Forms of competitive activity, usually physical
The 2005 London Marathon: running races, in their various specialties, represent the oldest and most 🌛 traditional form of sport.
Sport pertains to any form of physical activity or game,[1] often competitive and organized, that aims to 🌛 use, maintain, or improve physical ability and skills while providing enjoyment to participants and, in some cases, entertainment to spectators.
[2] 🌛 Sports can, through casual or organized participation, improve participants' physical health.
Hundreds of sports exist, from those between single contestants, through 🌛 to those with hundreds of simultaneous participants, either in teams or competing as individuals.
In certain sports such as racing, many 🌛 contestants may compete, simultaneously or consecutively, with one winner; in others, the contest (a match) is between two sides, each 🌛 attempting to exceed the other.
Some sports allow a "tie" or "draw", in which there is no single winner; others provide 🌛 tie-breaking methods to ensure one winner and one loser.
A number of contests may be arranged in a tournament producing a 🌛 champion.
Many sports leagues make an annual champion by arranging games in a regular sports season, followed in some cases by 🌛 playoffs.
Sport is generally recognised as system of activities based in physical athleticism or physical dexterity, with major competitions such as 🌛 the Olympic Games admitting only sports meeting this definition.
[3] Other organisations, such as the Council of Europe, preclude activities without 🌛 a physical element from classification as sports.
[2] However, a number of competitive, but non-physical, activities claim recognition as mind sports.
The 🌛 International Olympic Committee (through ARISF) recognises both chess and bridge as bona fide sports, and SportAccord, the international sports federation 🌛 association, recognises five non-physical sports: bridge, chess, draughts (checkers), Go and xiangqi,[4][5] and limits the number of mind games which 🌛 can be admitted as sports.[1]
Sport is usually governed by a set of rules or customs, which serve to ensure fair 🌛 competition, and allow consistent adjudication of the winner.
Winning can be determined by physical events such as scoring goals or crossing 🌛 a line first.
It can also be determined by judges who are scoring elements of the sporting performance, including objective or 🌛 subjective measures such as technical performance or artistic impression.
Records of performance are often kept, and for popular sports, this information 🌛 may be widely announced or reported in sport news.
Sport is also a major source of entertainment for non-participants, with spectator 🌛 sport drawing large crowds to sport venues, and reaching wider audiences through broadcasting.
Sport betting is in some cases severely regulated, 🌛 and in some cases is central to the sport.According to A.T.
Kearney, a consultancy, the global sporting industry is worth up 🌛 to $620 billion as of 2013.
[6] The world's most accessible and practised sport is running, while association football is the 🌛 most popular spectator sport.
[7]Meaning and usageEtymology
The word "sport" comes from the Old French desport meaning "leisure", with the oldest definition 🌛 in English from around 1300 being "anything humans find amusing or entertaining".[8]
Other meanings include gambling and events staged for the 🌛 purpose of gambling; hunting; and games and diversions, including ones that require exercise.
[9] Roget's defines the noun sport as an 🌛 "activity engaged in for relaxation and amusement" with synonyms including diversion and recreation.[10]Nomenclature
The singular term "sport" is used in most 🌛 English dialects to describe the overall concept (e.g.
"children taking part in sport"), with "sports" used to describe multiple activities (e.g.
"football 🌛 and rugby are the most popular sports in England").
American English uses "sports" for both terms.
Definition
The International Olympic Committee recognises some 🌛 board games as sports including chess.
The precise definition of what differentiates a sport from other leisure activities varies between sources.
The 🌛 closest to an international agreement on a definition is provided by the Global Association of International Sports Federations (GAISF), which 🌛 is the association for all the largest international sports federations (including association football, athletics, cycling, tennis, equestrian sports, and more), 🌛 and is therefore the de facto representative of international sport.
GAISF uses the following criteria, determining that a sport should:[1]
have an 🌛 element of competition
be in no way harmful to any living creature
not rely on equipment provided by a single supplier (excluding 🌛 proprietary games such as arena football)
not rely on any "luck" element specifically designed into the sport.
