Juried competitions are common in the arts. What’s the best way for a classical pianist to make it to Carnegie Hall? Build up the résumé by winning some major juried competitions.
Be it a heavily judged sport in the Olympics, or a juried arts competition, the best competitor in the world is not determined. All that is determined is the best competitor of that particular competition.
Alfréd Hajós won two golds in swimming in the 1896 Olympics, and a silver in architecture (town planning) in the 1924 Olympics.
The Olympics have included art competitions for architecture, literature, music, painting, and sculpture, but eventually dropped them on amateur v. professional grounds.
I continue to define a sport as a physical activity that requires defense.
So the 100m dash is not a sport, but it is still awesome.
The fact that the criteria of Olympic sporthood have sometimes been arbitrary or unreasoned is hardly an argument to abandon all hope of standards or reason.
The Olympics have a clear original context and continuing theme which I believe most people understand intuitively. Faster, higher, stronger. The testing of the human body-and-will, against physics, against one another.
Foot races are a pure, simple example. The very first Olympic contest was a foot race; there will always be running in the Olympics. The other early events were similarly basic extrapolations of the capacities of the human body. Jumping. Throwing. Combat. It makes sense at a deep level that these should always be Olympic sports in various forms.
Many modern competitions are easy to understand as iterations, combinations and variations of those primal forms. Running can be done over various distances. Water being a basic element of our environment, swimming races have a deep sensibility. There are different ways to approach and measure jumping. Running can be combined with jumping. Different objects may be thrown, to draw out different kinds of throwing action and play on different physics of flight. Combat may be unarmed on various terms, or with simple weapons.
From there, the possible forms proliferate in many different directions. For example, there are any number of team ball sports that combine elements of the primal exertions in complex ways. There is no intrinsic reason that any one or handful of these is better than the others; it’s reasonable at this stage to just include those that are most widely practiced.
Notice that the art competitions Muffin points to were “for works of art inspired by sport.” Hajós’ 1924 architectural design was for a stadium. While it was an interesting idea to include these competitions as medal events, it was always clearly subsidiary to a concept of “sport” in which it was not itself included.
I go further and have three criteria (in addition to the need for an objective measure of success):
Rules out golf but allows some athletics (if I can jostle for track-position we’re good) and road cycling; snooker and curling would be OK under this rule as my placement can prevent your winning shot.
Rules out snooker which has an element of defense but a pause between each shot
Rules out chess or darts which could be played via video link and still have an exciting outcome
So soccer, tennis, rugby and similar sports count.
Road cycling and non-lane based track athletics count because my physical position can influence your ability to compete.
American Football counts as although it’s turn-based both teams take their turns at the same time.
Crown green bowls, curling and snooker are more tricky… they allow for defensive play, but the action takes place in discrete phases with no real-time reactions needed (i.e. I can be out of the room grabbing a coffee and the game does not suffer).
None of this rules out the excitement, challenge and skill in “non-sports” but I think there is a distinction.
There’s a lot to be said for the department store approach. If the equipment for the activity is found in the sporting goods department or the Bubba department (automotive and animal fighting), then it is a sport.
In other words, a sport is a sport because a lot of people think that it is a sport, not because it is competitive, or because it is physical, or because it is historical.
As far as the Olympics goes, it tends to focus on competition. The problem is that just like Rule 34, if it exists, there is competition of it.
I think that defining what is or is not a sport based on whether or not it is competitive is a bit backwards.
For example, I tend to think of sports as personal physical recreational activities (I don’t buy into non-physical recreational activities as being sports).
Yoga, to me, is a sport, despite the very nature of it not being competitive. But then again, if it exists, there is competition of it, so yes, there are people who compete in Yoga and want it to be an Olympic sport. Does there being competition of it make it a sport when it was not previously a sport? Does it inherently not being competitive make it not a sport? In both instances, I don’t think so. Sport is not defined by competition.
Trying to take the square peg of sport and fit it into the round hole of competition often requires subective judging.
And here we come full circle in trying to nail down what sport is. I’ve posited that sport is a recreational activity (and my personal opinion is that it is also physical, but this is not universally accepted), but any general dictionary definition of the terms includes competition as being integral to sport, and the Olympics considering non-physical recreational activities to be being sports because they are competitive.
So let’s dig down a bit historically into the meaning of the term “sport”. It came from the Middle English “disport”, which in turn was brought over via Anglo-Norman from the Old French “desporter” (to carry away), where its meaning is far broader than athletics. For example, look at how Londoner Thomas von Britanja used the term in the courtly romance / Arthurian legend of Tristian (Gregory translation lines 491-494):
Without getting too Rule 34 about it, I don’t think that the sort of sport Tristian was contemplating was competitive in the way we think of competitive sport today.
