ABC's Wide World of Sports is a long-running sports anthology show on American television. As the title suggests, it aired on the ABC Television Network. Image File history File links Wwos. ... An anthology, literally a garland or collection of flowers, is a collection of literary works, originally of poems. ... 2002 identity of the ABC Circle logo, designed by Paul Rand in 1962. ...

Origins

The show debuted April 29, 1961, featuring the Drake Relays from Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, along with the Penn Relays from Franklin Field in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and was the creation of Edgar J. Scherick through his company, Sports Programs, Inc. After selling his company to the American Broadcasting Company, Scherick hired a young Roone Arledge, to produce the show. Arledge would eventually go on to become the executive producer of ABC Sports (as well as president of ABC News). Scherick became Vice President of Network Programming at ABC. Several years later, he became a film and television producer, with over seventy titles to his credit. is the 119th day of the year (120th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... See also: 1960 in television, other events of 1961, 1962 in television and the list of years in television. For the American network television schedule, please see 1961-62 American network television schedule. ... The Drake Relays is an annual outdoor track and field event held in Des Moines, Iowa, United States, on the campus of Drake University. ... Drake University is a private, co-educational university located in the city of Des Moines, Iowa. ... “Des Moines” redirects here. ... The Penn Relays (also Penn Relays Carnival) is the oldest and largest track and field carnival in the United States, hosted annually since April 21, 1895 by the University of Pennsylvania at Franklin Field in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. ... Franklin Field is the University of Pennsylvanias stadium for football, field hockey, lacrosse, sprint football, and track and field (and formerly for soccer). ... Nickname: City of Brotherly Love, Philly, the Quaker City Motto: Philadelphia maneto (Let brotherly love continue) Location in Pennsylvania Coordinates: Country United States State Pennsylvania County Philadelphia Founded October 27, 1682 Incorporated October 25, 1701 Mayor John F. Street (D) Area    - City 369. ... Edgar J. Scherick (October 24, 1924 – December 2, 2002) was one of the most prolific producers of television miniseries, made-for-television films, and theatrical motion pictures. ... Roone Arledge (July 8, 1931 – December 5, 2002) was an American sports broadcasting pioneer who was chairman of ABC News from 1977 until his death, and a key part of the companys rise to competition with the two other main broadcasting stations, NBC and CBS, in the 60s, 70s... ABC News logo ABC News Special Report ident, circa 2006 ABC News is a division of American television and radio network ABC, owned by The Walt Disney Company. ...

Sports featured on Wide World of Sports

Wide World of Sports was intended to be a "fill-in" show for a single summer season, until the start of fall sports seasons, but became unexpectedly popular. The goal of the show, which originally ran for ninety minutes on Saturday afternoons and featuring two or three sports, was to showcase sports from around the globe. These included many types not normally seen on American television, such as hurling, rodeo, curling, jai-alai, firefighter's competitions, surfing, Logger sports, demolition derby and badminton. Traditional Olympic sports such as figure skating, skiing, gymnastics, and track and field competitions were also regular features of the show. The broadcast was hosted for most of its history by Jim McKay. For the Cornish sport, see Cornish Hurling. ... It has been suggested that History of rodeo be merged into this article or section. ... For other uses, see Curling (disambiguation). ... Jai-Alai (IPA: in English and IPA: in Basque) means Merry Festival in the Basque language. ... This article is about the profession. ... For other uses, see Surfing (disambiguation). ... Lumberjacks in Oregon, c. ... A demolition derby under way at the Greenwich, Ohio Firemens Festival, 2005 Demolition derby is a motorsport usually presented at county fairs and festivals. ... This article is about the sport. ... The five Olympic rings were designed in 1913, adopted in 1914 and debuted at the Games at Antwerp, 1920. ... Figure skating is an ice skating sporting event where individuals, mixed couples, or groups perform spins, jumps, and other moves on the ice, often to music. ... Cross-country skiing (skating style) in Einsiedeln, Switzerland. ... Gymnastics is a sport involving the performance of sequences of movements requiring physical strength, flexibility, balance, endurance, gracefulness, and kinesthetic awareness, and includes such skills as handsprings, handstands, split leaps, aerials and cartwheels. ... Athletics, also known as track and field or track and field athletics, is a collection of sport events. ... James Kenneth McManus, better known by his professional name of Jim McKay (b. ...

Wide World of Sports aired from 5:00 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. Eastern Time and later 4:30 p.m. to 6:00 Eastern Time. Metronome, a public art installation showing the time in New York City The Eastern Time Zone (ET) of the Western Hemisphere falls mostly along the east coast of Northern America and the west coast of South America. ...

