My wife and I always have this argument: I hold the view that unless a performance can be OBJECTIVELY measured or timed then it is NOT a sport. (eg. a sport would include distance timed swimming; volleyball;any of the races , shot put discus-you get the idea)
If the end result must be SUBJECTIVELY judged and the winner approved by a group score tallied by individual judges then it is NOT a sport. Non sports would include, synchronized diving or swimming; gymnastics; (horse jumping NO - Horse racing YES); Moreover, subjective activities judgments are subject to all sorts of politics and favoritism which bear nothing on actual performance.
I'm not saying that that my "subjective" category participants are not "athletes". they most certainly are. but. eg in my view gymnasts are essentially highly specialized dancers. Synchronized swimming belongs back on 'Saturday Night Live."
Mike, I have this argument too - now and again - with friends and family members. To me, the idea of sport is physical effort against competitors, either solo or as a team member. You have to be at your fittest to do this. Anything else is a GAME, not sport.
Take, for example, golf. You can be physically un-fit, even a bit over-weight, and still play golf. You can be as fat as you like and still indulge in archery or rifle-shooting. These things may be defined as a skill, but not sport, which is where you should be sweating your butt off trying to beat the other person.
(Come to think of it, why isn't there any golf at the Olympics? Or, have I missed it??)
Mike, I have this argument too - now and again - with friends and family members. To me, the idea of sport is physical effort against competitors, either solo or as a team member. You have to be at your fittest to do this. Anything else is a GAME, not sport.
Take, for example, golf. You can be physically un-fit, even a bit over-weight, and still play golf. You can be as fat as you like and still indulge in archery or rifle-shooting. These things may be defined as a skill, but not sport, which is where you should be sweating your butt off trying to beat the other person.
(Come to think of it, why isn't there any golf at the Olympics? Or, have I missed it??)
- James.
I think golf is coming to Turkey in 2016. Golf is most definitely not a sport. It's barely a game.
This is kind of a slippery slope argument -- so many sports like baseball, tennis, and football -- rely on what are in essence judgement calls by officials. Key games and championships may be decided by judgement calls. Are they not sports? If you watch enough gymnastics you develop an eye for what makes one routine better than another -- which athletes perform closer to an ideal. Gymnasts do much more than floor exercises! -- bars, rings, etc. So, no, I guess I do not agree.
I am (mostly) in agreement with the OP (Recordman), and I too have this discussion with my wife, sister-in-law (a former gymnast), and anyone else with whom I dare bring it up.
DISCLAIMER: All of the following are purely my personal opinions- I wholly accept that I am not the Single Official Person on Planet Earth who gets to decide such things...
1. In NO WAY do I think the things that gymnasts, figure skaters, divers, synchronized swimmers, etc. do are NOT impressive. They are spectacular feats of physicality, and require many many years of training, focus, dedication, and incredible athletic ability. I wholly respect their achievements.
All that said...
2. No sport should "require" (or encourage, or reward/penalize) make-up and/or costumes. I'm looking at you, women's gymnastics. And figure skating (regardless of gender).
3. No sport should "require" routines done to music. I'm looking at you, women's gymnastics, rhythmic gymnastics, cheerleading, synchronized swimming, and figure skating.
4. No sport should "require" (or reward/penalize) choreography. This is different than technical element requirements. I hope the difference doesn't need explanation.
5. #2, #3, and #4 CAN certainly still happen in organized competitions (which I am differentiating from sports). But these competitions are physical "performances" that have more in common with acrobats, trapeze artists, dancers, and the like. The sort of thing people go see in a theater or a show, rather than in sports. There are dance competitions, for example (just as there are guitar competitions, or any number of performing competitions)- but people mostly don't confuse those with sports. My other sister-in-law is a professional ballet dancer- she is incredibly "athletic", but what she does is not a sport.
6. For something to be an actual sport, there needs to be some way of interacting with (or responding to) the performance of your peers. So to simply have a wholly self-contained routine planned, and then go out and try and perform it one time as best as possible, such as in gymnastics (floor exercise, for example) doesn't work with my idea of sports. I realize that in gymnastics, you can say to yourself "wow, Opponent X was really good at her routine, so I will need to step up my own performance when I go out there." But that is not the same thing as a back-and forth sporting contest. To me, in a sport you must be able to make decisions like a) try to block your opponent's shot, or b) run faster (burning more energy) when you see your opponent is at full-sprint earlier in the race than expected, or c) see that your competition fired 3 arrows into the 10-point circle (as you trade arrows back and forth- not just one time). Simply executing a pre-planned routine without having the chance to go back-and-forth in response to each other doesn't allow for this. Instead, it has much more in common with things like ballet or performing the choreography from a dance recital or stage show.
7. Generally, I think sports need to be based upon objective outcomes (finishing faster, or with more accuracy, or with more points, or having gained a certain position over your opponent, etc.), rather than a consensus of judges granting a score for your performance/execution of your intended routine (or dive, etc.).
