August 30, 2004

Be A Sport

I learned today from this Dan Drezner post that Sports Illustrated has a blog. What took them so long? This time the argument is about what should or shouldn't be an Olympic sport, but it's really a rehash of the old debate about what is a sport in the first place. Here is the premise of SI blogger Josh Elliott, (who irritatingly refers to himself in the inanimate third person as "The Blog" or "this Blog"....only Dave Barry can get away with that day in and day out):

No athletic event that is judged belongs in the Olympics.

And no exceptions: No gymnastics. No ice skating or boxing. No synchronized swimming or diving. If it can't be won on the track, in the lane lines or with one more goal than the other folks, it has no place in the world's premier festival of sport, one that purports to give us the world's greatest champions. For if a win can't be unquestionably achieved, what's it worth, really? Without an objective, inarguable method for determining victory and defeat, the very meaning of the competition is lost. (After all, this isn't my niece's toddler soccer league, where one team scores 49 goals and the other scores two, then the exhausted competitors are told, Saturday after disillusioning Saturday, that it was a tie.) Without an absolutely certain outcome, an event such as, say, the men's gymnastics all-around, isn't a sport at all. It's a talent show.

Exhibit 'A' for "that Blog" is U.S. gymnast Paul Hamm and his tainted Gold Medal. Anything with judges, he says, must go. He offers the 1500-meter run as one event evidently pure enough to merit continued Olympic competition, as well as those pure SI-type sports won "with one more goal than the other folks".

To me, his argument ignores the fact that many of those "one more goal" events, including baseball and basketball, are influenced and often have their outcomes decided by the flawed, subjective judgments of human officials, referees, umpires, etc.

A short 32 years ago in Olympic competition, the basketball referees didn't like the outcome of the Gold Medal game, so they decided to play the last few seconds over again so that the U.S.S.R. would win. How is that any different from having questionble judgments made in the scoring of the uneven parallel bars? Even events seemingly as clear cut as track and field competitions can see the "best team" fail to win if one official thinks he sees a faulty baton pass or a lane violation.

He'll certainly get an argument from me if he tries to say that boxing isn't a sport because it uses judges. That said, some of the most egregious displays of politics contaminating sports were the screw jobs done to American boxers by Soviet bloc judges in bouts with Cubans or Eastern Europeans in the 70's and 80's.

However, he'll get no argument on the matter of syncronized swimming or ice skating not being "sports", as I understand the concept. In these "contests", which I would liken more to musical competitions, the winner is determined solely by the judges opinion of which individual or team is better at whatever skill is being measured, and there is no real head-to-head event of any sort. (BTW, I'm undecided about Auto Racing. There is a competition, and I guess drivers are athletes of a sort. But you could say the same about WWF, couldn't you?)

It's just that when you start talking about a win that must be "unquestionably achieved", or "an...inarguable method for determining victory and defeat", that bar is set pretty high. See Drezner's take too, and those of his commenters.

Posted by dan at August 30, 2004 12:44 AM