DEFINING SPORT Transcript
You’ve played sport, watched sport, you’ve probably even got the Tshirt, but have you ever wondered how an
activity becomes a sport?
This is the Sports Law Canary Guide to Defining Sport.
To understand sport, we need to go back to its historical roots. Hundreds of years ago, soldiers practised
activities like archery, fencing and athletics in order to develop their fighting skills. Indeed, various kings tried to
ban recreational activities like soccer and tennis because they distracted soldiers away from their archery
practice. This is where the origins of the word sport are said to have came from, the French word for distraction
being: disport (which means to divert, amuse or play).
Nowadays, the word sport refers to a wide category of activities, played by teams, individuals, on the ground, in
the air, on water, snow and in hundreds of different combinations.
Let’s see how this applies to Ann. Her sport is skiing, within that broad sport, her discipline is ski jumping, and
her main event is the 90m women’s ski jump.
She likes being an athlete in a recognised sport, as this gives her legal protection if she hurts someone whilst
she is playing. She also receives money from the government, directly from special athlete grants, and
indirectly in the form of lower taxes on her sports goods.
Her friend Bob likes gardening and walking the dog, but while both of these hobbies involve physical exertion,
gardening and dog-walking are classed as pastimes rather than sports because of their informal nature. Bob
also likes cycling though and competes in races on the weekends. However this causes problems for our
definition, since Bob is playing a sport when he cycles fast in a race, but when he cycles slowly to work each
morning on the same bike he is just exercising.
So how can Ann and Bob tell if their activity is a sport?
Well, some organisations suggest that for a sport to be recognised, it has to have a certain number of people
participating in it. Others suggest that there needs to be a formal set of rules, enforced by a single organisation.
However the wide variety of activities and the differences between each of them, means applying one single
definition to every sport is almost impossible. For example, does every sport have to be physical? or to improve
an athlete’s health? to be played instead of demonstrated? or to involve competition against other athletes?
Ann and Bob therefore looked for lists of what other people said were sports. They found that different
countries and competitions had different rules on what activities should be included. For example, the
International Olympic Committee publishes a list of all the ‘recognised’ sports that they allow to compete in the
Olympics. Bob was happy because cycling was on this list, however the list was terrible news for Ann as
women’s ski jumping was not.
Defining sport can help politicians to allocate money to those athletes that need it most, and ensure that people
can play together safely. However until everybody can agree on one definition of what actually is a sport, there
will always be problems.
I’m Kris Lines and this has been the Sports Law Canary Guide to Defining Sport
Check out www.staffs.ac.uk/cisl for more information