Saturday 14th May

The world is changing fast; too fast for some of us.  And sport is changing fast too.  We now have the Para-Olympics where handicapped athletes are given, quite rightly, equal billing with the other competitors – a few years ago this was unheard of.  The Winter Olympics now include fantastic Snowboarding disciplines we never knew about a short while ago.  And now there is to be, staged at the O2 in London, an e-sports tournament.  This is basically computer games, but as a spectator sport.  There will still be computer nerds hunched over their own screens while their fingers scrabble at fantastic speeds but huge video screens will display their tiny screens for the edification of the expected hordes of devotees.

Now call me old-fashioned, but I find this hard to describe as a sport, though I concede that there is great skill involved; skills I have never desired to accomplish I might add.  But on Sky news this morning they were describing the participants as “athletes”, a term I find hard to recognise.  For me sitting in front of a computer screen is about the furthest from an athletic pursuit one can get, and incidentally a contributing factor to the obesity epidemic among many of our young people.  The whole event is of course being promoted by the makers of the games themselves, and despite my reservations will probably be a great success and go on growing in the future.

So, what exactly is the definition of sport?  I would automatically exclude “field sports” where animals are hunted or fished, and while I don’t ever want to hold a gun I concede that shooting at targets is a legitimate sport.  Bridge has just been ruled as not a sport, and likewise I think that Chess and similar games, full of skill as they may be are not sports.  For me there has to be an element of physical strength or skill involved, although in a way that does include computer games.  Who knows?  Snooker is classed as a sport and it isn’t exactly physically demanding.  But I wonder just what the future will hold; cyber athletes, drone racing, robot races – or a complete virtual Olympic games.  For now I am looking forward to the Euro football and, the Zico virus permitting, the Rio Olympics – hopefully drug-free this time, which of course may not be an issue with computer games, though viruses may be.