consecutive Olympic Games, a rare feat of endurance across a sixteen-year span.

Tanni Grey-Thompson, a wheelchair athlete, won sixteen Paralympic medals over five Games, eleven of them gold, and also took the London Marathon title six times while breaking thirty world records. Kelly Holmes won two gold medals in the 2004 Olympics and set several British and European running records. Ellen MacArthur, a yachtswoman, became the fastest person to sail single-handed around the world in 2004. Chris Hoy, a Scottish track cyclist, won six Olympic gold medals and one silver, alongside eleven world titles. David Weir, another wheelchair racer, won six Paralympic gold medals across two Games and also took the London Marathon six times.

Bradley Wiggins became the first British rider to win the Tour de France, in 2012, and went on to collect seven Olympic medals in total, with golds in 2004, 2008 and 2012. Mo Farah, a distance runner born in Somalia, won both the 5,000 and 10,000 metres at the 2012 Olympics, becoming the first Briton to take Olympic gold over the longer distance. Jessica Ennis won the 2012 Olympic heptathlon, a demanding combined event covering seven track and field disciplines, and holds several British athletics records. Andy Murray, a Scottish tennis player, won the US Open in 2012, the first British man to win a Grand Slam singles title since 1936; that same year he took Olympic gold and silver and was runner-up at Wimbledon. Ellie Simmonds won Paralympic swimming gold at both the 2008 and 2012 Games, having been the youngest member of the British team in 2008.

Important sporting venues

London's Wembley Stadium is England's national football stadium and one of the largest in Europe, holding 90,000 spectators. Owned by the Football Association, it stands on the site of an earlier Wembley Stadium that opened in 1923 and served as the main venue for the 1948 Olympics before it closed in 2000 and was rebuilt, reopening in 2007. As well as hosting England's home internationals and cup finals, it stages rugby league finals, boxing and major concerts.

Cardiff's national stadium, built for Wales in 1999 and originally called the Millennium Stadium, is now known as the Principality Stadium after a sponsorship deal. It seats around 74,000 and has a fully retractable roof, a rare feature that lets it switch between an open-air ground and a covered arena. It is the home of Welsh rugby union and has also hosted Wales's football internationals, several FA Cup finals while Wembley was being rebuilt, and a Champions League final.

Beyond these two national grounds, sport in the UK relies on a wide network of local venues. Councils and private businesses run swimming pools, tennis courts, football pitches, dry ski slopes and gyms in towns across the country, giving ordinary people the chance to play the same sports they watch on television.