The Definition of Sports

Sports are autotelic physical contests, played for their own sake. A clear definition of this concept is essential for understanding sport and for generating satisfactory answers to questions such as whether mountain climbing is a sport, or how many points are scored in a basketball game. It is also helpful for assessing the quality of a sporting event and its reporting.

While it is not possible to define when and where sports began, it is clear that they evolved from childhood games of spontaneous running races and wrestling into organized activities with a structured format. The emergence of these forms is evident from the rich iconographic and literary record of ancient peoples. Archaeological evidence suggests that the participants of such events were not necessarily aiming for a specific result but may have enjoyed the playful challenge of competing against each other and measuring their own progress in a game of skill and chance.

In competitive sports, the participants are graded or classified according to their performance based on a system of comparable measures (e.g., time to finish a race). These measurements are objective or subjective, and the results may be adjusted with “handicaps” in the case of handicapped athletes.

A key aspect of modern sport is a focus on quantified achievement, as well as a high level of technological intervention to enhance performance. While this emphasis is useful and even necessary for some sports, it has the potential to distort the fundamental ethos of sport as an activity for its own sake. For example, it can lead to nationalism in the pursuit of sports or its reporting, and incite partisan behavior on and off the field between players, coaches, commentators, and spectators. slot88