I think that the older, broader meaning of sport – an activity that carries you away – still hold true today, such that when I swoop down a ski hill, or dance down a rapid, I am carried away in sport, regardless of whether I am doing so in a competition or not.
I would also add a distinction between sports where the player provides his own equipment (e.g. 50 m rifle) vs. those where the equipment is the same for all contestants (e.g. hammer throw).
I had a friend with a little poster on his wall: “Golf is a sport, therefore I am an athlete.” 
What is the point of that distinction?
Gymnastics does have definite, specific elements the judges are looking for, as well as how they should be done and very specific penalties for doing things wrong. The problem is that there is no such thing as fair judging, especially on the Olympics level. There will always be biases, always be agendas, always be favors to give. Add the fact that these judges are accountable to absolutely no one and never have to answer for a single decision, no matter how egregious, and you can never trust the results. It’s a sport, all right, just not one anyone should be taking seriously. I put all the figure skating disciplines in the same category.
Likewise, boxing, where the judging system always has and always will be a crying joke, I don’t care how many tweaks and quirks and doodads they throw in. I mean, what the hell is “ring generalship”? Or “effective offense”? Has anyone even tried do define these elements in clear, understandable terms, preferably with video accompaniment so we can see them? I’ll tell you what it is: a smokescreen. A cover-up. So the judges, after making a horrible and completely wrong decision, can fudge up whatever excuse they wanted, including the ever-dependable “he blocked a lot of punches”. (Never mind that being excessively defense is supposed to be a negative.)
Cheerleading just plain baffles me. It’s not a sport for the simple reason that it’s not a competition. The whole purpose is to get the crowd riled up. You do that, you’ve “won”, and it makes absolutely no difference whether the opposing squad riled up their folks better or worse. This is like the Merrie Monarch Festival: without any criteria, the judges just have to pick a winner, and they can use whatever dang method they want. Beautiful, colorful spectacle, yes. Sport, no.
Golf is a sport because while it’s not strenuous, it has physical skills, which most definitely have to be honed for a long period of time for anyone seeking to compete on the professional level. Poker does not. Furthermore, while there’s always an element of luck, I can’t call anything that’s nearly pure chance (especially Hold 'Em, which I completely fail to see the appeal of) a sport. Card game, yes. Competition, I’ll grant it that.
I have no problem including events that don’t have “defense”. Some sports have offensive and defensive units, some don’t. Some have a ball, some don’t. I mean, when you really think about it, baseball is pretty weird, what with only the defensive end being allowed to handle the ball, fielders being able to set up anywhere they want, and offense having to run strict, predetermined lines (never mind the whole smack-it-fifty-feet-out-of-bounds-and-get-a-free-do-over thing I’ve mentioned more than enough times). It takes all kinds. So long as it meets the basic prerequisites, I’m cool.
Auto racing, that’s a tricky one. Of course there’s a competitive aspect, and of course the driver needs considerable physical skills. The thing is, the guys who work on the vehicle…mechanics, crewmen, testers…have at least as much to do with the driver’s success as the driver himself. They’re not kidding when they call themselves a “team”. So I’d put motorsports in its own unique niche, as I would horse racing. The problem with putting it in the Olympics comes down to a simple question: what kind? There are a plethora of vehicle types, course types, and regulations; there is no “standard” form of auto racing. Indycar? Pro stock? Rally? Lightweight? Off-road? BMX? Just too many to narrow down.
Bridge will not be an Olympic sport in our lifetimes. More or less every game or sport is making some sort of effort to get to the Olympics, whether it’s a realistic goal or not. "Recognition from the IOC is like Step 3 in a 500-step process.
The drive by every sport to get to the Olympics, or at least appears as if it might get to the Olympics, is simply explained; Olympic recognition means money.
As to the issue, I’ve always used the definition I was taught in school; a sport is a contest of physical skill, played for its own intrinsic purpose, with rules that determine a winner. Everything in the Olympics is a sport.
Of course, there are lots of sports that aren’t in the Olympics. Football, rugby, golf and cricket are all certainly sports but aren’t in the Olympics. Inclusion in the Olympics is depends on a lot of things besides just being a sport.
Actually, these quotes just show that you’re not aware of how competitive cheerleading works. While cheerleaders to go to their school’s football/basketball/etc… games and cheer on those teams, that’s not why (where, when) cheerleading is a sport. I was on competitive cheerleading teams when I was in junior high and high school (in Canada), and at our school we very rarely actually cheered at games. We would cheer at a two or three football games per season, maybe at a couple basketball games at a tournament (not regular season), and at one or two school pep rallies. The vast majority of our time was spent at cheerleading practices and competitions.
