Wide World of Sports was intended to be a "fill-in" show for a single summer season, until the start of fall sports seasons, but became unexpectedly popular. The goal of the show, which originally ran for ninety minutes on Saturday afternoons and featuring two or three sports, was to showcase sports from around the globe. These included many types not normally seen on American television, such as hurling, rodeo, curling, jai-alai, firefighter's competitions, surfing, Logger sports, demolition derby and badminton. Traditional Olympic sports such as figure skating, skiing, gymnastics, and track and field competitions were also regular features of the show. The broadcast was hosted for most of its history by Jim McKay.
Of course my reason for looking for this thread and finding none, creating one, is the death of one Robert Craig "Evel" Knievel. My experiences with Evel on TV were always on WWoS:
True to Roone Arledge's vision of giving the unusual in sport a chance to be noticed, Evel Knievel became a national icon under the limelight of the cameras of ABC's Wide World of Sports. It was the perfect venue for Knievel. Three weeks after his 35th birthday, he made his first appearance on Wide World, when he successfully jumped 50 stacked cars at the Los Angeles Coliseum in front of a crowd of 35,000.
Of course I always remember the Snake River jump, where the chute deployed early and he didn't come close, because ABC hyped it so relentlessly. I had the Evel Knievel Stunt Cycle, which I used to jump over Hot Wheels.