Questionable Sports

Questionable sports set for Olympics
Posted By DON BARRIE
Posted 2 hours ago

The XXIX Olympiad opens in Beijing, China next month. There will be 302 medal events, one more than the 2004 Athens Games. One new event is BMX bike racing; not surprising since many of the world’s bikes are made in China.

The inclusion of BMX racing reintroduces the controversy of what is an Olympic sport? There are already events for road and track cycling and mountain bikes, now with these trick bikes only kids’ tricycles are out.

There is no shortage of questionable sports in the Olympics. Both chess and bridge were exhibition sports in the Sydney Olympics in 2000 and the Salt Lake City Olympics two years later.

Juan Samaranch, President of the International Olympic Committee, stated at the time, “Bridge is a sport and your place is here, like all other sports.”

Two years later, his more realistic successor, Jacques Rogge, in an attempt to quell concern they may be included in future Games stated; “Chess and bridge were indeed sports, but sports where the physical elements are not performed by the players in the conduct of competition.”

Based on that definition, why is dressage, which is essentially dancing horses, been in the Olympics since 1912? The horse is the only athlete in that event. Even ballroom dancing, which once applied for Olympic status and was turned down, requires more athleticism than a dressage rider.

The decision of Olympic sports spawns a number of questions. First, what is a sport?

Bernard Suits wrote that for a game to be a sport it must meet four criteria. First, it must require skill. Second, it must have a physical component. Third, it must have a wide following and finally it must achieve a level of stability.

Source: www.thepeterboroughexaminer.com