INTRODUCTION

The 2016, International Monuments Day Celebration is dedicated to the forthcoming Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro Brazil in August this year, and ICCOMOS chose the theme for this year’s Celebration as: The Heritage of Sports. The history of Sports extends as far back as the most ancients cultures in the world and can teach us a great deal about social changes and about the nature of sport itself. Sports seem to involve the development and exercise of basic human skills for their own sake, in parallel with their being exercised for their usefulness. It also shows how society has changed its beliefs and therefore changes in rules.

However, heritage on the other hand is a broad concept that includes natural and cultural practices, knowledge and living experience. It is an integral part of individual life, the entire spirit of a people in terms of values, actions, work, monuments, architectures, sites, and archaeological sites. Heritage is a contemporary activity with far reaching effects. It can also be a platform for political recognition, a medium for inters-cultural dialogue, a means of ethical reflection and the political basis for local economic development. It is simultaneously local and particularly global but shared. The heritage of sports connotes all aspects of tangible and intangible aspect of sports.

PREHISTORIC SPORT ERA

Cave paintings have been found in the Lascaux cave in France which seems to suggest sceneries of sprinting and wrestling in the upper Paleolithic, around 17,300 years ago. Another cave painting in the Bayankhangor province of Mongolia dated back to Neolithic period also witness rocks arts found at the cave of a swimmer in Wadi Sura, near Gulf Kebir in Libya. It showed evidence of swimming and archery being practiced around 6000BC. Also evidence of prehistoric cave paintings has been found in Japan depicting a sport similar to sumo wrestling.

In ancient Egypt, the cradle of civilization in the history of mankind, monuments to the Pharaohs, found at Beni Hasan dating to around 2000BC indicate that sports, including wrestling, weightlifting, long jump, swimming, rowing, shooting, fishing and athletics, as well as various kinds of ball games, were well-developed and regulated. Other Egyptians sports also included javelin throwing, high jump and snooker. An earlier portrayal of figure wrestling was found in the tomb of khmumhotep and Niankhium in saqqara dating to around 2400BC.

The origin of Greek sporting festivals may date to funeral games of the Mycenaean period in 1600BC. It was predictably in Greece that sports were first instituted formally, with the first Olympic Games recorded in 776BC in Olympic, where they were first celebrated until 393AD. The games were held every four year, and that became a unit of time in historical chronologies. The interest in sport over decades has led to vast monuments and architectures of human achievement and competition, world stadiums are the crowning glory of many cities. The first stadium therefore originated in the VIII Century BC around a rudimentary athletics, track shaped as an elongated “U”. The oldest known stadium is the one in Olympia in the western Peloponnese, Greece, where the Olympic games of antiquity were held from 776BC. This has led to other beautiful master pieces of engineering designs and architecture of stadiums all around the world. Such stadiums are classified in terms of their unique architectural design and capacity. Examples are the Allianz Arena in Munich, which has the capacity to change colour of its exterior to red and blue, visible at night. The Melbourne Cricket Ground is the 10th largest stadium and one of the oldest cricket stadiums. Skydome, Toronto Canada, Emirate stadium in England.

Nigeria first participated in the Olympia Games in 1952, in Helsinki Finland and has sent athletes to compete in every summer Olympics; however the Nation has never participated in the winter Olympic Games. Twenty years ago, in 1996 Atlanta USA, Nigeria produced the best Olympic results. She won her first Olympic gold medal in the women’s long jump event when Chioma Ajunwa proved to the world, that Nigeria indeed, had great jumpers. In response to Chioma’s gold medal, the National Soccer team, the super eagles, surprisingly won another gold medal. Nigeria has done well in other sporting events, Athletes in the jumps, sprints and relays. They have won world titles in Boxing, weightlifting, wrestling, taekwondo, table tennis. Nigeria became the first African nation to win an Olympic goals medal in soccer. The next Olympic Games are in Rio De Janerio, Brazil, and it will be the first time a South American nation will be hosting the games.

In the traditional setting, Nigeria as a nation has set up various sports organization capable of contributing to development in the country. However such sports associations like Traditional sports and games should be adequately and progressively administered, to ensure that meaningful stated goals and objectives are achieved towards sports development in the Nigerian society. Nigeria, a multi-ethnic country of about 170million in population, blessed with diverse cultures and values, and traditional sports and games that have been practiced all over the years, even before colonialism and western education. The traditional sports and games then were basically for leisure and recreational activities. Over the years, there have been some efforts to constitute a sporting body for body for each of the known traditional sports and games with the approaches made by the National sports commission, the apex governing body of sports in Nigeria then, hence on 19th August, 1993, the Traditional Sports Federation of Nigeria was inaugurated. The mandate, among other functions, is to identify all invented sports and games; develop and promote them, through creation of awareness and organized competitions on the sports and games, with a view to selling some to the international sports community.

Some traditional sports and games include Ayo-seed game, Abula – a ball game played across the net with a baton, kokawa – Traditional wrestling, Dambe – Traditional boxing done with one hand clubbed with cloth and rope, langa – a hopping game of standing with one leg and opponents struggle to dislodge one another. Draft – a board game played by two persons, akuae – a seed game from esan land etc. Some intangible aspects of sports and games have found its way into our everyday language usage. Catch – phrases like show am red card to send someone packing, last card and check up – last money at hand and to complete a task – from the game of whot, upper-cut from boxing and wrestling, body-slam from wrestling, slam-dunk from basketball, run like Ben Johnson, etc. Also the non material aspect of sports which enliven the material aspect includes the talking drums, voovoozela of South Africa, trumpets, songs by fan clubs, customs, mascots, to mention but a few.

CONCLUSION

The benefits of sport to the global community cannot be over emphasized as its gain to the teeming youth and larger society is far reaching. Many years ago, sport was relegated to the “drop-outs” and unintelligent in the society but the view has changed in today’s trending world. The society at large now view sport from the perspective of a very lucrative business or occupation other than its interest as mere exercise. Sport also is a means of image building and character moulding as individuals, corporate organization and world body like  UNICEF, use sport icons as brand ambassadors and for product promos. T-shirts, fazecaps, billboards and many other advertising media are avenues used for promoting sports and sport icons. The gains of sports to National development, in terms of the social and economic gains, is so overwhelming that countries lobby for hosting and media rights because of its enormous revenue drive for the host country. Sport also serves as a global unifying agent and helps to strengthen diplomatic ties among members. Sport today, is a universal language understood by all peoples of the world.