Sport in childhood. Association football, shown above, is a team sport which also provides opportunities to nurture physical fitness and social interaction skills.

Sport (or, in the United States, sports) is all forms of competitive physical activity which,^[1] through casual or organised participation, aim to use, maintain or improve physical fitness and provide entertainment to participants.^[2] Hundreds of sports exist, from those requiring only two participants, through to those with hundreds of simultaneous participants, either in teams or competing as individuals.

Sport is generally recognised as activities which are based in physical athleticism or physical dexterity, with the largest major competitions such as the Olympic Games admitting only sports meeting this definition,^[3] and other organisations such as the Council of Europe using definitions precluding activities without a physical element from classification as sports.^[2] However, a number of competitive, but non-physical, activities claim recognition as mind sports. The International Olympic Committee (through ARISF) recognises both chess and bridge as bona fide sports, and SportAccord, the international sports federation association, recognises five non-physical sports,^[4][5] although limits the amount of mind games which can be admitted as sports.^[1]

Sports are usually governed by a set of rules or customs, which serve to ensure fair competition, and allow consistent adjudication of the winner. Winning can by determined by physical events such as scoring goals or crossing a line first, or by the determination of judges who are scoring elements of the sporting performance, including objective or subjective measures such as technical performance or artistic impression.

In organised sport, records of performance are often kept, and for popular sports, this information may be widely announced or reported in sport news. In addition, sport is a major source of entertainment for non-participants, with spectator sports drawing large crowds to venues, and reaching wider audiences through sports broadcasting.

Meaning and usage[link]

Etymology[link]

Look up sport in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

"Sport" comes from the Old French desport meaning "leisure", with the oldest definition in English from around 1300 being "anything humans find amusing or entertaining".^[6]

The French word for sport is based on the Persian word bord, meaning "winning" or "win".^{[citation needed]} The Chinese term for sport, tiyu (体育; 體育) connotes physical training. The modern Greek term for sport is Αθλητισμός (athlitismos), directly cognate with the English terms "athlete" and "athleticism".

Other meanings include gambling and events staged for the purpose of gambling; hunting; and games and diversions, including ones that require exercise.^[7] Roget's defines the noun sport as an "activity engaged in for relaxation and amusement" with synonyms including diversion and recreation.^[8]

Nomenclature[link]

The singular term 'sport' is used in most English dialects to decribe the overall concept (e.g. "children taking part in sport"), with 'sports' used to describe multiple activities (e.g. "football and rugby are the most popular sports in England"). American English uses 'sports' for both terms.

Definition[link]

Show Jumping, an equestrian sport

The precise definition of what separates a sport from other leisure activities varies between sources, with no universally agreed definition. The closest to an international agreement on a definition is provided by SportAccord, which is the association for all the largest international sports federations (including association football, american football, cycling, equestrian sports, baseball and more), and is therefore the de facto representative of international sport.

SportAccord uses the following criteria, determining that a sport should:^[1]

• have an element of competition
• be in no way harmful to any living creature
• not rely on equipment provided by a single supplier (excluding proprietary games such as arena football)
• not rely on any 'luck' element specifically designed in to the sport

They also recognise that sport can be primarily physical (such as rugby or athletics), primarily mind (such as chess or go), predominantly motorised (such as Formula 1 or powerboating), primarily co-ordination (such as billiard sports) or primarily animal supported (such as equestrian sport).^[1]

There has been an increase in the application of the term 'sport' to a wider set of non-physical challenges such as electronic sports, especially due to the large scale of participation and organised competition, but these are not widely recognised by mainstream sports organisations.

Competition[link]

There are opposing views on the necessity of competition as a defining element of a sport, with almost all professional sport involving competition, and governing bodies requiring competition as a prerequisite of recognition by the IOC or SportAccord.^[1]

Other bodies advocate widening the definition of sport to include all physical activity. For instance, the Council of Europe include all forms of physical exercise, including those completed just for fun.

In order to widen participation, and reduce the impact of losing on less able participants, there has been an introduction of non-competitive physical activity to traditionally competitive events such as school sports days, although moves like this are often controversial.^[9][10]

History[link]

Roman bronze reduction of Myron's Discobolos, 2nd century AD.

There are artifacts and structures that suggest that the Chinese engaged in sporting activities as early as 2000 BC.^[11] Gymnastics appears to have been a popular sport in China's ancient past. Monuments to the Pharaohs indicate that a number of sports, including swimming and fishing, were well-developed and regulated several thousands of years ago in ancient Egypt.^[12] Other Egyptian sports included javelin throwing, high jump, and wrestling. Ancient Persian sports such as the traditional Iranian martial art of Zourkhaneh had a close connection to the warfare skills.^[13] Among other sports that originate in ancient Persia are polo and jousting.

