Indiaca is a form of the
Brazil
Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...
ian game
peteca
Peteca () is a traditional sport in Brazil, played with a "hand shuttlecock" from indigenous origins and reputed to be as old as the country itself. The same name is given to the shuttlecock-object itself.
Objectives
The objective of the game i ...
popular in
Europe
Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...
. It is played on court across a net with similar rules to
volleyball
Volleyball is a team sport in which two teams of six players are separated by a net. Each team tries to score points by grounding a ball on the other team's court under organized rules. It has been a part of the official program of the Summ ...
but instead of a ball, a large
shuttlecock
A shuttlecock (also called a birdie or shuttle) is a high-drag projectile used in the sport of badminton. It has an open conical shape formed by feathers or plastic (or a synthetic alternative) embedded into a rounded cork (or rubber) base. T ...
, sometimes also called an ''indiaca'', or ''featherball'' is used; this consists of four goose feathers attached to a heavier base, and it is controlled using the hands. In this way, indiaca differs from
jiànzi (or
featherball
Jianzi (), tī jianzi (踢毽子), tī jian (踢毽) or jianqiú (毽球), is a traditional Chinese national sport in which players aim to keep a heavily weighted shuttlecock in the air by using their bodies, apart from the hands, unlike in si ...
), a very similar game originating in
Vietnam
Vietnam or Viet Nam ( vi, Việt Nam, ), officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam,., group="n" is a country in Southeast Asia, at the eastern edge of mainland Southeast Asia, with an area of and population of 96 million, making i ...
and
China
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...
, where the shuttlecock is controlled with the feet. Indiaca can be played by two individual players facing each other, or by small teams.
Origins
Records showed that in the past Indiaca was practiced by native Brazilian Indians as a recreation, even before the Portuguese arrived. This was passed successively through generations in Brazil.
In the V Olympic games held in Antwerp (Belgium) in 1920, the Brazilians who first participated in an Olympics, led Petecas for warming up their athletes, attracting numerous athletes from other countries interested in the practice. Finnish coaches and athletes repeatedly asked the head of the Brazilian delegation, about the rules of the sport and showed great interest in this activity.
Peteca left the streets, the grass and the sand to become a field sport in Belo Horizonte, in the 1940s.
It was in Belo Horizonte, capital of Minas Gerais state that the toy shape was transformed to its current format, proper for competitive games. The typical peteca has four white chicken feathers attached to a base and connected to a bottom made with several thin layers of rubber. It was also in Belo Horizonte that the rules of the game were first written, as well as the first courts were built and the practice gained competitive sense with internal championships that were held in various social clubs of the city.
In 1973 the Indiaca (Peteca) Federation of Minas Gerais (FEMP) was founded, confirming the pioneering spirit of a sport born and developed among the Brazilian people. From Belo Horizonte, the practice has spread to other Brazilian states, and from there to other countries, like France, that adopted the game as it is played in Brazil.
As positive support, there are many publications such as books, magazines, newsletters, brochures and reports that emphasize the advantages of the practice of this sport and that can be played by children and adults regardless of age, being healthy and attractive to both genres.
Indiaca is also played in Paraguay, Bolivia, Chile, United States, Portugal, Holland, Belgium, France, Germany, Spain, Switzerland, Estonia, Lithuania, Russia, China and Japan etc.
The rules of the game are not the same worldwide. In Brazil, for example, Peteca is played with a maximum of two players per team. In Germany a team can have five players.
See also
*
Jiànzi
*
Roundnet
Roundnet (also commonly known as spikeball) is a net sport. The game is played between two teams, usually with two players each. Players initially line up around a small trampoline-like net at the start of a point. The game starts with a serve f ...
References
External links
fempe.com.br
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