Sport, It's Just A Game

Newcastle Herald

Thursday August 17, 2006

Jeff Corbett

FOOTBALL is sport. So is soccer and cricket and even tennis, but what about bowls? Should someone who gently bends a knee to a mat to send a ball rolling slowly towards a smaller ball on a perfectly flat surface be said, sensibly, to be a sportsperson?

Horseracing is the sport of kings because animals and minions do all the sport for the kings, but even with that in mind it is hard to see how the racing of horses is any more sporting than the spinning of poker machine reels. The primary purpose of racing animals and spinning pokie reels is the same, to provide a hopefully uncertain result for gambling, although I agree that the only other purpose of these gambling platforms, to provide income for the organisers, may be the primary purpose.

Indeed, the racing of Jack Russell terriers has much greater claim to being a sport than the racing of greyhounds because it is done without gambling and a parasitic industry. But such is the corruption of the concept of sport that racing Jack Russells are much more likely to make the paper's news pages than the sport pages.

I'm moved to dive into these muddy waters by a friend telling me in an email how he offended his Mandarin teacher in Beijing. My friend asked which sport was most commonly played in China and when the teacher said ping pong (or ping pang, in Chinese) my friend commented that ping pong was more a game than a sport. The Chinese teacher knew enough English to see this as a slight.

Perhaps it makes the grade as table tennis, which is how ping pong is listed in the official Olympics list of sports in company with archery, boxing and weightlifting. And if tennis on a lawn is a sport surely tennis on a green table is too.

Weightlifting might provide a clue to the difference between a sport and a game. There is no confusion about weightlifting it is a sport, not a game. Perhaps it is a sport so unequivocally because it is about only competition, not fun.

Aah, I can hear the smarties crowing, it is the Olympic Games, not the Olympic Sports! That's true, of course, but an episode of most sports is called a game and when the games of many sports come together the event is referred to, predictably, as games. The sport is the code, not the game or event.

Is golf a game or a sport? It is commonly referred to by those who play it as the game of golf, not the sport of golf, yet it does entail competition even if the contest, as it can be in weightlifting, is with oneself. Perhaps golf is a game because it doesn't require physical or athletic prowess.

It may be, too, that golf has more in common with the recreational pursuit of fishing, which can be fun, than it does with the sport of cricket, which no one in their right mind would play for fun.

Cycling is undoubtedly a sport for those who compete as cyclists, but it is not a sport for those who commute on a bike or even those who, like me, try to ride at competitive speeds but do not compete.

Is skiing a sport? For those who compete, yes. Dancing? Surfing? For those who compete, yes.

We've made some ground, I think. We can say that a sport requires competition, human physical prowess and athletic endeavour and a game does not and also that a game requires fun and recreational value and a sport does not.

What, then, of chess and bridge? Both of these are on the Olympic Movement's recognised sports list and, thus, may one day be admitted as sports of the Olympic Games. Their only qualification as a sport is competition, but unless gambling can be classed fairly as competition another sedentary game seeking Olympic status doesn't have even that.

Poker, which now has an industry promoting the game as a sport, is seeking Olympic status with the argument that it requires the "focus of the archer, the endurance of the decathlete and the skill of the gymnast". What about, then, roulette?

It's all about status. Sport seems to be accorded a status a game is not, and for that status it relies on what seems to be a common assumption that sport has a higher calling.

If it's not money I'm not sure what it is.

jcorbett@theherald.com.au

© 2006 Newcastle Herald

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