We all have our favorites… and our dogs. The media lumps them by popularity which is very fickle. Seems to me that they fall into simple catagories such as:
Speed (how fast can you…)
Endurance (how long can you…)
Strength (how much can you…)
Coordination (court, ball and stick stuff…)
Technical and Pagentry (subjective judging stuff…)
You can probably read my prejudices… would it be better for the olympics if we broke them up in this fashioin? Is the debate over ‘what is a sport’ good for sports in general? What do you think?
Hmmm. Interesting. I’ve gone so far as to acknowledge a basic philosophical difference between “sport” and “games”.
Sport is any activity that provides a commensurate opportunity for gain and loss: High altitude mountaineering- you could reach the summit of a big mountain, or be killed by altitude, weather, avalanche. Opportunity for gain- opportunity for loss. Being a Roman Gladiator: Win, you live- loose, you die. Gain/loss.
Games are activities for which the opportunity for loss may be somewhat reduced and success/failure is detemined predominately by a set of “rules” or perfromance guidelines i.e. score, time, subjective judging, etc. The line starts to blur when a U.S. style football player fractures his neck and is paralyzed or a figure skater gets a serious concussion.
Is Ironman a “sport” or a “game”? Both I guess… A game in the sense you are trying to have a good race that may include just finishing or having a specific time/performance goal. It is sport in the sense that you could drown in the swim, die in a bike crash or suffer a serious physical problem during the run. Hmmm. Interesting discussion. Probably pointless, but interesting nonetheless.
My suggestion to the IOC would be to take all “sports” that fall into the “Technical & Pagentry” category, in other words ALL judged sports and put them in their own seperate Olympic Games - call it the Artistic Olympic Games, or something like that. This way I would not have to sit thrugh 2 hours of balance beam qualifications to watch the women’s 5000m final on the track.
The sports in this Artistic Olympic Games would be:
Figure Skating
Freestyle Skiing
Diving
Gymnastics
Synchronized Swimming
This way TV viewer would not be fooled into watching something they really don’t want to watch. Watching NBC coverage of the winter games one would think that all that’s going on is figure skating and for the summer games, well, it’s just a giant gymnastics meet. I feel sorry for American TV viewers. Thank god for the CBC here in Canada.
Very interesting question and interesting views from everyone.
Here’s mine. I differentiate sports and games based on what is the main determinant for performance - physical ability or skill. Obviously a combination of both is required for most (all?) sports/games. The defining factor is which one is more important in the event in question (subject to debate). For example: marathon running requires skill, yes, but I believe a person’s performance depends mostly on physical ability, therfore I call it a sport. Baseball requires physical ability, but I think skill is more important there, therefore I call it a game. Of course it becomes difficult to draw a set line when you get sports/games that require a high degree of both physical ability and skill. Then I guess I use my own prejudices to judge.
I cant speak for most of the artistic sports listed but I can say that my wife was a fairly highly nationally ranked synchronized swimmer (all american in college) and had since taken up tris. SHe has some interesting points. One is that you cant compare the two as far as pain goes. She says that synchronized swimming is so utterly painful that no one can appreciate it unless they did it. She hasnt been in a pool in 10 years and finally started swimming in October. Within three months she has gotten to the point where she does a set of 10x100’s on 1:07 to 1:03. Some serious swimming base there.
She’s done tris for four years now (no she hasnt trained the swim at all, only swims in races, and comes out in the top three women regardless). The one thing she loves about tris is that its you against the clock, nothing else, no excuses. She looks back on her synchronized swimming days with disgust in some respects since youre being judged by a panel, usually which is comprised of people who have swimmers in the meet. She lost a few meets due to “poor” judging. (She went undefeated for something like three years or so…the exact numbers escape me, but you get the point)
I still try to give her grief saying that tris have got to be harder. Shes done two half IM’s and a bazillion sprints…but she wont admit it. She’s thinking IM this year so we’ll see after that. She says its apples and oranges and you cant compare.
I watched her compete in college and it is impressive to see the level of control she has over her body in the water but its just not the same, good or bad…all I know is i cant do any of the stuff she can do in the water.