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The United Kingdom has given birth to a range of major international sports including: association football, rugby (union and league), darts, cricket, golf, tennis, table tennis, badminton, squash, rounders, hockey, boxing, snooker, billiards, curling and even baseball. This has meant that in the infancy of many sports, England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland formed among the earliest separate governing bodies, national teams and domestic league competitions. After 1922 some sports formed separate bodies for Northern Ireland though some continued to be organised on an All-Ireland basis. As a result, notably in certain teams sports such as association football and Rugby, but also in the multi-sport Commonwealth Games, international sporting events are contested not by a team representing the United Kingdom, but by teams representing the separate "home nations". At Olympic level, however, the United Kingdom is represented by a single national organising committee the British Olympic Association, and competes as Great Britain and Northern Ireland (although some Northern Ireland athletes are eligible for, and compete on behalf of, Ireland). For more information on most sports you may wish, therefore, to consider reading the Sport in England, Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland articles. Major individual sports include athletics, golf, Cycling, motorsport, and horse racing. Tennis is the highest profile sport for the two weeks of the Wimbledon Championships, but otherwise struggles to hold its own in the country of its birth. Many other sports are also played and followed to a lesser degree. There is much debate over which sport has the most active participants with swimming, athletics, cycling all found to have wider active participation than association football in the 2010 Sport England Active People survey. ==Administration and funding== Political responsibility for sport is a devolved matter. As England has no parliament of her own, the United Kingdom Department of Culture, Media and Sport which is headed by a cabinet minister -though the Minister for Sport and Tourism is not in the cabinet- deals with English sport in addition to United Kingdom-wide sports. Political responsibility for Sport in Scotland lies with the Scottish Government Minister for Sport and Health Improvement, currently Jaimie Hepburn, though is part of the remit of the Cabinet secretary for Health, Wellbeing and Sport, currently Shona Robison. Political responsibility for sport in Wales lies with the Welsh Assembly Government Minister for Heritage, currently Alun Ffred Jones. The Minister sets out the strategic policy objectives for Sport Wales, who are responsible for the development and promotion of sport and active lifestyles in Wales.〔 〕 Sport Wales work closely with the Governing bodies of sports in Wales to whom they distribute government and National Lottery funding, through grants and awards.〔 〕 The Northern Ireland Executive Minister for Culture, Arts & Leisure is currently Carál Ní Chuilín, however virtually every team sport is organised on either an all Ireland or United Kingdom-wide basis, with football and netball being the only exceptions. As such responsibility for most sports lies with either the United Kingdom minister or the Irish minister for Transport, Tourism & Sport. A large majority of the funding for elite sport in the United Kingdom is commercially generated, but this is concentrated heavily on a few sports. For example, the English Premiership's 20 clubs had an estimated combined turnover of £1.25 billion in 2003-04 according to Deloitte, and British professional football's total income was in the region of £2 billion. Other major sports have a turnover in low nine figures or the tens of millions. For example, cricket is highly dependent on its TV contract, which was worth £55 million a year for the 2006-09 seasons. Athletics, and also most sports outside the top ten or so in popularity, are heavily dependent on public funding. The government agency which funnels this is UK Sport, which has affiliates in each of the home nations, for example Sport England. These agencies are also responsible for distributing money raised for sport by the National Lottery. In 2005, when it was announced London would host the 2012 Games, UK Sport announced funding plans which were more focused than ever before on rewarding sports which have delivered Olympic success, and as a corollary penalising those which have not. UK Sport also provides money for the recreational side of the main team sports, even football. Other sports benefit from special financial provision. British tennis is subsidised by the profits of the Wimbledon Championships, which are in the tens of millions of pounds each year. Horse racing benefits from a levy on betting. Following the Budget from 21 March 2007 there will be only few tax breaks to British sport in the near future.〔http://www.thisisstaffordshire.co.uk/displayNode.jsp?nodeId=158316&command=displayContent&sourceNode=158309&contentPK=16954890&folderPk=87603&pNodeId=158332〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Sport in the United Kingdom」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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