Motorized sports have appeared since the advent of the modern age

A wide range of sports were already established by the time of Ancient Greece and the military culture and the development of sports in Greece influenced one another considerably. Sports became such a prominent part of their culture that the Greeks created the Olympic Games, which in ancient times were held every four years in a small village in the Peloponnesus called Olympia.^[14]

Sports have been increasingly organised and regulated from the time of the ancient Olympics up to the present century. Industrialisation has brought increased leisure time to the citizens of developed and developing countries, leading to more time for citizens to attend and follow spectator sports, greater participation in athletic activities, and increased accessibility. These trends continued with the advent of mass media and global communication. Professionalism became prevalent, further adding to the increase in sport's popularity, as sports fans began following the exploits of professional athletes through radio, television, and the internet—all while enjoying the exercise and competition associated with amateur participation in sports.

Fair play[link]

Sportsmanship[link]

Sportsmanship is an attitude that strives for fair play, courtesy toward teammates and opponents, ethical behaviour and integrity, and grace in victory or defeat.^[15][16][17]

Sportsmanship expresses an aspiration or ethos that the activity will be enjoyed for its own sake. The well-known sentiment by sports journalist Grantland Rice, that it's “not that you won or lost but how you played the game", and the modern Olympic creed expressed by its founder Pierre de Coubertin: "The most important thing... is not winning but taking part" are typical expressions of this sentiment.

Cheating[link]

Key tenets of sport include that the result should not be predetermined, and that both sides should have equal opportunity to win. Rules are in place to ensure that fair play to occur, but participants can break these rules in order to gain advantage.

Participants may choose to cheat in order to satisfy their desire to win, or in order to achieve an ulterior motive. The widespread existence of gambling on the results of sports fixtures creates the motivation for match fixing, where a participant or participants deliberately work to ensure a given outcome.

Doping and drugs[link]

The competitive nature of sport encourages some participants to attempt to enhance their performance through the use of medicines, or through other means such as increasing the volume of blood in their bodies through artificial means.

All sports recognised by the IOC or SportAccord are required to implement a testing programme, looking for a list of banned drugs, with suspensions or bans being placed on participants who test positive for banned substances.

Violence[link]

Violence in sports involves crossing the line between fair competition and intentional aggressive violence. Athletes, coaches, fans, and parents sometimes unleash violent behaviour on people or property, in misguided shows of loyalty, dominance, anger, or celebration. Rioting or hooliganism are common and ongoing problems at national and international sporting contests.

Participation[link]

Gender participation[link]

This section requires expansion.

Female participation continues to rise alongside the opportunity for involvement and the value of sports for child development and physical fitness. Despite gains during the last three decades, a gap persists in the enrollment figures between male and female players. Female players account for 39% of the total participation in US interscholastic athletics. Gender balance has been accelerating from a 32% increase in 1973–74 to a 63% increase in 1994–95. Hessel (2000)^{[Full citation needed]}.

Youth participation[link]

This section requires expansion.

Youth sports present children with opportunities for fun, socialization, forming peer relationships, physical fitness, and athletic scholarships. Activists for education and the war on drugs encourage youth sports as a means to increase educational participation and to fight the illegal drug trade. According to the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children’s Hospital, the biggest risk for youth sports is death or serious injury including concussion, with the highest risk coming from running, basketball, football, volleyball, soccer, and gymnastics.^[18]

Spectator involvement[link]

Spectators at the 1906 unofficial Olympic Games

The competition element of sport, along with the aesthetic appeal of some sports, result in the popularity of people attending to watch sport being played. This has led to the specific phenomenon of spectator sport.

Both amateur and professional sports attract spectators, both in person at the sport venue, and through broadcast mediums including radio, television and internet broadcast. Both attendance in person and viewing remotely can incur a sometimes substantial charge, such as an entrance ticket, or pay-per-view television broadcast.

It is common for popular sports to attract large broadcast audiences, leading to rival broadcasters bidding large amounts of money for the rights to show certain fixtures. The football World Cup attracts a global television audience of hundreds of millions; the 2006 final alone attracted an estimated worldwide audience of well over 700 million and the 2007 Cricket World Cup attracted about 2.3 Billion worldwide viewers.^{[citation needed]}

In the United States, the championship game of the NFL, the Super Bowl, has become one of the most watched television broadcasts of the year.^{[citation needed]} Super Bowl Sunday is a de facto national holiday in America; the viewership being so great that in 2007 advertising space was reported as being sold at $2.6m for a 30 second slot.^{[citation needed]}

Issues and considerations[link]

Amateur and professional[link]

Modern sports have complex rules and are highly organized.

Sport can be undertaken on an amateur, professional or semi-professional basis, depending on whether particpants are incentivised for participation (usually through payment of a wage or salary).

