Sports (Part I)

I call this Part 1 as I have too much to write about in just one post. I said in the comment section that I will be posting on what constitutes a sport since I said shooting gun is not a sport. I need to comment on the stupid Bryant Gumbel racist comment. I need to talk about the Winter Olympics and a reflection on Canada's performance, which I will leave until we finish our events.

So now the comprehensive list on what is, and isn't, a sport. If you think I'm wrong, leave a comment, but chances are you are just wrong.

So to address what is a sport, I'll start by giving some examples of sports that no one, in their right mind, disagrees with: hockey, basketball, football, soccer, rugby, tennis, baseball, cricket, handball, squash, racquetball, table tennis (no one would disagree with this one if you actually see professionals play), cross country skiing, track/marathon running, bike racing, speed skating, swimming, lacrosse, volleyball, badminton, and Aussi rules football. I probably missed a ton in there, but you should be ale to get the point with any of these. There can be a lot of physical exertion, combined with some level of skill and strategy.

The other common theme of all of these sports is that is completely objective who wins. There is no doubt who won the football game, it is the team that scored the most points. Yes, a referee can get a call wrong, but you look at video replay and come up with an answer if the ref was got it wrong or not. This is not to say that all judged events are not sports, if you can properly assign a score that will consistently be given by different judges under perfect viewing conditions, then I will argue that it is objective.

Which brings me to my first event that I will say is not a sport: figure skating/ice dancing. You cannot call anything a sport that your uniform and music get judged based on artistic merit. I understand it is a very physically demanding competition, it just is not a sport. The new judging system maybe is a step in the right direction, but it still matters what the freaking participant is wearing! This isn't a beauty pageant, if you want to be a sport, act like one. Now that figure skating is not a sport, gymnastics comes into question. Here is the big difference for me: male floor routine = sport, female floor routine = not a sport (this is not sexist, the events are different, if females did the male version it would be a sport). When females do the routine, it matters how they work to their music and how graceful they are between athletic moves. For the male version, only the athletic moves count. You can then assign difficulty and judging criteria based on completely objective actions instead of how "pretty" the thing looked.

Golf is a sport. I hear people say it isn't, mostly because they either think a) it is boring or b) you can be out of shape and do it, it isn't physical, etc. The boring argument is irrelevant, I just hear it all the time, and if you want to argue it, you are stupid, period. On the physicality of golf, I think it requires a tremendous amount of skill to play well. It is a different type of sport than hockey to be sure, as under normal conditions a golfer will not be gasping for air after their round. Why golf qualifies as a sport is that it takes incredible control of strength and agility to hit the golf ball. You have to alter how you are going to swing depending on what the lie is (ie. uphill, downhill, the ground conditions, etc) so it is not just one repeatable action over and over. It is true that you can have a beer belly and be a good golfer, but the best golfers all have personal trainers and work out daily. To swing faster you need to be stronger, and swinging faster has benefits in many areas of the game. Winning at golf also is completely objective as the person with the best score wins, so it does follow all the rules up until now.

The other thing that can make a sport is reaction time and quickness. This is why I will allow someone to consider auto racing a sport, in that they control the car and react to the other drivers. I agree it is borderline, but I am also told the amount of G-force a typical racer feels will also completely tire someone out that is out of shape. I have never seen a fat race car driver, so I will accept this to be a sport. Horse racing/jumping/riding, however, is not a sport. It is a sport for the horse, not for the human. Anything that requires actions that are outside of human control I don't think I can count to be a sport. With cars, humans build them, if they don't work, it is human error at least. If a horse doesn't run fast enough, or buck hard enough, or whatever, it is not due to the skill of the human. It is a competition, not a sport. This also eliminates fishing and hunting, as some people consider these to be sports. If people want to have an extreme hunting competition where the people have to hunt other each other, it is gruesome, but it is a sport. I pretty much pissed off all rodeo fans, too bad.

On the quickness factor, combined with other reasons mentioned in the golf paragraph, downhill skiing and snowboarding events are sports. It isn't pure strength, but it requires very good leg strength, combined with reacting to course and making quick turns. I am going to also allow curling to be a sport as there are times when the sweepers will use a lot of strength to get the stone where it is needed, as well as the competition aspect of it. Luge/bobsleigh/skeleton because they take strength at the beginning, then quick reaction as they go down the course.

Another rule: a sport combined with a random act can still be a sport. Biathalon is one of these. Cross country skiing is a sport, shooting at stationary targets isn't, but the shooting doesn't take away from the skiing. The shooting actually does add something here, to do target shooting you have to steady your arm, but that becomes much more difficult as your heart rate is higher from the skiing. Just shooting by itself is, as I have said, not a sport. There is a laid out shooting range, nothing changes from one day to the next, the act of shooting is in no way physically demanding. If you shot for a couple hours straight, yes you will be sore, but that isn't what shooting competitions do. They take a set number of shots, the one with the best accuracy wins. To shoot a gun requires exactly X amount of force, just need to use that force and the gun will shoot just the same. I am willing to accept types of action shooting events to be sports though, or any shooting that requires movement and reaction. Guns are allowed to be part of sports, but just straight shooting of the gun to a stationary target is not a sport.

I am going to, with some reservations, make this list all be considered sports: half pipe, aerials, diving, ski jumping, and the like. You have to be able to get into athletic positions to be successful in all of these, but the judging aspect of them do give me pause to accepting them as sports. But by my previous rule, if you can develop proper judging, they can all qualify.

Question marks: are billiards and darts sports? I have a lot of trouble with these, neither requires a lot of power, but they are both objective competitions that depend on what you physically do.

Anyways, please leave comments, as well as let me know if any more sports need to be judged that I left out. If there is a sport that is clearly just a modified version of a sport listed, consider it to be in the same category of the listed one (ie. luge is a modified version of skeleton).