Introduction

The show was introduced by a stirring, brassy fanfare over a montage of sports clips and dramatic accompanying narration by McKay: Fanfare for the Common Man is one of the most recognizable pieces of 20th Century American classical music. ... For other uses of the word montage, see Montage. ...

It was written by Stanley Ralph Ross. Stanley Ralph Ross (July 22, 1937, New York City – March 16, 2000) started his career in advertising, however soon went to work as a writer and actor on various television shows, most notably cult-classics such as the 1960s Batman series starring Adam West and also The Monkees. ...

"The Thrill of Victory..."

The melodramatic introduction became a national catch phrase that is often heard to this day. While "the thrill of victory" had several symbols over the decades, ski jumper Vinko Bogataj, whose dreadful misjump and crash of March 21, 1970 was featured from the late 1970s onward under the words "...and the agony of defeat", became a hard-luck hero of sorts, and an affectionate icon for stunning failure. Previously, the footage played with that phrase was of another ski jumper who made a long, almost successful jump, but whose skis lost vertical alignment shortly before landing, leading to a crash. Later in the 1990s, an additional clip was added to the "agony of defeat" sequence after Bogataj's accident. Footage of a crash by Alessandro Zampedri, Roberto Guerrero and Eliseo Salazar during the 1996 Indianapolis 500 shows a car flipping up into the catchfence. The "oh no!" commentary that accompanies it, however, is dubbed from commentary by Benny Parsons of a different crash in a different race (1997 NASCAR Purolator 500). Bogataj's mishap is also commemorated in Rich Hall's book Sniglets as "agonosis," which is defined as "The syndrome of tuning in on Wide World of Sports every weekend just to watch the skier rack himself." A catch phrase is a phrase or expression that is popularized, usually through repeated use, by a real person or fictional character. ... Ski jumping is a sport in which skiers go down an inrun with a take-off ramp (the jump), attempting to go as far as possible. ... Vinko Bogataj is a former ski jumper from Slovenia who became noted on US television in the 1970s for a moment of spectacular failure that was featured on ABCs Wide World of Sports as the infamous Agony of Defeat. Bogataj was competing as a Yugoslavian entrant at the World... is the 80th day of the year (81st in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1970 (MCMLXX) was a common year starting on Thursday (link shows full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Alessandro Zampedri (born October 3, 1969 in Brescia) is an Italian race car driver. ... Roberto Guerrero was a Formula One driver from Colombia. ... Eliseo Salazar Valenzuela (born in Santiago, November 14, 1955) is a former racing driver from Chile and the only one of his countrymen to compete in Formula One. ... Results of the 1996 Indianapolis 500 held at Indianapolis on Sunday, May 26, 1996. ... Benny Parsons (born July 12, 1941 in Detroit, Michigan, currently resides in Charlotte, North Carolina) is an American NASCAR announcer/analyst on NBC and TNT. He became famous as the 1973 NASCAR Winston Cup (now NEXTEL Cup) champion. ... Jeff Burton (99), Elliott Sadler (38), Ricky Rudd (21), Dale Jarrett (88), Sterling Marlin (40), Jimmie Johnson (48), and Casey Mears (41) practice for the 2004 Daytona 500 The National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR) is the largest sanctioning body of motorsports in the United States. ... The Kobalt Tools 500 is a NASCAR Nextel Cup stock car race held in March at Atlanta Motor Speedway in Hampton, Georgia. ... Rich Hall (born 1954 in Waxhaw, North Carolina) is an American comedian and writer. ... A sniglet is defined as a word that should be in the dictionary, but isnt. While Rich Hall invented the word sniglet itself, sniglets are actually a long-running popular joke in which people make up their own humorous words to define things or concepts that have no official... In medicine, the term syndrome is the association of several clinically recognizable features, signs, symptoms, phenomena or characteristics which often occur together, so that the presence of one feature alerts the physician to the presence of the others. ...

