The sports that should never be called sports | Bidisha, Joel Golby, Maurice Mcleod, Barney Ronay, and Nell Frizzell | Comment is free | The Guardian
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfre ... and-bridge

OK, so that's a typically poncey, 'who can do me a quick article?' Guardian effort. But which 'sports' would you have reclassified? I don't follow 'em, just curious.

It's not just The Grauniad. The British Bridge Association or some such is pushing for bridge to be reclassified as a sport, which would therefore make them eligible to appeal for funding from Sport England. They're obviously pushing the PR hard, it was on the radio this morning as well. Sport England's immediate reaction to the suggestion that a pastime that 90 year olds in bath chairs can compete at is 'a sport' was predictably 'Are you taking the piss?' I suspect it will end up in court.

Jon

Wasn't there a court case recently where it was judged to be a sport? Though I doubt it set a precedent, and assuming 'IIRC'...

That was darts, not bridge. I assume the success of that case is what's prompted the bridge association to make their little cash-grab.

Ah.

Though tbf, if you can drink that much and still throw something accurately...

The standouts for me are rhythmic gymnastics and synchronised swimming. Sure, they require athleticism, I just don't see how they can be classed as sports.

Apparently Chess is classified as a 'sport' so I can kind of see the Bridge clubs point.

Sports Englands is using the Council of Europ's European Sports Charter (1993) definition to argue its case (taken form the International Business Times article on this):


There's some punctuation missing there me thinks.

Cards, chess etc aren't sports in my opinion, they're games.

My rule of thumb (which I claim no greater validity for beyond my own head) is that if you can do it sitting down, it's not a sport. With the caveat that, obviously, paralympic sports are a whole different kettle of fish.

(and yes, that does mean F1 is not a sport. deal with it)

Jon

Chessboxing?

anything that can be done while holding a pint is not a sport.

Rowing?
Agree with you that F1 or any form of motor racing isn't a sport, even if you do need to be physically fit enough to deal with the G-force.

There are quite a few designated sports that are done sitting down (mostly the only areas GB seems to excel at as well). Rowing, canoeing, sailing and equestrianism are all Olympic events that require sitting down for almost all of it.

OK, I'll bite. Cycling isn't a sport?

Motorsports are just that - motorised sports. However, as a lifelong F1 fan, I've always mentally separated motorsports from "sport", and see them as a subset. If asked to name popular sports, F1 probably wouldn't be one of my answers, regardless how physically fit the drivers are.

football is known as "the beautiful game", so does that mean its not a sport?

Well you can pedal out of the saddle. Not so sure about reclining bikes .


Yeah, that's kind of my position. I appreciate F1 has may of the aspects of 'a sport' (i.e it's physically demanding, competitive in nature and people will pay to watch it being done) but I can't get past the fact it's actually much more about engineering, design and technology as it is the performance of the individual taking part. There's definitely an aspect that if the capability of the people immediately doing the thing is not the defining factor as to whether they'd win or not, it can't be a sport. Having said that, I think there's a very good argument that the backroom staff of the GB cycling team are a major factor on the number of gold medals that team achieves, yet you'd also never claim that Chris Hoy wasn't an extremely gifted sportsman.

This is definitely an area where people are going to look at something and say yes/no basically on instinct.