The Olympics feature a number of sports. Forty-one sports are played in the summer Olympics and there are fifteen events in the winter games. During each Olympics there are always such crowd favorites as gymnastics, track and field, figure skating, snowboarding, and hockey. And as is always also the case, there are some sports that are not as popular with the fans as well.

Among the lesser-known sports in the Summer Olympics is handball. Handball is a team sport in which two teams of seven players each attempt to score on their opponent’s net. The game consists of two thirty-minute periods, and the team with more goals by the end wins. The goals themselves resemble smaller soccer goals.

Badminton is another lesser-known Summer Olympic sport. Badminton is a bit like tennis in that players play with rackets. However, the players strike a birdie – a rubber ball with plastic feathers – rather than a tennis ball. The player wins a point when the birdie lands on their opponent’s side of the court.

Trampoline is much like gymnastics, but the sport is exactly what its name suggests: athletes doing flips and tricks on a trampoline.

Many of us have gone canoeing. Canoeing is another little-known Olympic sport. There are two different competitions for canoeing – canoe slalom and canoe sprints. Canoe slalom is where one or two people go through a series of gates in rough water. The fastest team wins. Time is added when a canoer hits or misses a gate. Canoe sprints are like rowing but the athletes are canoeing a certain distance and the person/team that finishes first wins.