Athlete of the Year

In 1963, the producers of ABC Sports began selecting the Wide World of Sports Athlete of the Year. Its first winner was track and field star Jim Beatty for its first under 4 minute mile run indoors. Through the years, this award was won by the likes of Muhammad Ali, Jim Ryun, Lance Armstrong, Mario Andretti, Wayne Gretzky, Carl Lewis and Tiger Woods. The award was discontinued in 2001. // May 4 — Pan American Games Marathon, Sao Paulo, Brazil Mens Winner: Fidel Negrete (MEX) 2:27:56 July 13 — Enschede Marathon, Netherlands Mens Winner: Václav Chudomel (CZE) 2:25:11 October 15 — Fukuoka Marathon, Japan Mens Winner: Jeff Julian (NZL) 2:18:01 Stock car racing... [1] ABC Sports is a division of ABC, responsible for the televising of many sports events on the network. ... Jim Beatty (b. ... For other persons named Muhammad Ali, see Muhammad Ali (disambiguation). ... James Ronald (Jim) Ryun (born April 29, 1947) is an American former track athlete and politician, who was a Republican member of the United States House of Representatives from 1997 to 2007, representing the 2nd District in Kansas. ... Lance Armstrong (born Lance Edward Gunderson on September 18, 1971) is a retired American professional road racing cyclist. ... Mario Gabriele Andretti (born February 28, 1940 in Montona dIstria, Italy, now Motovun, Croatia) is an Italian American racing driver, and one of the most successful Americans in the history of auto racing. ... Wayne Douglas Gretzky, OC (born 26 January 1961 in Brantford, Ontario) is a retired Canadian-American professional ice hockey player who is currently part-owner and head coach of the Phoenix Coyotes. ... Frederick Carlton Carl Lewis (born July 1, 1961) is a retired American track and field athlete who won 10 Olympic medals including 9 golds (He received the gold medal in the 100 meters in 1988 Olympics after Ben Johnson was disqualified for using drugs), and 10 World Championships medals, of... Personal Information Birth December 30, 1975 ) Cypress, California Height 6 ft 1 in (1. ... This is a list of television-related events in 2001. ...

Canadian version

During the 1970s and 1980s, a Canadian version was aired by the CTV Television Network. Licensed by ABC, the CTV broadcast included a mix of content from the American show, and segments produced by CTV and its affiliates. This article is about the Broadcast Television Network CTV, for the broadcasting television company see CTVglobemedia. ...

The end of Wide World of Sports

In later years, with the rise of cable television offering more outlets for sports programming, Wide World of Sports lost much of its appeal. Ultimately, the Wide World of Sports name was used as an umbrella title for ABC's weekend sports programming. Wide World of Sports discontinued its traditional anthology series format in 1997. Coaxial cable is often used to transmit cable television into the house. ... This is a list of television-related events in 1997. ...

In August 2006, ABC Sports was effectively displaced by the concept of ESPN on ABC. The future of Wide World of Sports is apparently over, although ESPN Classic reruns the show from time to time. ABC Sports redirects here. ... ESPN Classic features reruns of famous sporting events, sports documentaries, and sports themed movies. ...

Logos

Miscellany

• The 1971 Woody Allen film Bananas featured two parodies of Wide World of Sports, featuring cameo appearances by Don Dunphy and Howard Cosell.
• The album version of an early-1970s Cheech and Chong hit song called "Basketball Jones" (a parody of a rhythm and blues number called "Love Jones") contained a prologue that parodied this program. It was called "White" World of Sports and featured a not-too-bright commentator named "Red Blazer".
• An anachronistic joke early in the 1974 western film parody, Blazing Saddles, had Slim Pickens yelling at his railroad crew, "What in the Wide, Wide World of Sports is a-goin' on here?"

Year 1971 (MCMLXXI) was a common year starting on Friday (link will display full calendar) of the 1971 Gregorian calendar. ... Woody Allen (born Allen Stewart Königsberg on December 1, 1935) is a three-time Academy Award-winning American film director, writer, actor, jazz musician, comedian, and playwright. ... Bananas is a film written and directed by Woody Allen in 1971 and starring him and Louise Lasser. ... Don Dunphy (July 5, 1908 - July 22, 1998) was a radio sports announcer specializing in boxing broadcasts. ... Howard William Cosell, born Howard William Cohen (March 25, 1918 – April 23, 1995) was an American sports journalist on American television. ... Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong were a comedy duo who found a wide audience in the 1970s and 1980s for their stand-up routines, which were based upon the eras hippie, free love and especially drug culture movements. ... It has been suggested that Sportcoat be merged into this article or section. ... See also: 1973 in film 1974 1975 in film 1970s in film years in film film // Events February 7 - Blazing Saddles is released in USA May 1 - George Lucas creates the first draft of what would eventually become Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. ... Alex Karras as Mongo in Blazing Saddles Blazing Saddles (1974) is a comedy directed by Mel Brooks and starring Cleavon Little and Gene Wilder, and released by Warner Brothers. ... Slim Pickens riding the bomb in the movie Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb Louis Bert Lindley, Jr. ...

External links

• Wide World of Sports (US TV series) at the Internet Movie Database
• Classic Wide World of Sports at TV.com
• The '80s TV Theme SuperSite
  • ABC's Wide World of Sports (1972)
  • ABC's Wide World of Sports (1989)
• Jump The Shark - Wide World of Sports