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Sports inPeru are popular and widespread.
Football is the most popular sport in Peru, and thePeru national football team have competed in theFIFA World Cup five times.
The national team has also won twoCopa América trophies:1939 and1975.
At the club level there are significant achievements such as theCienciano championships in the2003 Copa Sudamericana and in the2004 Recopa Sudamericana.[1][2] TheSimon Bolivar Cup won byDefensor Lima andAlianza Lima in 1974 and 1976 respectively,[3] in addition to theCopa Libertadores U-20 championship won byUniversitario de Deportes in2011.[4]
The Peru First Division is the top flight ofassociation football inPeru.
The Liga 2 (Ligue 2) of Peru is the second-highest division in thePeruvian football league system.
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The Peru women's national volleyball team is the national team of Peru. The team was one of the dominant forces in women's volleyball in the 1980s, culminating in the silver medal won at the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, South Korea. Peru has a volleyball league called theLiga Nacional Superior de Voleibol, which has both men’s and women’s competitions, the winners move into South American competitions. It was founded in 1965 and the current teams with the most winners arePeerless in the men’s division, andRegatas Lima for the women’s division, each with eight champions won.
Volleyball was introduced in Peru in1911, with the hiring by the government of President Augusto B. Leguía of American educators Joseph Lockey and Joseph McKnight, responsible for an educational reform, and that he practiced it as a hobby, since in those years football and boxing predominated.[43][44][45]
Until the mid-70s, Peru had one of the best basketball national teams in South America. However, since the 1973South American Basketball Championship, where Peru won the bronze medal, international victories have become scarce.
For travelers from all over the world, Peru offers waves for everyone: beginners, intermediate, and advanced longboard riders alikesurfers.Felipe Pomar, Second World Surfing Championship, Peru 1965, andSofia Mulanovich, Women's World Surf Champion in 2004.
Peru is the only country of the region that has won theCentral,South American &Caribbean Championships for six years inSunfish Class. In theOptimist Class, it was three times World Champion inTeam-Racing in 1997 and 1998, and have more South American Champions inJ24,Windsurf,Laser Class andLightning.
Peru's fourOlympic medals achievements include three in shooting.Edwin Vásquez won Peru's only gold medal in the1948 Summer Olympics, whileFrancisco Boza (Los Angeles 1984), andJuan Giha (Barcelona 1992) both won silver medals.
Taekwondo was introduced in Peru by Hakeem Aanders Polar, an Arequipeños instructor master the art of Taekwondo inCochabamba,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 theSan 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 fromkung 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 Peru2008 Summer Olympics team includedPeter López; he finished at fourth place.
Luis Horna andJaime Yzaga are well-known Peru-born tennis players. Tennis Hall of Famer and Davis Cup and Wimbledon winnerAlejandro Olmedo is Peru-born, but played for the United States.[46][47]Laura Arraya is the best Peruvian tennis player in the women's competition. Her brother isPablo Arraya, a former Peruvian tennis player.
ThePeru Davis Cup team currently compete in the Americas Zone Group II, with their best result qualifying for the World Group in 2008. They had twice previously reached the World Group playoffs in 1989 and 1994, but did not advance.
Club Lawn Tennis de la Exposición is located in the district ofJesús María in Lima, the usual court location for Peru's players. The court was found in 1884, and was the home court for the golden generation of Peru's tennis players of the 1980s. Its principal colosseum was named after the Buse Brothers, Enrique and Eduardo Buse. Enrique played atWimbledon and theUS Open in 1946 and again at the US Open in 1951.
While noRugby 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.
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.
Peru features awater polo team that finished fourth at the2018 South American Games.[48]
Peru's women's national under-20 water polo team made its debut at the 2021FINA Junior Water Polo World Championships.[49]
Peru has officially participated in 17Summer Olympic Games and 2Winter Olympic Games. The Comité Olímpico Peruano is theNational Olympic Committee for Peru which was founded in 1924 and recognized by theInternational Olympic Committee in 1936.
Peru has won a total of four medals, three inshooting events and one involleyball. Their first and only gold medal to date was won byEdwin Vásquez in the1948 Summer Olympics in theMen's 50 metre pistol. The remaining three medals were silver.