They also recognise that sport 🌛 can be primarily physical (such as rugby or athletics), primarily mind (such as chess or Go), predominantly motorised (such as 🌛 Formula 1 or powerboating), primarily co-ordination (such as billiard sports), or primarily animal-supported (such as equestrian sport).[1]
The inclusion of mind 🌛 sports within sport definitions has not been universally accepted, leading to legal challenges from governing bodies in regards to being 🌛 denied funding available to sports.
[11] Whilst GAISF recognises a small number of mind sports, it is not open to admitting 🌛 any further mind sports.
There has been an increase in the application of the term "sport" to a wider set of 🌛 non-physical challenges such as video games, also called esports (from "electronic sports"), especially due to the large scale of participation 🌛 and organised competition, but these are not widely recognised by mainstream sports organisations.
According to Council of Europe, European Sports Charter, 🌛 article 2.
i, "'Sport' means all forms of physical activity which, through casual or organised participation, aim at expressing or improving 🌛 physical fitness and mental well-being, forming social relationships or obtaining results in competition at all levels.
"[12]CompetitionHorse racing
There are opposing views 🌛 on the necessity of competition as a defining element of a sport, with almost all professional sports involving competition, and 🌛 governing bodies requiring competition as a prerequisite of recognition by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) or GAISF.[1]
Other bodies advocate widening 🌛 the definition of sport to include all physical activity.
For instance, the Council of Europe include all forms of physical exercise, 🌛 including those competed just for fun.
In order to widen participation, and reduce the impact of losing on less able participants, 🌛 there has been an introduction of non-competitive physical activity to traditionally competitive events such as school sports days, although moves 🌛 like this are often controversial.[13][14]
In competitive events, participants are graded or classified based on their "result" and often divided into 🌛 groups of comparable performance, (e.g.
gender, weight and age).
The measurement of the result may be objective or subjective, and corrected with 🌛 "handicaps" or penalties.
In a race, for example, the time to complete the course is an objective measurement.
In gymnastics or diving 🌛 the result is decided by a panel of judges, and therefore subjective.
There are many shades of judging between boxing and 🌛 mixed martial arts, where victory is assigned by judges if neither competitor has lost at the end of the match 🌛 time.
History
Roman bronze reduction of Myron's Discobolos, 2nd century AD
Swimmers perform squats as warm-up exercise prior to entering the pool in 🌛 a U.S.
military base, 2011.
Artifacts and structures suggest sport in China as early as 2000 BC.
[15] Gymnastics appears to have been 🌛 popular in China's ancient past.
Monuments to the Pharaohs indicate that a number of sports, including swimming and fishing, were well-developed 🌛 and regulated several thousands of years ago in ancient Egypt.
[16] Other Egyptian sports included javelin throwing, high jump, and wrestling.
Ancient 🌛 Persian sports such as the traditional Iranian martial art of Zoorkhaneh had a close connection to warfare skills.
[17] Among other 🌛 sports that originated in ancient Persia are polo and jousting.
The traditional South Asian sport of kabaddi has been played for 🌛 thousands of years, potentially as a preparation for hunting.[18]
Motorised sports have appeared since the advent of the modern age.
A wide 🌛 range of sports were already established by the time of Ancient Greece and the military culture and the development of 🌛 sport in Greece influenced one another considerably.
Sport became such a prominent part of their culture that the Greeks created the 🌛 Olympic Games, which in ancient times were held every four years in a small village in the Peloponnesus called Olympia.[19]
Sports 🌛 have been increasingly organised and regulated from the time of the ancient Olympics up to the present century.
Industrialisation has brought 🌛 motorised transportation and increased leisure time, letting people attend and follow spectator sports and participate in athletic activities.
These trends continued 🌛 with the advent of mass media and global communication.
Professionalism became prevalent, further adding to the increase in sport's popularity, as 🌛 sports fans followed the exploits of professional athletes – all while enjoying the exercise and competition associated with amateur participation 🌛 in sports.
