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Aworld championship is generally an international competition open to elite competitors from around the world, representing their nations, and winning such an event will be considered the highest or near highest achievement in the sport, game, or ability.
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The title is usually awarded through a combination of specific contests or, less commonly,ranking systems (e.g. theICC Test Championship), or a combination of the two (e.g.World Triathlon Championships inTriathlon). This determines a 'world champion', who or which is commonly considered the best nation, team, individual (or other entity) in the world in a particular field, although the vagaries of sport ensure that the competitor recognised at the best in an event is not always the 'world champion' (seeUnderdog).[citation needed] This may also be known as aworld cup competition, for example cycling (UCI World Championships andUCI World Cups). Often, the use of the term cup or championship in this sense is just a choice of words. Some sports have multiple champions because of multiple organizations, such as boxing, mixed martial arts and wrestling.
Certain competitive exercises do not have a world championship or a world cup as such, but may have one or several world champions. Professionalboxing, for example, has several world champions atdifferent weights, but each one of them is decided by a "title match", not a tournament. In a title match system, the championship can only be won by directly defeating the incumbent, who in turn must continue to compete to retain their title or riskforfeiture.
Inassociation football (soccer), the first such tournament was theFootball World Championship disputed from 1876 to 1904 between the winners of theFA Cup andScottish Cup.[1] After that, there have been many tournaments between teams from around the world, but it wasn't until 1960 when theIntercontinental Cup was established, competed between the winners two greatest and most important continental championships: theUEFA Champions League from Europe andCONMEBOL Copa Libertadores from South America, the cup was endorsed by bothUEFA andCONMEBOL but had no involvement fromFIFA, the governing body for world football.[2] As such, FIFA wanted to expand the tournament to include the champion from other continents - from theAFC Champions League (Asia andAustralia),CAF Champions League (Africa),CONCACAF Champions League (North America andCaribbean) andOFC Champions League (Oceania) and created theFIFA Club World Cup. Thefirst edition in 2000 ran concurrently with the2000 Intercontinental Cup, and in 2004 the Intercontinental Cup was merged with the CCW, which has been ongoing since 2005 with yearly editions.
Finally, certain competitions do not have a world championship or world cup, but rather hold a series of events recognised as the elite level in their field (e.g.tennis andgolf have a series of fourGrand Slam events recognised as the pinnacle of the game, in addition to key team events, world tour finals and the Olympic Games, though each yearITF (International Tennis Federation) designates aWorld Champion based on performances throughout the year).
There are some sports that already had a 'world championship' in the 18th or 19th century, although it was variable how 'world-wide' these competitions really were. The French playerClergé is considered to be the first international champion inreal tennis, since 1740. Inchess, international matches have been held for centuries, often resulting in certain players considered the best of all, with the first multiplayer tournament heldin London in 1851, but Wilhelm Steinitz in 1886 was the first chess player generally recognized as theworld chess champion.
Other sports with early 'world championships' wereEnglish draughts (1840) andspeed skating.
The following lists for the various sports with a world championship include:
