Sport in Croatia to some extent table tennis and chess. Various amateur sport games are popular in Croatia, notably picigin. Franjo Bučar (1866–1946) is widely considered to be the father of modern Croatian sport. He founded the Croatian Sports Federation in 1909 within what was then the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Bučar introduced a multitude of mainstream sports in Croatia, such as football, alpine skiing, ice skating and ice hockey, as well as gymnastics and fencing. The Franjo Bučar State Award for Sport, the Republic of Croatia's highest award in the development of sport, is named in his honor. With the exception of the years
Sport in the United Kingdom modern pentathlon, figure skating and sailing. Thoroughbred racing, which originated under Charles II of England as the "sport of kings", occupies a key place in British sport, probably ranking in the top four or five sports in terms of media coverage. There are sixty racecourses in Great Britain with annual racecourse attendance exceeding six million and roughly 13,500 races being held across Britain and Ireland each year. The sport in Great Britain is governed by the British Horseracing Authority. The two racecourses in Northern Ireland are governed by Horse Racing Ireland, which runs the sport on an All-Ireland basis. The