B The Mud Bowl Championship

Mud Bowl football is similar to normal American football, so players can pick up the ball and run with it. There are also two teams, but the match is shorter. The winner is the team with the most goals at the end of sixty minutes. The really big difference is that the players have to play in a field with half a metre of mud!

Answer the quetions, no more than three words.

1. Where is Idiotarod popular?

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2. How many people are in a team of the Idiotarod race?

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3. How long does the Mud Bowl match last?

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4. What is different about field of the Mud Bowl match?

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Read the article again and fill in the blank.

1. In twenty different US cities, the Idiotarod is an ............race.

2. A shopping ........ must have in a team.

3. Teams can ...........the shopping cart but can't .......... the wheels.

4. In Mud Bowl match, the team has the most........... will be the winner.

5. The field of Mud Bowl match has a half of...............

In Bolivia, football is the country's national sport but the country is also famous for another sport-wrestling. Local people like watching the wrestling and it's very popular 5 with tourists. It's an exciting mixture of sport, drama and entertainment. When modern wrestling started in Bolivia in the 1950s, the competitors were all men, but nowadays women are also competing in the ring.

The city of El Alto is a good place to watch the wrestling. Hundreds of spectators go to the fights in the evening. This evening, the crowd is sitting round a huge wrestling ring and they shout: 'Bring them on! Bring them on!' Suddenly, the commentator is speaking into a microphone: 'Ladies and Gentlemen. It's time for Yolanda and Claudina!' The crowd is screaming with excitement as two women in colourful clothes enter the ring.

Yolanda and Claudina are like famous pop stars. They smile and wave to their fans. The music stops and the referee starts the fight. Claudina jumps on Yolanda. Then Yolanda throws Claudina on the floor. As Claudina lies on the floor, Yolanda smiles and waves to the crowd. Then, Claudina gets up and pushes Yolanda onto the ground. One minute Yolanda is winning. The next minute, Claudina is winning. The spectators go crazy!

Away from the ring, many wrestlers are women with families. At home Yolanda has a normal and quiet family life. She has two daughters and she makes clothes for a living. Her father was also a wrestler, so it's a family tradition. In answer to the question, 'Would your daughters like to become wrestlers one day?' Yolanda says they wouldn't. She answers: 'My daughters ask me why do this. It's dangerous and they complain that wrestling doesn't bring any money into the house.' So why does she do it?

Yolanda loves wrestling because of her fans, and she has lots of them. One of her fans is called Esperanza Cancina. She pays $1.50 (a large part of her salary) to sit near the ring. Esperanza likes watching the wrestling because she says: "We laugh and we forget our problems for three or four hours."

Read the article about wrestling. Are sentences 1-5 True (T) or False (F).

1. Wrestling is popular in Bolivia.

2. Wrestling is an exciting mixture of sport, romance and entertainment.

3. Only men can wrestle in 1950s.

4. Wrestlers wear casual clothes.

5. Yolanda has two daughters.

6. People can earn a lot of money from wrestling.

Choose the correct answer

1. Nowadays, who are the competitors?

A. Only men

B. Only women

C. Both men and women

D. Teenagers

2. What do we find out about Yolanda's family?

A. It is a special family.

B. All family members are wrestlers.

C. Yolanda's father is a tailor.

D. It is a traditional family.

3. Yolanda's daughters don't want to be wrestlers because

A. they want to become tailors .

B. they feel wrestling is a boring sport.

C. they can't earn money from wrestling.

D. it is an easy sport to learn to play.

4. What makes Esperanza like watching the wrestling?

A. It is a dangerous sport.

B. Esperanza can easily forget her problems.

C. Her mother like wrestling.

D. She used to be a wrestler.