Sport caricatures appeared when grotesque pictures were painted on antique vases. The forerunners of modern sport caricatures were presented later. But what we name today "sport humorous pictures" were issued only in the XVIIIth century in the works of T. Rolandson (England). His funny pictures on hunting, horse racing, and cricket are in the Sport museum in Paris now. Nearly two hundred O. Daumier's lithographs with rowers, mountaineers, and gymnasts are also at this museum.

In 1820 in Russia M. Bugaevsky-Blagodarny drew funny pictures of the chess players. Since that time sport caricatures are popular and are presented in different magazines - horse-races in "Satiricon", aerobics in"Nov", bicycle sport in "Budilnik" ( in the picture of P. Yakovlev an injured athlete in romantic mood plays strings-spokes of the damaged bicycle). Sport and laughter are twin brothers. Every athlete's dream is to jump over his/her head and this dream is funny itself.

Sport and athletes have always tried not to be involved in politics and ideology, but that was hard in totalitarian countries. In the Soviet times sport caricature ridiculed "antihuman" Western sport based on money and doping. Caricature gibed at rude athletes ( Y. Ganf. "An eye foe an eye", "Hippopotamus", 1926) and ignorant fans. The "Krokodil" magazine published pictures that pointed out at spending too much money on stadiums' construction and backstairs (I. Semyonov. "Sport community of dependents" 1958).

A lot of sport caricatures appear in the 60s (series of I. Sichev's and Y. Fedorov's pictures in the "Krokodil"), special "sport" magazines and albums are published ( V. Galba "A Hundred Smiles", 1964). Sport pictures anthologies including, for example, humorous Olympic encyclopedia become popular.

The Olympic Movement played an important role in sport caricatures. Caricature collections devoted to the Olympic Games, 1980 were published in Moscow and Tallinn.

Ideology invaded sport caricature in 1984 when the Communist countries refused to participate in the Olympic Games in Los Angeles. A lot of satiric pictures ( E. Milutka "The Olympic torch is sold") were published in the "Krokodil" and other magazines.

Caricaturists drew attention to sport as they satirically pictured many distinguished athletes. Let's take chess, for example. N. Radlov, a famous sport caricaturist of the 1980s, enjoyed playing this game. Later I. Igin and N. Lisogorsky depicted H. Capablanka, M. Tal, and T. Petrosyan. In the 1990s a famous caricaturist Luri devoted his works to G. Kasparov. An important role in humorous sport pictures' creation belongs to the Russian and foreign caricature exhibitions ("Penalty" in Dnepropetrovsk, 1988; "Sport and People" in Moscow, 1990; "Marathon race" in Omsk, 1991).

In Ankone, Italy, the exhibitions are held once in three years. The exhibition held in Shaulyai, Lithuania is devoted to a bicycle. After the contest the winners ride home on their prizes.