My boyfriend says that at best it’s a competition, because of the judging aspect. I think it’s a sport, but I can’t seem to come up with a reason why beyond “it just is!” I believe that a better reason exists, though, so I turn to the Dope.
Do you think that figure skating is a sport? Why/why not?
(FWIW: I did a search for this topic, and the closest I came up with was this post by GingerOfTheNorth in this thread of twickster’s last year. If I’ve missed something more pertinent, please let me know!)
It isn’t a sport because there isn’t any objective criteria for winning. You don’t score runs, or goals, or whatever. The final ranking is purely subjective. Therefore it is a competition, not a sport. IMO. YMMV.
I would say that diving qualifies as a competition - unless the objective is the number of times one hits the pool. Then, it is a sport - not a great one, but still a sport.
Can anyone think of a reason why it is a sport? I mean, by strict dictionary definition terms it is, but he thinks that something has to be won or lost objectively in order to really be a sport.
If hunting, fishing and boxing are sports, then fiigure skating totally gets to be a sport too. There are objective mesures of performance in figure skating (eg, number of quads performed, number of tripples, spins, etc) along with the subjective “foo-foo” measures.
what about chess, bridge
they do have objective criteria for winning, but can we really consider them sports ?
I guess we have to define “sport” somehow.
In my humble opinion, if the only way to win is for somebody to tell you that you do “it” better than other people, then “it” isn’t a sport.
Now that doesn’t mean figure skaters, dancers, gymnasts, divers, synchronized swimmers, etc. aren’t athletes; because it is also my opinion that you don’t have to play a “sport” to be an athlete.
I love figure skating, but I think the manner in which it is judged makes it hard to qualify it as a sport, mainly because of the artistic element.
I don’t think “judged” sports all fall under this category. For gymnastics, for instance, the analogy I like to use is that the judge is similar to a referee in football. That is, there is a specific goal that is being attempted, and the judge/referee uses a professionally trained eye to determine if it was accomplished in a manner that is within the guidelines of the sport.
The easiest apparatus to illustrate this with is the vault. Each potential vault is worth X number of points, which is pre-determined. The judge merely watches to see if the vault is completed correctly, and deducting points for various parts of it that weren’t done quite right.
Just as in football, a touchdown is worth 6 points, and the referee determines that the offensive players have not committed any violations during the play that would cause the touchdown not to be valid. In football, they might take away the entire touchdown, and use loss of yards as the penalty rather than taking away part of the 6 points, but the general idea is the same…the referee has to determine if the game is being played “within the rules.”
The reason I see a sport like gymnastics being different from figure skating is because of the fact that each trick is worth X number of points, and each fault is worth X number of point deduction, and all this is determined in advance by a governing body. Technically speaking, it’s not “subjective” as many people claim. Judging artistic merit, on the other hand, much more subjective…and makes it much harder to prove bias on the part of judges.
Except women’s floor exercise has an artistic component which is judged - music selection is judged, “dance” is judged. So is all gymnastics sport except for women’s floor exercise?
The difference between chess & bridge is that they’re mental competitions, not physical competitions, and I wouldn’t call them sports. No, moving the pieces doesn’t count as “physical competition”.
Beyond that, deciding whether to call figure skating a sport just depends on whether your definition of sport can include a subjective cmoponent. Even then, given the subjective nature of referees, can you include basketball, baseball, or just about anything outside of the high jump?
What really gets into fuzzy territory is once you have your definitions down concerning a competition of physical abilities, try to rule out playing video games.
Defining “sport” is an exercise in just drawing a line somewhere and recognizing that others draw their line elsewhere.
You know, it allllll went downhill ever since we let “cheerleading” into the pantheon of “sport”. Then the NASCAR fans wanted their crap in (to which I say no. You must turn left AND right for it to be racing.)
Boxing is a sport. I suppose figure skating could be a sport because it could possibly construed to be “boxing without punching, but on ice and girly”.*
Idon’tcareit’sstillnotafuckingsport!
*said as obscurely as possible so I can retain my Man Card with no problems.
The problem is that it has a subjective component to it. It’s judged. So, if you’re going to rule out figure skating because it’s judged, you should rule out boxing, too.
For the record, I consider them both sports. I have a pretty broad definition that also includes darts, pool, bowling and golf.
