Selection of the most important

games and sports in the natural and

urban environment

Poland's sports include almost all sports, in particular: track & field, basketball, boxing, fencing, football, American football (Gridiron), handball, ice hockey, swimming, volleyball, and weightlifting. The first Polish Formula One driver, Robert Kubica, has also brought awareness of Formula One Racing to Poland. football are the country's most popular sports, with a rich history of international competition. Poland has also made a distinctive mark in motorcycle speedway racing thanks to Tomasz Gollob, a highly successful Polish rider. The Polish mountains are an ideal venue for hiking, skiing and mountain biking and attract millions of tourists every year from all over the world. Cross country skiing is also an incredibly popular TV sports, gathering 4-5 million viewers each race, with Justina Kowalczyk as the main attraction. Baltic beaches and resorts are popular locations for fishing, canoeing, kayaking and a broad-range of other water-themed sports.

Polish National Football Team

The Polish National Football Team was the winner of the 1972 Olympic Football Tournament, as well as a runner-up in 1976 and 1992. Poland has made seven FIFA World Cup appearances (1938, 1974, 1978, 1982, 1986, 2002, 2006) and achieved great success, finishing third at both the 1974 World Cup in Germany and the 1982 World Cup in Spain. The junior team has also achieved success on the international stage, finishing third at the 1983 FIFA U-20 World Cup Final, fourth at the 1979 FIFA U-20 World Cup Final and fourth at the 1993 FIFA U-17 World Cup Final.

Basketball

Basketball is one of Poland's most popular sports. In the 1960s, the national team belonged to the world elite as it won silver at the 1963 European Basketball Championship and bronze at the 1965 and 1967 event. At the 1967 FIBA World Championship, Poland was among the world's five elite basketball teams. At the 1964 and 1968 Summer Olympics, the Orły ("Eagles," as the team is often nicknamed) finished 6th.

Since 2000, basketball in Poland went trough a revival and has been home to several NBA players, including Marcin Gortat, Maciej Lampe and Cezary Trybański. The country hosted the 2009 European Basketball Championship.

Ice hockey Main article: Poland national ice hockey team

The Poland national ice hockey team is the national ice hockey team of Poland, and a member of the International Ice Hockey Federation. They are ranked 21st in the world in the IIHF World Rankings, but prior to the 1980s they were ranked as high as 6th internationally. They are one of only 8 countries never to have played below the Division I (former B Pool) level.

Poland has managed to produce some NHL calibre talent including Mariusz Czerkawski with the New York Islanders, Peter Sidorkiewicz for both the Hartford Whalers and the Ottawa Senators, and Krzysztof Oliwa for the New Jersey Devils where he won a Stanley Cup in 1999-2000.

Adam Henryk Małysz ( listen) (born 3 December 1977 in Wisła, Poland) is a former Polish ski jumper, one of the most successful ski jumpers in the history of the sport.

The most important of Małysz's successes are 4 individual Olympic Games medals, 4 individual World Championships gold medals (all-time record), 4 individual World Cup titles (all-time record shared with Matti Nykänen), 39 individual competition wins and 92 podiums in total.

After concluding his ski-jumping career in 2011 he appeared in Dakar Rally in 2012 and 2013 reaching 37 and 15 respectively.

Handball (also known as team handball, Olympic handball,

European team handball, European handball, or Borden ball) is a team sport in which two teams of seven players each (six outfield players and a goalkeeper on each team) pass a ball to throw it into the goal of the other team. A standard match consists of two periods of 30 minutes, and the team with more goals scored wins. Modern handball is usually played indoors, but outdoor variants exist in the forms of field handball and Czech handball (which were more common in the past) and beach handball (also called handball).

Volleyball

is a team sport in which two teams of six players are separated by a net. Each team tries to score points by grounding a ball on the other team's court under organized rules. It has been a part of the official program of the Summer Olympic Games since 1964.

A scene of Volleyball play in Ervadi village. The complete rules are extensive. But simply, play proceeds as follows: a player on one of the teams begins a 'rally' by serving the ball (tossing or releasing it and then hitting it with a hand or arm), from behind the back boundary line of the court, over the net, and into the receiving team's court. The receiving team must not let the ball be grounded within their court. The team may touch the ball up to 3 times but individual players may not touch the ball twice consecutively. Typically, the first two touches are used to set up for an attack, an attempt to direct the ball back over the net in such a way that the serving team is unable to prevent it from being grounded in their court.

Motorcycle speedway, usually referred to as speedway, is a motorcycle sport involving

four and sometimes up to six riders competing over four anti-clockwise laps of an oval circuit. Speedway motorcycles use only one gear and have no brakes and racing takes place on a flat oval track usually consisting of dirt or loosely packed shale. Competitors use this surface to slide their machines sideways, powersliding or broadsiding into the bends. On the straight sections of the track the motorcycles reach speeds of up 70 miles per hour (110 km/h).

The exact origins of the sport are unknown but there is evidence of a type of speedway racing being practised in the USA before the First World War and in Australia in the late teens and early 1920s. There are now both domestic and international competitions in a number of countries including the Speedway World Cup whilst the highest overall scoring individual in the Speedway Grand Prix events is pronounced the world champion. Speedway is popular in central and northern Europe and to a lesser extent in Australia and North America. A variant of track racing, speedway is administered internationally by the Fédération Internationally de Motocyclisme (FIM). Domestic speedway events are regulated by FIM affiliated national motor sport federations.