Since the turn of the 21st century, there has been increasing debate about whether transgender sports people should be 🌛 able to participate in sport events that conform with their post-transition gender identity.
[20]Fair playSportsmanship
Sportsmanship is an attitude that strives for 🌛 fair play, courtesy toward teammates and opponents, ethical behaviour and integrity, and grace in victory or defeat.[21][22][23]
Sportsmanship expresses an aspiration 🌛 or ethos that the activity will be enjoyed for its own sake.
The well-known sentiment by sports journalist Grantland Rice, that 🌛 it is "not that you won or lost but how you played the game", and the modern Olympic creed expressed 🌛 by its founder Pierre de Coubertin: "The most important thing...
is not winning but taking part" are typical expressions of this 🌛 sentiment.
Cheating
Key principles of sport include that the result should not be predetermined, and that both sides should have equal opportunity 🌛 to win.
Rules are in place to ensure fair play, but participants can break these rules in order to gain advantage.
Participants 🌛 may cheat in order to unfairly increase their chance of winning, or in order to achieve other advantages such as 🌛 financial gains.
The widespread existence of gambling on the results of sports events creates a motivation for match fixing, where a 🌛 participant or participants deliberately work to ensure a given outcome rather than simply playing to win.
Doping and drugs
The competitive nature 🌛 of sport encourages some participants to attempt to enhance their performance through the use of medicines, or through other means 🌛 such as increasing the volume of blood in their bodies through artificial means.
All sports recognised by the IOC or SportAccord 🌛 are required to implement a testing programme, looking for a list of banned drugs, with suspensions or bans being placed 🌛 on participants who test positive for banned substances.
Violence
Violence in sports involves crossing the line between fair competition and intentional aggressive 🌛 violence.
Athletes, coaches, fans, and parents sometimes unleash violent behaviour on people or property, in misguided shows of loyalty, dominance, anger, 🌛 or celebration.
Rioting or hooliganism by fans in particular is a problem at some national and international sporting contests.
[citation needed]Participation
Gender participation
International 🌛 level female athletes at ISTAF Berlin, 2006
Female participation in sports continues to rise alongside the opportunity for involvement and the 🌛 value of sports for child development and physical fitness.
Despite increases in female participation during the last three decades, a gap 🌛 persists in the enrolment figures between male and female players in sports-related teams.
Female players account for 39% of the total 🌛 participation in US interscholastic athletics.
Certain sports are mixed-gender, allowing (or even requiring) men and women to play on the same 🌛 team.
One example of this is Baseball5, which is the first mixed-gender sport to have been admitted into an Olympic event.
[24]Youth 🌛 participation
Youth sport presents children with opportunities for fun, socialisation, forming peer relationships, physical fitness, and athletic scholarships.
Activists for education and 🌛 the war on drugs encourage youth sport as a means to increase educational participation and to fight the illegal drug 🌛 trade.
According to the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children's Hospital, the biggest risk for youth sport is 🌛 death or serious injury including concussion.
These risks come from running, basketball, association football, volleyball, gridiron, gymnastics, and ice hockey.
[25] Youth 🌛 sport in the US is a $15 billion industry including equipment up to private coaching.[26]
Disabled participation
A runner gives a friendly 🌛 tap on the shoulder to a wheelchair racer during the Marathon International de Paris (Paris Marathon) in 2014.
Disabled sports also 🌛 adaptive sports or parasports, are sports played by people with a disability, including physical and intellectual disabilities.
As many of these 🌛 are based on existing sports modified to meet the needs of people with a disability, they are sometimes referred to 🌛 as adapted sports.
However, not all disabled sports are adapted; several sports that have been specifically created for people with a 🌛 disability have no equivalent in able-bodied sports.
Spectator involvement
Spectators at the 1906 unofficial Olympic Games
The competition element of sport, along with 🌛 the aesthetic appeal of some sports, result in the popularity of people attending to watch sport being played.
This has led 🌛 to the specific phenomenon of spectator sport.
Both amateur and professional sports attract spectators, both in person at the sport venue, 🌛 and through broadcast media including radio, television and internet broadcast.
