一直坐着是运动吗？

一直坐着是运动吗？

窝在椅子上几个小时、废寝忘食地打游戏是一种运动吗？3月在卡托维兹(Katowice)开打的英雄联盟总决赛，吸引了3400万观众，或许电子竞技远比大众所想象的更值得被认真对待。

测试中可能遇到的词汇和知识：

knocked out 被麻醉；神志不清

groan 呻吟；抱怨[grəʊn]

triumphant 成功的；得意洋洋的；狂欢的[traɪ'ʌmf(ə)nt]

comfy 舒服的；（等于comfortable）['kʌmfɪ]

chipmaker 芯片制造商['tʃɪp,meɪkə]

sponsor 赞助；发起['spɒnsə]

League of Legends 英雄联盟

bizarre 奇异的[bɪ'zɑː]

doughnut 甜甜圈['dəʊnʌt]

bemusement 困惑[bi'mju:zmənt]

akin to 同类，近似

penthouse 阁楼；顶层公寓['penthaʊs]

cereal 谷类['sɪərɪəl]

阅读马上开始，建议您计算一下阅读整篇文章所用的时间，对照下方的参考值就可以评估出您的英文阅读水平。

如果您读完全文用时为： 那么，您的阅读速度相当于 每分钟阅读的英文单词数

5分55秒 母语为英语者的朗读速度 140

3分0秒 母语为英语的中学生的阅读速度 250

2分34秒 母语为英语的大学生的阅读速度 350

0分15秒 母语为英语的速读高手 1000

Is it a sport if you’re sitting in a chair? （750words）

By Jonathan Margolis

-----------------------------------------------------

When Euro 2016 begins on Friday and the British teams are inevitably knocked out early, a familiar groan will be heard across the UK: why, many Brits will complain, are we still only reliably good at sports conducted sitting down, like motor racing, cycling and equestrianism.

The same will be said in August at the Olympics, when British rowers will probably do well, while the UK’s triumphant 2012 performance in standing-up sports isn’t likely to be repeated.

Like many fans of what I regard as truly physical sports, I share the views of the sceptics down the pub about games conducted essentially from a comfy chair.

I was recently talking to some folk from the chipmaker AMD at a conference when the subject of professional video gaming — surely the sitting-est of sitting pursuits — came up. I was aware that professional gaming has an estimated 300m global audience, but knew nothing about these “esports”.

AMD, it turns out, sponsors a stable of teams under the name Fnatic, and its world-beating League of Legends team in particular is widely acknowledged as the Real Madrid of gaming. The team’s five members live with their manager, coach and statistician in a “gaming house”, which sounded bizarre, remarkable and depressing all in one.

To me, along with perhaps most people over 40, the notion of computer gaming being a sport, let alone a professional one, flies in the face of pretty much everything. Surely you might as well sleep or eat Krispy Kreme doughnuts for a living?

To counter my bemusement, AMD offered a visit to the gaming house. I was dimly aware that this was an honour akin to being allowed to hang out with Ronaldo, Bale and co, except it was a bit lost on me, as I haven’t played a computer game since Caterpillar on my kids’ Atari. But soon, I was at the League of Legends house in Berlin, which is the global esports hub.

I imagined the house resembling the student flat in The Young Ones. But it was a bright seven-bedroom penthouse off the chic Kurfürstendamm more in the style of a Big Brother house.

It was early on a weekend morning, so the hum of powerful PCs was more notable than the hum of human activity. A couple of sleepy team members — one Dutch and one Korean (Koreans are the Brazilians of gaming) — were working out gently at their screens playing each other at some low-stress game.

What was hard to compute for me was that these guys, who looked like anyone’s 20-ish son eating breakfast cereal at their computer, were almost as famous as footballers, with fans in the tens of millions and earnings in six, if not quite seven, figures.

Crowds of 30,000 can gather for big games, and 40m have been known simultaneously to stream tournaments online where prize money reaches hundreds of thousands of pounds. No wonder, then, that Fnatic’s Dutchman, Fabian Diepstraten, had just appeared in Vogue’s Netherlands edition — with a full-page photo — in a feature on his nation’s rising personalities.

“When we go to KFC or McDonald’s down the street here, we do get stopped for photos by 13 to 24-year-olds. It can be quite difficult,” said Finlay Stewart, the team manager. “Our address is kept secret, but they still find us. And yes, there are groupies, although we have a house rule that only real girlfriends can come into the house.”

Brits are not famed as players, so Mr Stewart, 24, is the only one in the house, although Fnatic is a 45-employee UK business, based in Shoreditch. From Chelsea, he joined Fnatic straight out of Exeter University. Gaming doesn’t seem a bad way to cut your business teeth; Fnatic is considered the first big brand in esports, and has a growing apparel and computer hardware catalogue.

I learnt a lot about epsorts on my visit, but did I leave persuaded it’s a sport?

Well, I quite like that seven-stone weaklings can excel at it, although they can also do well at chess — or amateur radio, which, weirdly, is considered a sport in the old communist countries.

The game may be a bit too warlike for my taste, but then again chess can be quite aggressive too. In fact, any sport lacking aggression is a bit limp really.

And I admire that being a brilliant strategist is as important as wondrous hand-eye co-ordination, so I think I’ll say perhaps to esports — although I may not be streaming games just yet.

请根据你所读到的文章内容，完成以下自测题目：

1. Which one is not mentioned as UK’s great sport?

A. motor racing

B. esports

C. cycling

D. equestrianism

2. Who sponsors the LOL team Fnatic as mentioned?

A. IBM

B. ADM

C. UK government

D. CoolerMaster

3. What is author’s feeling to visit to the gaming house?

A. sad

B. calm

C. happy

D. whiny

4. Who can come into the gaming house from the rule?

A. member's big fans

B. member's same-sex friends

C. no one

D. member's real girlfriends

[1] 答案 B. esports

解释：第一段可推测出，在电子竞技方面英国人并不那么擅长。

[2] 答案 B. ADM

解释：ADM是Fnatic战队的主要赞助商。

[3] 答案 C. happy

解释：作者表示尽管很久不打游戏了，但是能被邀请参观还是感到非常荣幸的。

[4] 答案 D. member's real girlfriends

解释：根据规定只有真的女友可以进入，但还是常有粉丝找上门。