And yet it was the English who called them the Olympic Games. 
I think it is simply conflation of two definitions of the word “game”, one involving any contest for pleasure (as opposed to, say, work), the other involving a way to pass time pleasantly. Soccer, or if you will footie, is known as the “Beautiful Game” for a reason. Trust me that that connotation is not American born, given that everyone here barely recognizes that soccer is anything at all. 
Well of course your references are correct. 
I suppose my attitude is based on various conversations over the years like:
- chess is just a game, like Monopoly or Snap
- top sportsmen are highly trained professionals (i.e. chessplayers aren’t)
- sportsmen are real men; chessplayers are geeks (we are - but it shows the negative connotation)
There’s more to archery than hand-eye coordination - it’s way more physically demanding than darts. Try drawing a 40 lbs. olympic recurve 180 times with the finesse and exactness needed to merely hit a 48" target face at 100 yards. I could easily pick strong, coordinated athletes who couldn’t do it, from a pure physical standpoint. Fatigue kills accuracy. Archery uses lots of small muscles that tire quickly, alongside some real work being done by the big back and shoulder muscles.
Well, chess IS a game like Monopoly. People may take it very seriously, but they are both board games. (And Monopoly’s taken very seriously indeed by some people; there are world championships and everything.) I would also argue that baseball, my favourite sport, is a game just like T-ball, a sport played only by small children. Just because one is more serious than the other does not mean they aren’t similar.
And sportsmen are not more highly trained professionals than elite chess players but they are certainly more highly trained ATHLETES, which is probably what people were trying to express. There’s no athletic component to chess; in theory, you could play a game of chess without even touching the peices. Or with there being no peices at all.
My general guideline for sports is that they have to include significant physical and mental components. If it’s only got the mental component, it’s a game. Golf has both, even though I don’t find it interesting to watch. I’m less sure about NASCAR.
Um, it is not something that is true only “in theory.”
Is baseball a sport? Some pitchers are overweight,can’t hit a lick and run horribly. They are not great athletes. They can throw well. Toss in a knuckleballer who does not even throw hard. Is he an athlete? Yes baseball and golf are sports.
I think the Russians and other Eastern (formerly bloc) countries would disagree with you.
There are also some European countries that classify chess as a sport, I think Holland is one of them
As far as judged events go, here’s where I draw the line.
If there are definite requirements, specific physical feats that need to be done correctly and appropriately, and there are actual hard, quantitative methods of judging these feats, which the judges can later use to justify their decisions, it’s a legitimate subjective sport. Figure skating qualifies, (required elements, body lines, clean landings, straightness of jumps, speed, things fans can actually see), as does gymnastics. Not to say that these aren’t subject to corruption, but they’re not any more inherently corrupt than a regular sport.
If there are requirements, criteria, penalties, etc., but they’re not clearly defined, I call that a “questionable” sport. Boxing is the prime example. What the freak is “ring generalship”? What is a “scoring blow”? Has anyone even attempted to define this? You don’t often get outrageous cockamamie results like a South Korean getting turned into hamburger and having his hand raised in the end, but there’s always the potential.
And then you have those endeavors where the “winner” is purely a matter of opinion; there are no criteria whatsoever. These are NOT sports, no matter what anyone says. I’m looking at you, cheerleading. The purpose is to get the crowd fired up, no more, no less. How the hell do you judge “crowd fire-uppitdue?” It’s ridiculous. I know there’s a College Cheerleading Championship, and IMO it has as much credence as the BCS. Same deal with the Merrie Monarch Festival. How you you judge who’s the “most elegant”, or “most faithful to the traditional Hawaiian art”, or “most breathtaking”? And suppose there are four or five competitors who are perfectly elegant and breathtaking; what’s the tiebreaker? For that matter, how do you judge fifteen men in loincloths shuffling and stomping to a single drum against one woman in a floral print dress weaving her hands to a ukulele ensemble? Great spectator action, but competition-wise, there’s nothing here.
Re. horse racing: Yes, it’s a sport, although in this case “game” is actually a more appropriate label because it’s tied so closely to gambling. Yes, the horse is the real athlete. I don’t think you’ll find anyone in the business arguing otherwise. I don’t understand how that’s relevant to the discussion; there’s a reason it’s called “horse racing”, not “jockey racing”. If anything, the most important human is the trainer, simply for convincing a horse to run very quickly down a course on demand, which is not something that comes naturally to most animals.
I think it’s straightforward enough to define a physical game - any competition involving physical skill. The trouble is, what makes a physical game also a sport is a subjective thing - it’s whether enough people take it seriously, i.e. whether it is prestigious enough. Evidence of this might be things like having a widely recognised governing body, being included in prestigious events such as the Olympics, having established championships, even things like there being well-known manufacturers of equipment for the game. I can name several makers of tennis racquets, golf clubs and so on, but I’m damned if I know who makes the best pro-quality tiddlywinks.
So I guess what I’m saying is that a sport is simply any physical game that enough people consider prestigious enough to merit the description. The likes of tiddlywinks fail only because hardly anybody takes them seriously.
There’s the famous story (maybe apocryphal) of Ted Williams and Sam Snead discussing which was harder - baseball or golf. Williams says, “I have to hit a round object with a round bat squarely, while it’s coming at me at 90 mph and moving up and in. You get to hit a stationary ball with a flat surface.” Snead replies, “Yeah - but I have to play my foul balls!”
If golf is not a sport because it is not strenuous enough, I would like someone to dare inform millions of American sportsmen that their pastime of shooting actually means they’re playing a game, so they really aren’t sportsmen at all.
Go ahead.
I dare ya.
I’m reminded of another (probably apocryphal) story regarding the always-flabby John Kruk. A woman saw him smoking and drinking at a party and asked how an athlete could do such things.
He replied, “Lady, I ain’t no athlete – I’m a baseball player!”