Category
The games the world plays and the stories behind them.
Sport is a shared global language with some very strange rules. Our Sports stories explain why games are played the way they are, from the 26.2-mile marathon to tennis scoring that runs 15, 30, 40, and how athletes, events and traditions spread around the world. We dig into the history behind distances, scores and records, and into the science and economics of sport, using official records and reliable reporting. Whether you play, watch or simply wonder why the rules are so odd, these stories aim to give every match and race a little more context.
Love, 15, 30, 40, deuce. Tennis has the oddest scoring in world sport, and it is older than the modern game itself. Here is where the numbers came from, which popular theories fall apart, and how the tiebreak finally tamed the endless set.
The marathon's oddly precise distance has nothing to do with ancient Greece. It was fixed by a London race route in 1908 and made official in 1921. Here is the full story, from Pheidippides to the sub-two-hour era.