Sport in Italy Sport in Italy Sport in Italy has a long tradition. In several sports, both individual and team, Italy has good representation and many successes. Football is the most popular sport in Italy. Italy won the 2006 FIFA World Cup, and is (along with Germany) currently the second most successful football team in World Cup history, after Brazil, having won four FIFA World Cup championships. Basketball, volleyball, and cycling are the next most popular/played sports, with Italy having a rich tradition in all three. Italy also has strong traditions in swimming, water polo, rugby union, tennis, athletics, fencing and Formula One.
Gaston de Saporta was a supporter of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution and showed the transformation of plant species in different eras. He corresponded with Darwin. In 1877, Darwin wrote a supportive letter to Saporta which stated that "your idea that dicotyledonous plants were not developed in force until sucking insects had been evolved seems to me a splendid one." He wrote many books about botany from the 1860s to the 1890s. He became a member of the French Academy of Sciences. Moreover, he often visited the National Museum of Natural History in Paris to attend conferences, and paved the way for the