Both attendance in person and viewing remotely can incur a sometimes 🌛 substantial charge, such as an entrance ticket, or pay-per-view television broadcast.
Sports league and tournament are two common arrangements to organise 🌛 sport teams or individual athletes into competing against each other continuously or periodically.
It is common for popular sports to attract 🌛 large broadcast audiences, leading to rival broadcasters bidding large amounts of money for the rights to show certain events.
The football 🌛 World Cup attracts a global television audience of hundreds of millions; the 2006 final alone attracted an estimated worldwide audience 🌛 of well over 700 million and the 2011 Cricket World Cup Final attracted an estimated audience of 135 million in 🌛 India alone.[27]
In the United States, the championship game of the NFL, the Super Bowl, has become one of the most 🌛 watched television broadcasts of the year.
[28][29] Super Bowl Sunday is a de facto national holiday in America;[30][31] the viewership being 🌛 so great that in 2015, advertising space was reported as being sold at $4.
5m for a 30-second slot.[28]
Amateur and professional
Women's 🌛 volleyball team of a U.S.university
Sport can be undertaken on an amateur, professional or semi-professional basis, depending on whether participants are 🌛 incentivised for participation (usually through payment of a wage or salary).
Amateur participation in sport at lower levels is often called 🌛 "grassroots sport".[2][32]
The popularity of spectator sport as a recreation for non-participants has led to sport becoming a major business in 🌛 its own right, and this has incentivised a high paying professional sport culture, where high performing participants are rewarded with 🌛 pay far in excess of average wages, which can run into millions of dollars.[33]
Some sports, or individual competitions within a 🌛 sport, retain a policy of allowing only amateur sport.
The Olympic Games started with a principle of amateur competition with those 🌛 who practised a sport professionally considered to have an unfair advantage over those who practised it merely as a hobby.
[34] 🌛 From 1971, Olympic athletes were allowed to receive compensation and sponsorship,[35] and from 1986, the IOC decided to make all 🌛 professional athletes eligible for the Olympics,[35][36] with the exceptions of boxing,[37][38] and wrestling.[39][40]Technology
These lights at the Melbourne Cricket Ground indicate 🌛 the decision the third umpire makes following a review.
Technology plays an important part in modern sport.
It is a necessary part 🌛 of some sports (such as motorsport), and it is used in others to improve performance.
Some sports also use it to 🌛 allow off-field decision making.
Sports science is a widespread academic discipline, and can be applied to areas including athlete performance, such 🌛 as the use of video analysis to fine-tune technique, or to equipment, such as improved running shoes or competitive swimwear.
Sports 🌛 engineering emerged as a discipline in 1998 with an increasing focus not just on materials design but also the use 🌛 of technology in sport, from analytics and big data to wearable technology.
[41] In order to control the impact of technology 🌛 on fair play, governing bodies frequently have specific rules that are set to control the impact of technical advantage between 🌛 participants.
For example, in 2010, full-body, non-textile swimsuits were banned by FINA, as they were enhancing swimmers' performances.[42][43]
The increase in technology 🌛 has also allowed many decisions in sports matches to be taken, or reviewed, off-field, with another official using instant replays 🌛 to make decisions.
In some sports, players can now challenge decisions made by officials.
In Association football, goal-line technology makes decisions on 🌛 whether a ball has crossed the goal line or not.
[44] The technology is not compulsory,[45] but was used in the 🌛 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil,[46] and the 2015 FIFA Women's World Cup in Canada,[47] as well as in the 🌛 Premier League from 2013–14,[48] and the Bundesliga from 2015–16.
[49] In the NFL, a referee can ask for a review from 🌛 the replay booth, or a head coach can issue a challenge to review the play using replays.
The final decision rests 🌛 with the referee.
[50] A video referee (commonly known as a Television Match Official or TMO) can also use replays to 🌛 help decision-making in rugby (both league and union).
[51][52] In international cricket, an umpire can ask the Third umpire for a 🌛 decision, and the third umpire makes the final decision.
