By Kenneth Muir (Contributor) – Email
Print Edition: June 6, 2012
The word “sport” gets thrown around a lot these days, and the average person probably pays no mind to the apparent evolution of its use in arguably incorrect circumstances. However, those of us who take the word seriously, perhaps pretentiously so, do pay attention, and some of us feel that the line has been crossed.
The problem is, activities recognized as “sports” are growing rapidly, under a spectrum that ranges from gymnastics to competitive Minesweeper. Call me a traditionalist, but I don’t think those two disciplines should be related under any circumstances.
You may recall a similar article run in this very paper that debated the possible inclusion of e-sports (read: competitive video games) to the umbrella of what’s known as normal sports. However, the issue extends a bit farther than that. There’s also large grey area that lies between basketball and Call of Duty, and it includes activities such as motocross, Formula 1 racing, IndyCar racing and so on. When viewed separately I’d hesitate to call them sports, but when compared to the competitive video game scene, does make for more of a case.
Could one argue that activities should only be labeled as sports if they are physically taxing? Unfortunately not. Professional StarCraft players can reach speeds of 200-600 actions per minute, or clicks of the mouse and keyboard, and have to maintain these speeds for up to 45 minutes if a game goes on long enough. A popular StarCraft II star of the alias TheLittleOne suffered from an extreme bout of carpal tunnel syndrome last year as a result of “training” too much. And racing car drivers must be capable of extremely precise driving for hours on end. They must also deal with the physical demands of having their bodies attacked by G-forces in the corners. So how, then, is race-car driving any less demanding than curling? There are some Olympic sports that are classified as purely technical sports: archery, shooting, curling and so on, wherein the difficulty lies not in pushing the body to its limit, but rather in being as precise as possible. Why is that more difficult, or more “sport-like” than piloting an 800-horsepower racecar around chicanes at speeds of 200 mph?
Could the argument be made that activities that sufficiently depend on some mechanical device, such as an engine or a computer, should be made distinct from those which do not? Again, the argument is nullified by shooting being an Olympic event. Hell, even equestrianism is recognized by the IOC, and that’s a sport which partially depends on the abilities of an entirely different species. I don’t even know where to start with that one. If that’s a sport, than why not rally racing? Why not Halo 3? A true conundrum, in my books.
Though I have no real concrete evidence for saying so, I personally draw the line after most Olympic sports. And I’m not saying the IOC is the holy tribunal for all things sports related; in fact, I’d probably remove a couple from the official Olympic program. Call me un-Canadian, but I’d cut curling. I just can’t take it seriously. To me it’s just bocce on ice. And though the matter is way too convoluted to be unanimously agreed upon, the line really has to be drawn somewhere, because as Yeats said, “Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.” For a full-time athlete to be lumped in with competitive gamers is just plain insulting, for both parties. In any case, I hope that this mislabeling problem can be tailored before it gets too out of hand. Already there’s more highlight reels of poker than of actual sports on ESPN. I mean, really?
