Sports
1) Must be timed, as in, who comes in first
or
2) Must involve a ball/projectile
Anything with judges is an exhibition of some sort of leisure activity.
Just clearing this up. Thanks.
posted by Teodoro Callate @ 9:06 PM
10 comments
10 Comments:
Ooooh, snap! I'm guessing you don't groove on the ice-styings of Michelle Kwan or Sasha Cohen. But I have to disagree. Because I would include a third qualification:
3) Anything involving muscle movement that in a million years I could not do.
I'm actually referring more to the "half pipe" where people do things called McFakeys or 1080 Suicide Drops. With subjective scoring. Not a sport.
There's also the Ski Down A Bumpy Hill and Do A Sommersault Off A Small Cliff exhibition. Not timed. Subjective scoring. Not a sport.
The figure skating thing? Hard stuff to do physically. So is ballroom dancing, which is in the olympics. Not sports.
Throw a ball and score? Sport. Shoot a puck and score? Sport. Hurtle down a tube of ice faster than anyone else? A questionable call, sure, but I'd say a sport because it's about being quantifiably better than everyone else. So, a sport.
What about ice dancing? Not much different than figure skating, and near impossible to do, for sure. Not a sport.
Maybe we need a Winter Olympics, a Summer Olympics, and a Community Center Activities Olympics?
I fear that I am making enemies with this post.
Nah, no enemies here. There are a number of sports that have always felt to me like art forms that someone decided to turn into competition. Figure skating, ice dancing, synchronized swimming, and others all feel very much to me like well-developed art forms that someone once decided to figure out how to judge and stratify. It's really an odd phenomenon that runs the gamut from figure skating and others on the olympic level to marching bands and show choirs on the high school level and the innumerable piano competitions one finds everywhere.
I don't have an objection to any of them being turned into competitions and even being considered sports, but it does strike me as interesting that we have this overwhelming need to figure out who is best in any activity and do so by turning things into sports.
And to the objection of "don't you realize how hard these things are to do?": That's a silly objection. Of course I recognize that jumping in the air, spinning three times, and landing gracefully on ice is hard. I couldn't do it in a million years. But so is holding my breath underwater for eight minutes. Just because something is ridiculously hard doesn't make it a sport.
Again, I don't object to these things being sports, but I do find it funny that human nature always requires a champion and therefore a codified and structured method whereby the champion can be crowned.
A friend of mine is a recent olympian in track and field. He competes in the pole vault, which is a great example of a sport that's clean and straightforward in terms of who wins and who doesn't: if you get over the pole, good on you. If not, sorry. The other sports in which champions are determined by some sort of committee process are less compelling to me. Are these committe-based sports worthwhile? Sure, why not. But I'm probably going to skip the telecast.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go to my origami-bird-making championship tourney.
Misspelled "committee" in the prior post. My bad.
Teo:
Rhythmic gymnastics involves a ball. Does that make the cut? ;-)
I KNEW someone was going to call me out on that one.
NO.
i knew there was something i couldn't put my finger on....
first of all... do you know that i watched these cool snowboarding *races* on the xtreme games a couple of weekends ago? that made it much cooler to watch.
secondly, now that kev brings up various track and field sports....
the long jump, javelin, etc... don't fall into either one of your categories...
i don't know... i mean. i get where you're coming from kind of... i mean, is ballroom dancing in the olympics? that sort of surprises me. on the other hand.... both synchro swimming AND real ballroom dancing people are bad ass.. in shape. muscles. big deal. you know? cardio even.
so...?? it's athletic. i don't know.
call me natalie imbruglia, i'm torn.
long jump - who jumps furthest: a sport
jevelin - it's a projectile: a sport
pole vault - who goes the highest: a sport
rhythmic gymnastics - the ball is not used properly, as in, you can't score with it (hey now): not a sport
synchro swimming and ballroom dancing: sure, you've got to be in badass shape to do it. gotta be in great shape to be a model, too. not sports.
by the way, there are BAD sports, maybe some i've mentioned here.
baseball, a sport, and my favorite sport, can be ridiculously dull and bad, especially when played by my team, which will go nameless here until they figure out who's gonna bat second, and until they finally take a walk or two this season, which might not happen, morons.
javelin...or the SHOT PUT...no, i can't say that these sports would interest me very much. sports, nonetheless.
biathalon, i can't figure out. if anyone has an opinion, i'm all ears. (eyes?)
Biathalon rules. That's the one where you cross country ski and then shoot stuff, right? I'm in favor of that.
biathalon sounds like it's a track and field sport...and then it ends up to be one that dick cheney should have checked out.
however, i hate to nitpick teo, but since i'm up for a little good natured ribbing, i will: your first two requirements were ball/projectile or *timed*... not who jumps furthest or goes highest.... unless what you meant to say was there is some objective -measurable- way of judging/marking. that is quantitative analysis vs. qualitative.
right? i always get those fucked up.
Post a Comment
<< Home