[53][54] Since 2008, a decision review system for players to review decisions 🌛 has been introduced and used in ICC-run tournaments, and optionally in other matches.
[53][55] Depending on the host broadcaster, a number 🌛 of different technologies are used during an umpire or player review, including instant replays, Hawk-Eye, Hot Spot and Real Time 🌛 Snickometer.
[56][57] Hawk-Eye is also used in tennis to challenge umpiring decisions.[58][59]
Sports and education
Research suggests that sports have the capacity to 🌛 connect youth to positive adult role models and provide positive development opportunities, as well as promote the learning and application 🌛 of life skills.
[60][61] In recent years the use of sport to reduce crime, as well as to prevent violent extremism 🌛 and radicalization, has become more widespread, especially as a tool to improve self-esteem, enhance social bonds and provide participants with 🌛 a feeling of purpose.[61]
There is no high-quality evidence that shows the effectiveness of interventions to increase sports participation of the 🌛 community in sports such as mass media campaigns, educational sessions, and policy changes.
[62] There is also no high-quality studies that 🌛 investigate the effect of such interventions in promoting healthy behaviour change in the community.[63]Politics
Benito Mussolini used the 1934 FIFA World 🌛 Cup, which was held in Italy, to showcase Fascist Italy.
[64][65] Adolf Hitler also used the 1936 Summer Olympics held in 🌛 Berlin, and the 1936 Winter Olympics held in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, to promote the Nazi ideology of the superiority of the Aryan 🌛 race, and inferiority of the Jews and other "undesirables".
[65][66] Germany used the Olympics to give off a peaceful image while 🌛 secretly preparing for war.[67]
When apartheid was the official policy in South Africa, many sports people, particularly in rugby union, adopted 🌛 the conscientious approach that they should not appear in competitive sports there.
Some feel this was an effective contribution to the 🌛 eventual demolition of the policy of apartheid, others feel that it may have prolonged and reinforced its worst effects.[68]
In the 🌛 history of Ireland, Gaelic sports were connected with cultural nationalism.
Until the mid-20th century a person could have been banned from 🌛 playing Gaelic football, hurling, or other sports administered by the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) if she/he played or supported Association 🌛 football, or other games seen to be of British origin.
Until recently the GAA continued to ban the playing of football 🌛 and rugby union at Gaelic venues.
This ban, also known as Rule 42,[69] is still enforced, but was modified to allow 🌛 football and rugby to be played in Croke Park while Lansdowne Road was redeveloped into Aviva Stadium.
Until recently, under Rule 🌛 21, the GAA also banned members of the British security forces and members of the RUC from playing Gaelic games, 🌛 but the advent of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 led to the eventual removal of the ban.[70]
Nationalism is often 🌛 evident in the pursuit of sport, or in its reporting: people compete in national teams, or commentators and audiences can 🌛 adopt a partisan view.
On occasion, such tensions can lead to violent confrontation among players or spectators within and beyond the 🌛 sporting venue, as in the Football War.
These trends are seen by many as contrary to the fundamental ethos of sport 🌛 being carried on for its own sake and for the enjoyment of its participants.
Sport and politics collided in the 1972 🌛 Olympics in Munich.
Masked men entered the hotel of the Israeli Olympic team and killed many of their men.
This was known 🌛 as the Munich massacre.
A study of US elections has shown that the result of sports events can affect the results.
A 🌛 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences showed that when the home team wins the game 🌛 before the election, the incumbent candidates can increase their share of the vote by 1.5 per cent.
A loss had the 🌛 opposite effect, and the effect is greater for higher-profile teams or unexpected wins and losses.
[71] Also, when Washington Redskins win 🌛 their final game before an election, then the incumbent President is more likely to win, and if the Redskins lose, 🌛 then the opposition candidate is more likely to win; this has become known as the Redskins Rule.[72][73]
As a means of 🌛 controlling and subduing populations
Étienne de La Boétie, in his essay Discourse on Voluntary Servitude describes athletic spectacles as means for 🌛 tyrants to control their subjects by distracting them.
