Who is the best lifesaver in the world? Who is the most elegant performer at a height of 3,000 meters? And who throws a flying disc the most accurately?

All those questions, and more, will be answered at the World Games 2001 Akita, which open today.

The Opening Ceremony will be held at the Yabase Track and Field Stadium, one of the 21 venues in Akita Pref. that hosts this unique international sports event over the next 11 days.

What are World Games?

The World Games have been in existence for 20 years.

They were held for the first time in 1981 at Santa Clara, Calif., with the aim of spreading non-Olympic sports around the world. Since then, the event has taken place every four years in the year following a Summer Olympic Games. Four European cities have also hosted the international event and Akita will become the sixth city to hold the World Games and the first in Asia.

More than 2,500 athletes from 80 countries and regions have gathered in the northern prefecture of Japan and will compete in the 158 medal events and 11 demonstration exhibitions.

In 1980 the International World Games Association (IWGA), the organizing body of the World Games, consisted of 12 international sports federations. Baseball, badminton, bowling, casting (fly-fishing), taekwondo were among the original 12 sports and those sports featured in the World Games' early era.

Baseball, badminton and taekwondo have since become Olympic events, and they have been replaced by aerobics, flying disc, parachuting and billiards.

Aerial acrobatics

One of the sports that make the World Games very unique is parachuting. Participants compete for accurate landings from a height of 1,200 meters; freestyle skydiving, in which an individual performs while falling from 3,000 meters; and formation skydiving in which four people form various formations from a height of 3,000 meters.

In the accurate landing event, athletes compete to see how close they can land to the center of a target, which is only 3-centimeter in diameter.

The skydiving events require the competitors to team up with a photographer, who records the performance in the air. Athletes get points based on the difficulty of their performance and on the quality of the photographer's work.

BaywatchLife saving is more commonly associated with the beach. But here, it is a contest that highlights the art, speed and technique of the lifeguards. Events include an obstacle race and manekin race, which simulates rescuing a drowning person.

In the team event, one athlete plays the role of a lifeguard and rescues a teammate who is floating 120 meters offshore. Two assistants wait on the beach and help pull them ashore.

Tug of warTug of war used to be an Olympic sport and was one of the track and field events from the 1900 Paris Games to the 1920 Antwerp Games.

It is played by a eight-man team which has to pull its opponent a distance of 4 meters to win. The total weight of the team cannot exceed 680 kg when the tug of war is competed outdoors and 600 kg when competed indoors.

This sport is very popular among Japanese people, but it is not as simple as it looks. The eight men have to coordinate both their power and tempo in order to get the upper edge on their opponents.

Unfamiliar sports

The Games also feature some sports with unfamiliar sounding names.

Faustball is thought to be the origin of volleyball and is one of the oldest sports in the world.

"Faust" means fist in German and the game is played on a 50x20-meter court. The five players that make up a team can only use one hand to pass the ball over a two-meter net to their opponent's side. The team gets one point if the opposition touches the ball four times before returning it to the other side, or if the ball bounces twice before a player touches it.

The first team to get 20 points wins the set and the event is played in a best-of-three set format.

Korfball is very similar to basketball. However the players (eight per team -- both men and women as it is a mixed sport) cannot dribble the ball. Instead they have to pass the ball around before scoring in the "Korf," which is a basket in Dutch.

Exhibition events

In Akita, local and perhaps unfamiliar sports such as Aikido, beach handball, women's tug of war, gate ball and sumo have been chosen as exhibition events. No medals will be provided in these sports.

The mascots

The mascots of the World Games 2001 Akita are based on namahage, fearsome ogres from folk myths. The one on the left is Huggy and the one on the right Nummy.