Bowling, by number of alleys

In bowling, a bowling ball with three finger holes is thrown towards a formation of ten pins. Bowling is played on a wooden or plastic lane, which is covered with a thin film of oil as far as the final third. Bowling players wear special shoes which have a special sliding sole made from Teflon or leather. One game has a total of ten frames. In each frame, the player tries to knock down all ten pins, which are arranged in a triangle, with the bowling ball.

History of bowling
The exact origin of bowling is not entirely clear, although its roots are most likely in the European game of skittles. Europeans, especially German, English and Dutch immigrants, took skittles to the US in the 19th century. People often played skittles for money, which was soon banned due to betting scams. From this ban, bowling emerged. Since the game with exactly nine skittles was banned, people started to add an extra skittle, call them pins and change their formation. In the US, several variations of the game with different rules and playing conditions had begun to develop. In 1865, the National Bowling Association was founded in Chicago through a merger of 22 clubs, and at the same time the first universal rules were defined. The American Bowling Congress (ABC) was then founded in 1895. Since then, international standards have been set: pins must be 38 cm tall, balls can weigh up to 7.3 kg, and lanes are up to 106 cm wide. Women were not allowed to become ABC members, which is why they founded the Women’s International Bowling Congress (WIBC) at the beginning of the 20th century. Until the first half of the 20th century, so-called “pinboys” were responsible for setting up the pins – it was only in 1951 that bowling lanes were automated. Bowling spread through Europe after the Second World War due to American soldiers. During this bowling-boom, the global umbrella organisation for bowling – the Fédération Internationale des Quilleurs (FIQ), today known as World Bowling – was founded in 1952. In the 1960s, the first commercial bowling alleys were already starting to appear. Bowling is still not an Olympic sport as of today, but World Bowling remains committed to having bowling included in the Olympic programme.

Bowling in Switzerland
The national association of Swiss bowlers is Swiss Bowling. The association was founded in 1963 under the name Schweizerischer Bowling-Verband (Swiss Bowling Association). Today, Swiss Bowling has around 1,000 members. There are 84 bowling alleys in Switzerland, with 13 in Bern alone.