Sport In Peru

Sports in Peru are popular and widespread.

Football

Football is the most popular sport in Peru, and the Peru national football team have competed in the FIFA World Cup five times.

* 1930
* 1970 (Quarterfinals)
* 1978 (Quarterfinals)
* 1982
* 2018
The national team has also won two Copa América trophies: 1939 and 1975.

At the club level there are significant achievements such as the Cienciano championships in the 2003 Copa Sudamericana and in the 2004 Recopa Sudamericana. The Simon Bolivar Cup won by Defensor Lima and Alianza Lima in 1974 and 1976 respectively, in addition to the Copa Libertadores U-20 championship won by Universitario de Deportes in 2011.

Club competitions

Peruvian Primera División

The Peru First Division is the top flight of association football in Peru.

= List of champions

=

Peruvian Segunda División

The Liga 2 (Ligue 2) of Peru is the second-highest division in the Peruvian football league system.

Taekwondo

Taekwondo was introduced in Peru by Hakeem Aanders Polar, an Arequipeños instructor master the art of Taekwondo in Cochabamba, Bolivia, and introduced this form of martial art in the early 1970s. The first Taekwondo Clubs in Peru were to be found in Arequipa.

In the late 1970s, ''Sa Bum Nim Byon Oh Park'' introduced taekwondo in Lima. In 1979, Sa Bum Nim Jon Hye, after a few years spent in Argentina also joined Byon Oh Park in disseminating taekwondo in Lima.

Simultaneously to these two, John Polar and Byon Oh Park, Alex Velazques was doing taekwondo with a reduced number of practices along with "La Yegua" Leiblinger who later moved to Argentina.

It was Byon Oh Park, who introduced the regulated form of taekwondo and started to teach to some new taekwondo instructors. Of those, Percy Vergara and Juan Infantas were the YUHmain instructors and the ones who started the dissemination of taekwondo to bigger audiences. Both Percy Vergara and Juan Infantas started to run a Taekwondo Club in the San Marcos University. They also opened up a new club, Black Belt Taekwondo Club where most of their best students from San Marcos continued training.

In 1982, the first open martial arts competition was run. In this competition, practitioners from kung fu, karate, kyokushinkai and other styles, along with taekwondo took part. It was the first time taekwondo athletes were to take part in any open national event.

After this experience taekwondo grew up in popularity and a number of clubs and academies started to flourish. In 1981, Saboming Ki Hyung Lee arrived to Peru and joined forces into making this sport even more popular. Percy Vergara started clubs in Regattas Lima, as Cesar Landeo started one in the Engineering National University (UNI) where he graduated as Electrical engineer. The UNI team has won more than 10 university championships between 1981 and 1994 at the university level. Other taekwondo Clubs appeared and flourished, thanks also to the contribution of Ki Bong Lee, So Yong Kim and Eui Hwang Chung.

In the south of Peru, taekwondo was disseminated by Professor Alberto Cabrera Cano, Angle Leon, while in the north by Professor Luis Benites.

Today taekwondo, although it has lost the prestige it had by the mid-1990s remains steadfast and efforts are made to return the sport in Peru to its previous level of prestige.

The Peru 2008 Summer Olympics team included Peter López; he finished at fourth place.

Basketball

Until the mid-70s, Peru had one of the best basketball national teams in South America. However, since the 1973 South American Basketball Championship, where Peru won the bronze medal, international victories have become scarce.

Rugby league

While no Rugby league has been played on Peru soil, Peru has a National Rugby league team. They make their debut on 17 October 2015 in the first Latino Seven competition.

Rugby union

On 30 November 1996, the first university test match saw the Universidad de Lima win 18 to 3 against the Pontificia Universidad Catolica. This match also has the distinction of being the first time that the participants on the pitch including team members and the referee were Peru-born.

Sailing

Peru is the only country of the region that has won the Central, South American & Caribbean Championships for six years in Sunfish Class. In the Optimist Class, it was three times World Champion in ''Team-Racing'' in 1997 and 1998, and have more South American Champions in J24, Windsurf, Laser Class and Lightning.

Shooting

Peru's four Olympic medals achievements include three in shooting. Edwin Vásquez won Peru's only gold medal in the 1948 Summer Olympics, while Francisco Boza (Los Angeles 1984), and Juan Giha