The popularity of spectator sport as a recreation for non-participants has led to sport becoming a major business in its own right, and this has incentivised a high paying professional sport culture, where high performing participants are rewarded with pay far in excess of average wages, which can run in to millions of dollars.^[19]

Some sports, or individual competitions within a sport, retain a policy of allowing only amateur sport. The Olympic Games started with a principle of amateur competition with those who practiced a sport professionally considered to have an unfair advantage over those who practiced it merely as a hobby.^[20], but following the 1988 games, the IOC decided to make all professional athletes elgible for the Olympics, with only boxing and wrestling still competed on an "amateur" basis, although this revolves around rules, and not payment.

Grassroots sport is a popular phrase which covers the amateur participation in sport at lower levels, normally without pretension towards higher achievement, and is in line with the "sport for all" mentality, where enjoyment is the primary reason for participation.^[21][2]

Technology[link]

Technology plays an important part in modern sport, with it being a necessary part of some sports (such as motorsport), and used in others to improve performance.

Sports science is a widespread academic discipline, and can be applied to areas including athlete performance, such as the use of video analysis to fine tune technique, or to equipment, such as improved running shoes or competitive swimwear.

In order to control the impact of technology on fair play, governing bodies frequently have specific rules designed to control the impact of technical advantage between participants.

Politics[link]

This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (May 2010)

Sports and politics can influence each other greatly.

When apartheid was the official policy in South Africa, many sports people, particularly in rugby union, adopted the conscientious approach that they should not appear in competitive sports there. Some feel this was an effective contribution to the eventual demolition of the policy of apartheid, others feel that it may have prolonged and reinforced its worst effects.^[22]

The 1936 Summer Olympics held in Berlin was an illustration, perhaps best recognised in retrospect, where an ideology was developing which used the event to strengthen its spread through propaganda.

In the history of Ireland, Gaelic sports were connected with cultural nationalism. Until the mid 20th century a person could have been banned from playing Gaelic football, hurling, or other sports administered by the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) if she/he played or supported football, or other games seen to be of British origin. Until recently the GAA continued to ban the playing of football and rugby union at Gaelic venues. This ban is still enforced, but was modified to allow football and rugby to be played in Croke Park while Lansdowne Road was redeveloped into Aviva Stadium. Until recently, under Rule 21, the GAA also banned members of the British security forces and members of the RUC from playing Gaelic games, but the advent of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 led to the eventual removal of the ban.

Nationalism is often evident in the pursuit of sports, or in its reporting: people compete in national teams, or commentators and audiences can adopt a partisan view. On occasion, such tensions can lead to violent confrontation among players or spectators within and beyond the sporting venue, as in the Football War. These trends are seen by many as contrary to the fundamental ethos of sports being carried on for its own sake and for the enjoyment of its participants.

A very famous case when sports and politics colided was the 1972 Olympics in Munich. Masked men entered the hotel of the Israeli olympic team and killed many of their men. This was known as the Munich massacre.

See also[link]

Sports and games portal

Find more about Sports on Wikipedia's sister projects:
	Definitions and translations from Wiktionary
	Images and media from Commons
	Learning resources from Wikiversity
	News stories from Wikinews
	Quotations from Wikiquote
	Source texts from Wikisource
	Textbooks from Wikibooks

• Outline of sports
• List of sportspeople
• List of sports attendance figures
• List of professional sports leagues

Related topics

References[link]

• European Commission (2007), The White Paper on Sport.
• Council of Europe (2001), The Europien sport charter.

Further reading[link]

• The Meaning of Sports by Michael Mandel (PublicAffairs, ISBN 1-58648-252-1).
• Journal of the Philosophy of Sport

3-2-1 Contact is an American science educational television show that aired on PBS from 1980 to 1988, and an adjoining children's magazine. The show, a production of the Children's Television Workshop, teaches scientific principles and their applications. Dr. Edward G. Atkins, who was responsible for much of the scientific content of the show, felt that the TV program wouldn't replace a classroom but would open the viewers to ask questions about the scientific purpose of things.^[1]

History[link]

3-2-1 Contact was the brainchild of Samuel Y. Gibbon, Jr., who had been the executive producer of The Electric Company for CTW from 1971 to 1977. (Gibbon actually left CTW before Contact's production began, though he was still credited as "Senior Consultant.")

The first season of 65 programs began airing January 14, 1980 on select PBS member stations; it featured a cast of three college students who discussed science in an on-campus room known as the Workshop. The first season came to an end on April 11, 1980, but funds for more episodes were not sufficient until 1982.

When production resumed for the second season, which premiered on October 17, 1983, the show presented a more realistic appearance, as the new cast convened in a suburban basement (these segments were shot at Reeves Teletape, which also housed Sesame Street at the time). This cast continued until October 18, 1985. Ozzie Alfonso was Contact's new director and Al Hyslop its executive producer.

