On Sports That Aren't, part 2

“Everybody was Kung Fu fighting

Those cats were fast as lightning

In fact it was a little bit fright'ning

But they fought with expert timing”

~ ‘Kung Fu Fighting’, by Carl Douglas

from his album “Kung Fu Fighting and Other Great Love Songs”, 1974

A while back, I pondered a bit about the difference, in my mind, between a sport and a game (you can read that post here).  It seems to me that many games seek to see themselves as elite sport when really, they are not.  Elite sport is the very apex of physical and mental competition.  I argued, at the time, that activities such as horse racing, golf, fishing and hunting cannot be seriously considered part of the pantheon we know as sport.

It was on the topic of hunting that I admit that I was challenged.  As a pacifist, I don't like guns.  I understand the need to have them and use them in remarkable circumstances, but I am not a fan.  A gun is a weapon; weapons have no place in elite sport.  Mixing guns and with any other activity (such as skiing, as in the biathlon) does not make it a sport either.  If it did, then anything added to legitimate sport could be considered likewise.  What's preventing some enterprising soul from adding knitting to running and calling it a track and field event?

What then of Olympic pursuits such as the hammer throw, shot put and javelin?  The instruments of such competitions find their origins as weapons too.  Quite true.  It is perhaps amusing to note that the hammer throw was not always a heavy ball on a wire but an actual sledge hammer.  The javelin is essentially a spear.  The shot put was once either a heavy rock or a cannonball.  These facts, and that all the official measurements in the competition rules are expressed in imperial measures, lends these contests a faintly comical air.   

Yes, it's also true that the marathon has similar ancient origins to these 'throwing' sports, celebrating Pheidippides's fabled run from the site of the Battle of Marathon to Athens (whereupon he keeled over dead), but I doubt there's a fair argument against the marathon as indeed an elite activity, even if the exact distance (26 miles, 385 yards) is a rather odd one.

So, to sum up, any contest involving a weapon, ancient or modern, gets the big ol' thumbs down from the On Writing Blog.

Same goes for boxing, and other hand-to-hand combat contests.  I have very similar issues with boxing as I have with hunting; it's barbaric.  Boxing and its ilk have a unique 'quality' that other sports fortunately lack - the object of the exercise is to hurt your opponent as badly and as quickly as possible.  I'll have to cop to the inevitable accusations that I lack the stomach for such things.  As stated, I am something of a pacifist, and there is plenty enough violence in this world without adding to it in the name of sport.  Besides, I suspect that boxing is not dissimilar to horse racing in that it may very well find itself without much following at all if it wasn't for the gambling element, or indeed the pay-per-view receipts.

Another selection of sports that I feel lacks the merits of genuine sport are those activities that are synchronised, such as synchronised swimming or synchronised diving.  Has anyone else ever watched these things in the Olympics and wondered if they'd just stepped into the Twilight Zone?  They are supremely strange.  I'll concede that they take skill, fitness and training, but there is an inherent silliness about it all.  If indeed sports can be improved by merely doubling an element of it, then why not do this with other competitions?  Surely a second football added to an AFL or soccer match is no more a foolish idea than synchronised-anything, or reducing cricket to a mindless twenty tip-it-and-run overs for that matter?

I also take issue with the kinds of competitions where the contest is decided by subjective voting, usually by a panel of judges.  While there is plenty of subjectivity in the process of sport (ever yelled at an umpire who has a seemingly casual familiarity with the rules?), it doesn't take much of a stretch before the Ukrainian judge is making deals with the one from Turkey, and the next thing you know, the Olympics starts becoming the Eurovision Song Contest.  Sure, it may be entertaining, but the winner usually ends up being a cross-eyed hunchback drag queen from Kazakhstan.

I suppose that in the end, I prefer my sport to be a little more meat-and-potatoes.  A physical and mental test.  Sublime skills, gracefully executed.  An exciting spectacle.  True athletes, testing their mettle against each other, and sometimes even against themselves, exploits rising above the achievements of the common man.  And above all, let's call sports sports, and let's call games something other than sports.

**To follow the On Writing Blog on Facebook, click HERE and click the "Like" button**