Unit 6 The Spirit of Sports Expansion 6 Exercise 2 Tony is with me today in our studio. He is a retired national gymnast. He had been a successful gymnast and had won a lot of medals. Now he is a coach in a primary school. He likes gymnastics so much that he wants to help more children learn it. Today,he is here to talk to our listeners about his sport. Tony, many people like watching the gymnastics event during all kinds of games. It's a sport that requires strength, skills and art. But many people aren't quite sure about the rules of the sport. Could you tell our listeners something about the gymnastics events at the Olympics? Exercise 3 First of all, Olympic gymnastics are divided into two types, artistic and rhythmic. Both men and women compete in the artistic event,and only women compete in the rhythmic event. Could you explain to our listeners the main differences between the artistic and rhythmic gymnastics? Certainly. As I said earlier,both men and women compete in artistic gymnastics and they use different types of equipment. Men compete in six different events and women compete in four. Do gymnasts compete in teams or in individuals in the artistic event? Both teams and individuals compete in the artistic event. I see. Many people love watching gymnastics, but they find the scoring difficult to understand. How does the scoring work? Scores are given based on the difficulty of the routine and the performance of the gymnast. Then their scores are added up to give a final score. The team with the most points wins. Now, what about rhythmic gymnastics? This event is only for women and it combines gymnastics and dance. And could you tell me if this is an individual or team event? It's both. Individuals and teams perform a routine according music with different objects, like a ball or a rope. How do you know who the winner is? The judges score the individuals and teams for the difficulty of the routine and how artistic it is. The person or team with the highest score wins. Thanks Tony for taking the time to come to our studio. Let's go now to the artistic gymnastcs events in Athens... Roundup 6 Exercise 2 At the 2004 Olympics, Liu Xiang won the gold medal in the men's 110 meters hurdles with a world-record time of 12.91 seconds. This was a unbelievable success because China had only won one men's athletics medal before- Zhu Jianhua's bronze medal in the high jump in Los Angeles in 1984. A Chinese male athlete had never won an Olympic gold medal before. Xing Huina achieved another notable success in Athens when she won the gold medal in the women's 10,000 race with a personal best time of 30 minutes 24.36 seconds.
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