第716期:Sports Divided

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Yuri: Shirley, one question. I'm a bit confused now. One thing, about sports. Sometimes, I can see U.K. play something with a team. Sometimes you're all divided. Why is that?

Shirley: So, we are essentially still four countries, four separate countries in a united kingdom, so yeah, basically each country just wanted to keep their national team.In the case of the Olympics, for some reason, and I'm not sure of the exact reason, but the Olympics committee didn't want four divided teams from Great Britain. They wanted a representative of the United Kingdom, so they basically made the rule that Great Britain had to send a team and not teams from the four individual countries.So, yeah, so we are the United Kingdom but we're still very much four independent countries and each country is very proud of their own national teams for football and for rugby[橄欖球] and things like that.But, yeah, it's good that we get together for the Olympics and we can perform as one united country.

Yuri: OK, thank you very much.