Do not imagine that there is any bird more easily caught by decoy, 🌛 nor any fish sooner fixed on the hook by wormy bait, than are all these poor fools neatly tricked into 🌛 servitude by the slightest feather passed, so to speak, before their mouths.
Truly it is a marvellous thing that they let 🌛 themselves be caught so quickly at the slightest tickling of their fancy.
Plays, farces, spectacles, gladiators, strange beasts, medals, pictures, and 🌛 other such opiates, these were for ancient peoples the bait toward slavery, the price of their liberty, the instruments of 🌛 tyranny.
By these practices and enticements the ancient dictators so successfully lulled their subjects under the yoke, that the stupefied peoples, 🌛 fascinated by the pastimes and vain pleasures flashed before their eyes, learned subservience as naïvely, but not so creditably, as 🌛 little children learn to read by looking at bright picture books.[74]
During the British rule of Bengal, British and European sports 🌛 began to supplant traditional Bengali sports, resulting in a loss of native culture.
[75][76]Religious views
The foot race was one of the 🌛 events dedicated to Zeus.
Panathenaic amphora, Kleophrades painter, c.
500 BC , Louvre museum.
Sport was an important form of worship in Ancient 🌛 Greek religion.
The ancient Olympic Games were held in honour of the head deity, Zeus, and featured various forms of religious 🌛 dedication to him and other gods.
[77] As many Greeks travelled to see the games, this combination of religion and sport 🌛 also served as a way of uniting them.
The practice of athletic competitions has been criticised by some Christian thinkers as 🌛 a form of idolatry, in which "human beings extol themselves, adore themselves, sacrifice themselves and reward themselves.
"[78] Sports are seen 🌛 by these critics as a manifestation of "collective pride" and "national self-deification" in which feats of human power are idolised 🌛 at the expense of divine worship.[78]
Tertullian condemns the athletic performances of his day, insisting "the entire apparatus of the shows 🌛 is based upon idolatry.
"[79] The shows, says Tertullian, excite passions foreign to the calm temperament cultivated by the Christian:
God has 🌛 enjoined us to deal calmly, gently, quietly, and peacefully with the Holy Spirit, because these things are alone in keeping 🌛 with the goodness of His nature, with His tenderness and sensitiveness....
Well, how shall this be made to accord with the 🌛 shows? For the show always leads to spiritual agitation, since where there is pleasure, there is keenness of feeling giving 🌛 pleasure its zest; and where there is keenness of feeling, there is rivalry giving in turn its zest to that.
Then, 🌛 too, where you have rivalry, you have rage, bitterness, wrath and grief, with all bad things which flow from them 🌛 – the whole entirely out of keeping with the religion of Christ.[80]
Christian clerics in the Wesleyan-Holiness movement oppose the viewing 🌛 of or participation in professional sports, believing that professional sports leagues profane the Sabbath as in the modern era, certain 🌛 associations hold games on the Lord's Day.
[81] They also criticise professional sports for its fostering of a commitment that competes 🌛 with a Christian's primary commitment to God in opposition to 1 Corinthians 7:35, what they perceive to be a lack 🌛 of modesty in the players' and cheerleaders' uniforms (which are not in conformity with the Methodistic doctrine of outward holiness), 🌛 its association with violence in opposition to Hebrews 7:26, what they perceive to be the extensive use of profanity among 🌛 many players that contravenes Colossians 3:8–10, and the frequent presence of gambling, as well as alcohol and other drugs at 🌛 sporting events, which go against a commitment to teetotalism.[81]Popularity
Popularity in 2018 of major sports by size of fan base:[7]See alsoRelated 🌛 topicsSources
This article incorporates text from a free content work.
Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO.
Text taken from Strengthening the rule of 🌛 law through education: a guide for policymakers, UNESCO, UNESCO.UNESCO.
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ReferencesSources
European Commission (2007), The White 🌛 Paper on Sport ..
Council of Europe (2001), The European sport charter.
Further reading