8. I acknowledge that all sports have their subjective aspects (did the runner stay in-bounds, was that a charge or a block, did the throw beat the runner, etc.), but that is not the same thing as "I think that athlete's planned performance was executed at about a 96% success rate" or "someone decided that the total number of things this athlete is going to attempt are worth 3.2 difficulty points" and so on. In the former, if humans were perfect, the calls/decisions would still all be made objectively and with 100% accuracy (yes, the runner did stay in bounds), while with the latter, it still took a bunch of people to SUBJECTIVELY decide together what scores should even be assigned to what elements in the first place.
So there you have it. Sports vs. "performing competitions" from MusicMaker.
On the same topic is NASCAR a sport and are the drivers "athletes "? They claim they are.
I don't know about NASCAR specifically, but motor sport as a whole certainly is full of athletes. Have you ever seen (or done) motocross? Or endurance sports car racing (cockpit temperatures of 140+ for multiple hours under high g-loads). Or perhaps the best example of all- Formula One? Heck, if I just go go-karting for a couple hours I can barely lift my arms at the end. And that's kid stuff compared to high-level racing.
In Formula One, the drivers pull g-forces under braking and acceleration and (especially) while turning in excess of 4.5-5 Gs. Even the Blue Angels (for those outside the USA, this is the US Navy fighter plane high performance demonstration team) only go under load to about 9 Gs, and that is in limited doses and durations and singular instances. F1 drivers pull those kinds of physical forces at most every turn (say, 15 turns per lap) for 2 hours. Most of those guys, in their "down time" (i.e. when they're just having fun), do things like A) play semi-pro soccer matches (Michael Schumacher and Giancarlo Fisichella), B) run triathlons (Jenson Button), C) enter serious eco-challenge survivor-style competitions (Mark Webber). Those guys are supposed to be as lean and mean as possible at all times for their race performances, and each of the teams spends millions of dollars on nutritionists and reflex coaches and mental coaches and strength/conditioning coaches to make sure that is the case for their drivers.
So yeah- those guys are definitely athletes. In fact, they are elite athletes.
As for NASCAR drivers specifically, I'm not as sure- I genuinely don't know as it's not a sport I follow closely. Big, heavy cars which turn in one direction, and without much else in terms of G-force demands (they even get a side-support to hold their helmets in place and rest their heads against while turning).
I know that when Jeff Gordon got out of the Williams F1 car after just a few demonstration laps several years ago (after trading cars with Juan Pablo Montoya, who at the time was a Williams F1 driver), he said his head was about to fall off from the g-forces. He said he'd never be able to actually race in F1 without some serious physical conditioning. And Jeff Gordon has never seemed like an out-of-shape guy to me in the first place.
MusicMaker, you make some very good points. Food for thought, in fact, and here are one or two of mine, which may be added to when I get more time.
Boxing is a well established Olympic sport. In the event of a knock out, the winner is very clear. In the absence of a KO, the bout is decided subjectively by judges. No other way of doing it - and the participants are fit, strong and athletic - but this may not be a sport by your definition.
Motor racing - no matter how fit they are (and they are, as you very ably point out) my instinctive reaction is that it may well be a sport but the drivers could only be athletes if (like cyclists) they powered their own vehicles themselves, without the benefit of engines. I can't see Hamilton and Button in pedal cars, so sorry guys - you're amongst the fittest of sportsmen, but I think you're drivers, not athletes.
Excellent posts, MusicMaker, and I enjoyed reading them much as I can recall enjoying any posts of recent times. More discussion required and to follow!
To me, the outcome of a sporting event should be measurable and determined objectively; anything that can be judged subjectively according to one's personal opinion of a performance is not a sport but more of an art form. Of course, there are those who will argue that art itself can be measured objectively and therefore be judged good or bad, but in my opinion, the success of art is subjective and not objectively quantifiable.
Is the Olympics evolving into a glorified talent contest?
To me, the outcome of a sporting event should be measurable and determined objectively; anything that can be judged subjectively according to one's personal opinion of a performance is not a sport but more of an art form. Of course, there are those who will argue that art itself can be measured objectively and therefore be judged good or bad, but in my opinion, the success of art is subjective and not objectively quantifiable.
Is the Olympics evolving into a glorified talent contest?
Josh,
I refer you to my dilemma over boxing, above. Undoubtedly a sport, but often decided subjectively. Also, gymnastics and diving involve levels of difficulty according to the elements attempted, so a mixture of objectivity and subjectivity.
I maintain that synchronised anything, however, is dance, not sport.
To return to your definition, darts, pool and snooker would be included. None of us wants that!
I think a lot of traditional Olympic sports are a bit odd: Throwing a spear, jumping very high using a long bendy stick, throwing a really heavy ball out of a small circle using just one arm. Synchronized swimming/diving seems quite sane after that lot, & I've enjoyed the beach volleyball
Are the Olympics a sport? I don't think so. I think it's one big: Our ideology/way of life is better that yours, look at all the gold medals we've won! It seems to me that the Olympics is a really big & expensive circus that no one can really afford now. I have enjoyed a lot of it.