Competitive cheerleading with long routines at a competition is not simply about getting the crowd riled up. In many ways, it’s actually very similar to gymnastics, figure skating, synchronized swimming, etc… There are specific judging criteria, with difficulty points given for specific stunts, tumbling, choreography, etc… There are scoring metrics for execution, and specific deductions for errors and safety violations.
I can see how some people might argue whether gymnastics or figure skating are sports, given how there is subjectivity in the judging. But if they are sports then competitive cheerleading is also a sport.
Here are some examples of cheerleading judging score sheets: http://cms.cheercanada.net/index.php/en/scoringsystem
Here is a link to a competitive cheerleading routine. Very different and much more difficult than what those same cheerleaders would be doing at a football game. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZqvYAVtoFA
I’ve often wondered this sort of thing too.
Now, I know I’m about to say something extraordinarily contradictory and uncharacteristic here, but personally I think it’s astounding that shooting is an Olympic sport and Cricket isn’t.
Shocked gasps from the assembed Members; a lady in the front row faints dramatically and has to be revived with smelling salts & a fan.
Don’t for a minute think I’m trying to say shooting isn’t a sport (IMHO it most definitely is) - but, and let’s be honest here, a lot of it at that sort of level (again, IMHO) is as much about what sort of equipment you’ve got as how good you are at using it. In many respects it’s a lot like motorsport, in that the machinery being used is as much part of the competition (and the end result) as the person using it.
Cricket (or baseball, for that matter), on the other hand, is a popular sport*, and one that involves the physical activity and competition etc traditionally associated with sport.
So yeah, the criteria for what gets to be in the Olympics and what doesn’t does seem rather arbitrary sometimes…
*I know, not outside the Commonwealth
You are not, however, going to ever see cheerleading at the Olympics, for the same reason you don’t see football; it has no serious activity outside of the USA and Canada.
There’s a lot of politics in who does or doesn’t get into the Olympics, but a degree of international popularity and competitive ability is a pretty key factor. There is already talk of removing women’s hockey from the Olympics for the simple reason that although it is, obviously, a sport, nobody except Canada and the USA seems able to put a decent team on the ice.
I would prefer to watch a “who can skate the fastest” competition instead of a “which country can afford the biggest R&D budget for new types of skates” competition, for instance.
True. But then what about the example of cricket? Do you think a sport that’s widely played around the world, but not so much in the US, China, Russia, and others will ever get into the Olympics?
I’m assuming that the countries that have a significant number of cricket players would be on the list of Full or Associate members of the International Cricket Council.
Waenara - Okay, I know now. And I gotta say…dear lord, what the freak happened?
Now, I saw a few of those competitions on ESPN. I’ve seen clips where some of them were crying backstage* after a subpar routine. But I always thought that it was either a brief overemotional lapse (it’s happened to me!) or a major release of tension, and the next day they’d forget about it and go back to their real jobs. I just couldn’t wrap myself around the idea of this “sport” meaning so much to these young, beautiful athletes, that they’d have a genuine emotional stake in it and feel honest-to-goodness misery after a failure.
So many damn rules…so many things to keep track of…so much time sacrificed, and it doesn’t even bear any resemblance to actual cheerleading! (That, IMO, is what’s the most messed up about it. At least the Merrie Monarch Festival doesn’t subject us to “competition hula”.)
No, I never considered gymnastics or figure skating to be actual sports, and after what you just showed me, I’m glad the NCAA pulled the plug on cheerleading as a sport. It’s like reality TV, and idea that was once cool and went completely off the rails.
Er…no offense. (You at least made some lasting friendships, I hope? 
)
Well, I can see the reflection subjectivity, but I’m using a different matrix.
Lol. Yeah, some cheerleading teams take things really, really seriously and there can be emotional drama involved. I watched an episode of a high school cheerleading reality show on tv a few years ago, and good god it was insane.
My team in junior high was quite successful in competitions (city and provincial champions for all three years I was on the team, travelled to the US for camps and competitions). But there probably was no more drama than you would find with any group of young teenage girls who spend so much time together. In high school, I was initially going to go to the school with the best cheer team (best in the province, and probably best in the country), and I even tried out and made the team. Then I decided that choosing my school based purely on the cheer team when I wasn’t a good fit otherwise for that school was a bad idea, and I ended up going to a much more academic school that also had a less competitive cheer team. And I also played rugby in high school. So I’m not exactly the stereotypical cheerleader.