Very politely put, but I beg to disagree. Athletic and Sporting are not synonyms. There are a lot of very athletic endeavors that are not sports. Unless Art and Sport are synonyms, since most of the best professional athletes I know are artists. It takes great skill and coordination to do a 35' high fall (I know, I have done them many times). But that isn't even an art - it is just an athletic job, that is part of the art form of film making (and very occasionally live theatre).
Now these days the olympics are, no doubt, a collection of athletic events. Some of those events are sports, and some are competitive art forms. Is competitive swing dance a sport? It is athletic and competitive. But my feeling, as I said, is that there is a real difference between competitive athletic events like figure skating and swing dance, where professional judges disagree constantly (which is why we have to take a consensus and the consensus frequently disagrees with a large number of the other observers), and sports, where the winner is the one who ran the swiftest, jumped the highest, or lifted with the most strength.
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Date: 2010-02-19 04:16 pm (UTC)Now these days the olympics are, no doubt, a collection of athletic events. Some of those events are sports, and some are competitive art forms. Is competitive swing dance a sport? It is athletic and competitive. But my feeling, as I said, is that there is a real difference between competitive athletic events like figure skating and swing dance, where professional judges disagree constantly (which is why we have to take a consensus and the consensus frequently disagrees with a large number of the other observers), and sports, where the winner is the one who ran the swiftest, jumped the highest, or lifted with the most strength.