We at The National are selecting — and writing about — the planet’s best places to see a sports event.

Stadiums, arenas, race tracks (horse and motors), even a “Gulf.”

This was the idea of Robert Mashburn, the sports editor here, who had a brainstorm a few months back to rank the top 10 venues in the world. Something like that.

We asked dozens of people in the newsroom to send us their top 10 global venues, and then we added up the points … and it needed tweaking. Because as native English speakers, mostly from Britain or North America, the list skewed toward England and the U.S.  Which is not exactly what you want when your paper is in the Middle East and a significant chunk of its readers come from India.

So, Mashburn refined it:

The Best Sports Venues in the World … by continent.

We turned this into something of a mega-project. One of the biggest I have been deeply involved with in 30-plus years in the biz. And one of the most complicated.

By turning into a “continent by continent” story, it assured that we would look hard at places anglophones might not know very well — Asia and, especially, South America and Africa.

So, one continent per day, for six consecutive days, beginning Saturday.

First, let’s do some linkage: Here is the winner for Australasia, an enormous sports palace in Melbourne. Here is the runner-up and here is No. 3 … the aforementioned gulf, and perhaps another reason I Really Need to Get to New Zealand Someday.

This has a bit more impact when you can see it as it looks in the paper, and the good news here is … The National’s website allows you to do that. Look at pages.

Here is the venue double-truck for Saturday morning. Or, at least, that’s what I’m showing.

If you register to look at every page in the newspaper, you eventually can see the sports cover, as well, which has another photo of our winner from Australasia (Australia as well as New Zealand and Oceania).

The doublee truck, on pages 8-9 has a batch of goodies not available as stories:

–The list of Nos. 4-8 of our “best venues” in Australasia.

–The top three moments at the No. 1 venue. (Up in the crown.)

–A explanation of our criteria for selecting, as well as the schedule.

This is just the start. For Sunday, it’s Europe, then North America on Monday. (Those two were tough; cutting down the list to eight, and then just the three that we wrote full stories about.) Followed by the exotic: South America, Africa and Asia.

It’s fun. It’s interesting. It’s mind-expanding. It will make you more worldly to be able to say, “Sure, this is a nice stadium, but is it any Melbourne Cricket Grounds? I think not.”

Oh, and because of that stadium, today I just added “cricket” to my “categories” of blog entries. I’m getting so worldly, I may be getting a head rush.

The Best Sports Venues in the World … by continent. Check it out.