Interesting question. What qualifies as a sport? I heard a discussion recently on radio sport to this effect. For me a sport is an activity that involves these elements. Firstly, competitiveness. That is, one person/team is trying to beat another in a pursuit. The aim of a sport is to win. You can play sport to not win and to merely have fun; but built into the essence of the activity, is a system to delineate win, lose or draw. Secondly, rules and fairness. That is, there is an organised set of rules to govern the game to ensure fairness. This calls into question climbing Mt Everest as a sport. Even though I would rate what Sir Edmund Hillary did on Everest as the greatest physical achievement by a New Zealander, I do not consider it a sport as it was not a governed, fair race to the top of Everest. I do not think that Hillary should have been listed second in the recent Radio Sport poll of NZ's greatest history makers in sport. In terms of running, running an 800m on the track is...
The blog of Mark Keown, New Testament lecturer at Laidlaw College, Auckland, New Zealand. It involves comments on theology, life, sport and whatever comes into Mark's random mind.