A sport is defined as a competition between a person (or group of people i.e. team) against a seperate person or team. The person or team will try to prevent the other person or team from scoring a definitive point while trying to score a point themselves.
I bolded the two words that I believe are the most important words in the definition. These two words seperate a sport from a an athletic event. I say atheltic event because some of these events take a tremendous amount of athletic ability. By nature they are all competitive. A sport is always an athletic event, but an athletic event is not always a sport.
Here is my breakdown:
Sport
- Baseball/Softball
- Football
- Basketball
- Hockey (Ice & Field)
- Rugby
- Polo
- Water Polo
- Lacrosse
- Tennis
- Volleyball
- Cricket
- Fencing
Athletic (Leisure) Event
- Golf
- Bowling
- Gymnastics
- Figure Skating
- Swimming/Diving
- Wrestling ?
- Cross Crounty (Run & Ski)
- Track & Field
- Horse Shoes
- Boxing ?
- Skiing
- Snowboarding
- Cycling
- Equestrian
- Darts
- Billiards
- Handball
I put a question mark by boxing and wrestling because if there is a knock out or pin those are definitely definitive, but other than that the points are subjective.
5 comments:
Wrestling is not subjective. A takedown is a takedown. A reversal is a reversal. An escape is an escape. Illegal holds are illegal holds.
There are two things that are close to subjective is the near-falls and you usually see two or three points given for those (I've seen one four-point nearfall once). Even with near-falls, there's counting when athletes are going for that pin.
The other is stalling, but that's pretty blatant, too, and comes when someone won't tangle is running away from the bout.
That's my arguement on wrestling. Boxing is more subjective, especially when it goes to the judges' cards.
A "sport" to me would be an athletic competion, guided by rules, that requires physical skill. Added to this would be a scoring system that provides a victor or winner.
Racing, horse racing, ballroom dancing and figure skating are examples of a competion requring skill, but each can be disqualifed as being a "sport" for a specific reason.
Auto and horse racing: a superior car or horse determines the outcome and no true athletic skill is required.
Figure skating: I would lose my Man Card if I paid the least amount of attention to it, so it isn't a "sport"!
Softball has to be broken into two -
1) Fastpitch=sport
2) Slowpitch=leisure
Any activity with judging(not officiating, but judging) becomes leisure activity
Good point with the judging/officiating. Hence slow pitch softball has officials, so it is a sport.
I played team handball, and even went to a USOEC camp once in middle school...and that is definetley a sport.
Plus, even though I am not a fan, soccer is a sport. So is squash...and congrats to Trinity for breaking the NCAA record in consecutive wins (I just watched Around the Horn).
As for skiing, snowboarding, cross country or track, even swimming...those could all be subjective since the goal is to have the fastest time.
Anything that has a judge in it to GIVE you a score...that is not a sport, I agree...I think there is more than two catagories...
Found this at http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/sport:
"an athletic activity requiring skill or physical prowess and often of a competitive nature, as racing, baseball, tennis, golf, bowling, wrestling, boxing, hunting, fishing, etc."
I disagree with almost half of those...
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