I agree almost entirely with your process, but not your conclusion. I share your expansive definition of sport, the only tweak being that mine clarifies that the fundamental thing being measured, or pitted against on another, must be a physical skill. So, chess is not a sport (because we’re not comparing how good people are at physically picking up and moving the pieces), but golf is, even though overweight, out of shape, and even handicapped people can be excellent golfers. There’s a little gray area (auto racing?), but mostly this definition does everything I want it to do while offending as few people as possible.
However, I don’t think ice dancing qualifies. Clearly there’s a physical component but – and I’d welcome correction on this point by an expert – it seems to me that what’s being compared isn’t primarily physical skill, because all of the actual competitors are basically equally as good at the moves that they’ll actually be doing. It seems that what’s *primarily *being compared is artistic merit. No doubt there are some slight, relevant differences in physical skill for Olympic ice dancers, but those are generally not going to be decisive. Compare this with figure skating, in which there’s an important artistic component, but *fundamentally *the competitors are being measured on their ability to perform jumps, etc. cleanly.
As an aside, I’ve never understood why so many people throw in the requirement that a sport can’t have outcomes determined by judges. It seems totally arbitrary, to say nothing of the fact that it leads one to the conclusion that this was a sporting event while this was merely a game. (Note: I’m not including in my complaint those who’ve clarified above that this is just a distinction about which sports they prefer.)
