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Olympic Sports Word Search

A word search dedicated to Olympic sports, perfect for the excitement of the Games. Hidden in the grid are eight words to find: athletics, swimming, fencing, judo, archery, boxing, tennis and football. Each sport carries a story of skill, discipline and global tradition. Print it for free or download it as a PDF: ideal for a PE lesson or an Olympics-themed classroom activity.

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Created for free at creapuzzle.com

Olympic Sports, one by one

Every four years the Olympic Games bring athletes from all over the world together, and the eight sports in this grid are among the most familiar. Below is a short note on each one, useful for talking about the Games once the grid is solved.

Athletics — The "queen" of the Games and the oldest sport; running events were already held at the first ancient Greek Olympics.

Swimming — Contested in 50-metre pools, with four different strokes tested at the highest level.

Fencing — An elegant duel with sword, foil or sabre, with hits now tracked electronically.

Judo — A Japanese martial art whose name means "the gentle way", teaching how to use an opponent's own strength.

Archery — Demands extraordinary calm and precision; top archers even slow their heartbeat before shooting.

Boxing — A sport of strategy as much as strength, where timing and agility matter enormously.

Tennis — Returned to the Olympics after decades away and is played on different surfaces.

Football — The most loved sport in the world, seen at the Olympics mostly through youth national teams.

From ancient Olympia to the modern Games

The Olympic Games began in ancient Greece, in the sanctuary of Olympia, and tradition dates the first ones to 776 BC. They were held every four years in honour of Zeus, and a sacred truce let athletes and spectators travel safely even when cities were at war. The modern Games were revived in Athens in 1896 by a French educator, Baron Pierre de Coubertin. The five interlocking rings stand for the continents, and Coubertin explained that every national flag of his day contained at least one of the six colours of the emblem, counting the white background. The motto is “Citius, Altius, Fortius”, Latin for faster, higher, stronger, and in 2021 the word “Communiter”, together, was added to it.

Three of the eight words in the grid have been on the programme of every modern Games since 1896: athletics, swimming and fencing, joined only by cycling and gymnastics. Others came and went. Archery was added in 1900, dropped after 1920 and brought back in 1972; tennis was removed after 1924 and returned in 1988; judo made its debut at the Tokyo Games of 1964, and its name means “the gentle way” in Japanese. The words are old too: “athletics” comes from the Greek athlon, a contest or its prize, and “fencing” is a shortened form of “defence”.

Four activities for young athletes

The Games offer plenty of ideas for group activities in the classroom or the gym:

  • A marathon on the map. The marathon is 42.195 kilometres long, which is 26 miles and 385 yards. Ask the children to find on a map a place about that far from school, then to work out how long it would take to walk, run or drive there.
  • The five rings. Draw the rings in the right colours (blue, yellow, black, green and red) and ask the children what the five could stand for. No single colour belongs to a single continent, which makes it a good starting point for a discussion.
  • A two-minute list. After the grid, each team writes as many sports as it can in two minutes, Olympic or not. The team with the longest list wins, but every word must be spelled correctly.
  • Rules of fair play. The children write three rules for a fair contest, such as shaking hands with the opponent or accepting the referee's decision, and pin them up in the gym.

How this grid is built

Eight sports hide in 12×12 squares: two horizontal, five vertical and one diagonal. ATHLETICS, with nine letters, is the longest word and takes up three quarters of the bottom row, while JUDO, with four letters, is the shortest. FOOTBALL ends on that same row and shares its last letter, the L, with ATHLETICS: it is the only crossing in the grid. SWIMMING is the lone diagonal and slopes down to the right from the first row to the eighth, and FENCING and ARCHERY run down neighbouring columns. The first two columns are empty.

More events for the programme

To add more events, open the generator with the Sport theme and type other disciplines such as gymnastics, cycling, rowing, volleyball or equestrian. Weightlifting, with thirteen letters, would fit a 13×13 grid exactly.

Also in Italian

The Italian names are atletica (athletics), nuoto (swimming), scherma (fencing), judo (judo), tiro con l'arco (archery), pugilato (boxing), tennis (tennis) and calcio (football). The Italian version, Crucipuzzle degli Sport Olimpici, uses the shorter word tiro, which in Italian covers both archery and shooting, and it has five horizontal words against two here.

More word searches to try

From the Games you can move on to other word searches that get you moving:

For talking about sporting values with children, with more words and activities, read the article Sports word search puzzles.