1st-year students at "Instituto Santa Cruz" tell the world what sports they consider typical of our cultures.

1. Sports
Here, in Argentina, typically play four
sports: pato, polo, tennis and football.

2. Pato
• It´s played on horseback, and combines
elements from polo and basketball. It has been
the national sport of Argentina since 1953.
• In modern pato, two four-member teams riding
on horses fight for possession of a ball which has
six conveniently-sized handles, and score by
throwing the ball through a vertically positioned
ring.
• The rings have a 100 cm (3.3 ft) diameter, and
are located atop 240 cm (7.9 ft) high poles. A
closed net, extending for 140 cm (4.6 ft), holds
the ball after goals are scored.
• The winner is the team with most goals scored
after regulation time (six 8-minute "periods").
• The dimensions of the field are: length 180 to
220 m (196.9 to 240.6 yd), width 80 to 90 m (87
to 98 yd).

3. Polo
• It is a team sport played on horseback. The objective is to
score goals against an opposing team. Sometimes called "The
Sport of Kings", it was started by Persians, and was popular in
Iran until 1979, after which its popularity there declined
sharply due to the Iranian Revolution.
• Players score by driving a small white plastic or
wooden ball into the opposing team's goal using a long-
handled mallet. The traditional sport of polo is played at
speed on a large grass field up to 300 yards long by 160 yards
wide, and each polo team consists of four riders and their
mounts.
• Field polo is played with a solid plastic ball, which has
replaced the wooden ball in much of the sport.
• Polo is played professionally in 16 countries.

4. Polo players
• Our best polo player is Adolfo Cambiasso .
Facundo Pieres and Javier Novillo Astrada are
really good too.

5. Tennis
• In Argentina, tennis has been popular since the 1970s, prevailing widely
use clay surfaces, in the form of clay.
• The first player internationally prominent was Mary Teran de Weiss, who
in the 1940s and 1950s came to be among the 20 players in the world.
• Top players in its history have been Guillermo Vilas and Gabriela
Sabatini, both at the International Tennis of Fame. Exceptional sporting
achievements have also been obtained by Paola Suarez and Gisela
Dulko, (the only Argentine who reached # 1 in the world ranking in
doubles), Gaston Gaudio (who won Roland Garros in 2004), David
Nalbandian (who won the Masters Tournament in 2005) and Juan Martin
del Potro ( U.S. Open in 2009).

6. Tennis
• During the 2000s Argentina became a world tennis power, as
the country that had the most players in the Top 100 on the
ATP. Players like Guillermo Canas, Gaston Gaudio, Mariano
Puerta, Guillermo Coria, David Nalbandian and Juan Monaco
reached the Top 10, while Franco Squillari, Agustin
Calleri, Mariano Zabaleta, Juan Ignacio Chela and Jose
Acasuso the Top 20. They were all born between 1975 and
1984, making the players born in this range of ten years under
the golden generation of Argentine tennis, called the "
Argentine Legion".
• By the early 2010s Nalbandian, Monaco, Chela and Carlos
Berlo remain in the top 50 ranking, while Juan Martin del
Potro stands as the great figure of a new generation.

7. Tennis players

8. Football
• Football in Argentina is the most popular sport, especially among
boys and men from toddlers to sixty-year-olds. Nine out of ten
people claim to be supporters of a football team. Football is always
present in popular conversations in this country.
• The Argentine Football Association (AFA) was formed in 1893. It is
the eighth oldest in the world. The league tournament, played from
this year, is the third oldest in the world, behind the British and
Dutch leagues. Argentina is one of eight countries that has the
World Cup, having won in Argentina 78 and Mexico 86, in addition
to having reached the second place in Uruguay 1930 and Italy 90.
• The organized practice of football in Argentina is the oldest and
most traditional of the world, so the number of clubs competing in
tournaments for all divisions largely exceed 100 years.

9. Football players

10. What about you?
• Do you like sports?
• What sports do you usually play?
• Who are your favourite players?