When the fifth season began on September 22, 1986, a third cast was introduced. However, unlike the previous casts, they did not meet in any specific setting; instead, they appeared in various taped and filmed segments. Episodes continued to be produced through November 1988.

For a time in the mid-1980s, the program was co-produced with the French television network FR3 and featured several new French cast members in addition to the American cast. From 1982 to 1983 the program was aired in Spain with dubbed-over versions of the American original broadcasts, and some local add-ons with four Spanish cast members: Sonia Martínez, Luis Bollain, Fernando Rueda and Marifé Rodríguez.^[2] Another Spanish version of the broadcast was aired from 1990 to 1992.

From September 1, 1991 until May 1, 1992, an edited version of the series titled 3-2-1 Classroom Contact was produced, specifically for in-school viewing.

It was reported in 1984 that 3-2-1 Contact had an audience of over 7 million viewers and was broadcast in 26 countries including West Germany, France, Italy and Spain making their own dubbed-over versions.^[1]

Broadcasters wanted the children to record the episodes without being afraid of infringement of copyright violations.^[1]

Hosts[link]

The Bloodhound Gang[link]

A frequent segment of the show was The Bloodhound Gang, a series about a group of young detectives who used science to solve crimes. Episodes of the series needed to be run in regular sequence for understandable viewing, as many Bloodhound Gang mysteries were cut among two or three Contact episodes.

The magazine[link]

Three months before the show premiered, a print magazine of the same name that also focused on science was released. In 1985, the magazine absorbed some of the content of sibling publication Enter (which went out of print that same year), including reader submissions of computer programs written in the BASIC computer language as well as reviews of popular computer programs. A new feature called "The Slipped Disk Show" appeared in mid-1985, starring a fictional disc jockey who answered computer-related questions submitted by readers.

Beginning in 1987, the magazine also featured content from another CTW production, Square One Television. Such content frequently took the form of a two-page comic strip, often parodying a popular show or movie of the time, with a math-related question at the end.

The Bloodhound Gang mysteries also made the leap to the magazine, but they were subsequently replaced with a series entitled The Time Team in September 1990. These stories found teenage characters Sean Nolan and Jenny Lopez traveling to different time periods in the past and future. Their surroundings and personal encounters were described with great detail, educating readers as to the customs of various cultures throughout history, and – on trips to the future – often pushing present day hot-button issues. For example, a 1993 story saw the duo traveling to what appeared to be a prehistoric forest, but near the end, they found a Brazil flag, a newspaper clipping from 1995, and a bulldozer at work: this was in fact a Brazilian rainforest being levelled.

In 1996, The Time Team was replaced by a comic serial, Cosmic Crew, which focused on the adventures of a group of teenagers and their robot butler in space. Their first story arc (which ran for more than a year) had them trying to figure out a series of riddles relating to places in the solar system in order to claim a treasure (which turned out to be a scholarship fund). Another story arc had a delinquent (who had been a villain in the first arc) join them in order to chase down a gang of other delinquents. Despite being effectively replaced, a few Time Team stories were run whenever there were gaps between installments of Cosmic Crew.

Many of the magazine's cover stories involved current events, such as 1990s oil fires in the Middle East. In addition, the magazine offered a games section in which most of the games were related to the stories in the issue.

In 1996, CTW presumably concluded that faithful readers from the late 1980s and early 1990s had long since moved on, and the magazine began to reprint non-time-sensitive stories from years past. For example, a 1991 article on the geography of the Galápagos Islands – a relatively unchanging subject – could very well re-appear in an identical format a half a decade later.

Under Sesame Workshop the magazine later became Contact Kids, removing the original reference to the television show. Production of the magazine was suspended indefinitely in 2001.

After production[link]

Though the show went off the air in 1988, it appeared in reruns from 1999 to 2003 on the cable television network Noggin, then a joint venture of CTW and Nickelodeon. Occasionally, shows were also rerun on Nickelodeon's Cable in the Classroom time period. For all these Nickelodeon and Noggin airings, the series was rated TV-Y7 (possibly due to the target audience). It also still aired on some PBS stations as reruns from 1989 to 1998 before it was switched to Noggin in 1999. As of 2003, Noggin no longer airs any shows produced by Sesame Workshop. The shows were modified for the shorter running time on these networks to allow for their interstitials.

Sources of funding[link]

Funding for 3-2-1 Contact was provided by the following:^[3]

• National Science Foundation (January 14, 1980–November 18, 1988)
• United States Department of Education (January 14, 1980–November 18, 1988)
• Corporation for Public Broadcasting (January 14, 1980–November 18, 1988)
• Andrew W. Mellon Foundation (January 14, 1980–November 18, 1988)
• IBM Corporation (January 14, 1980–November 18, 1988)
• Carnegie Corporation of New York (October 31, 1983-November 18, 1988)

Five sponsors funded the show for its entire run. They were originally supposed to fund for 20 new episodes until 1989.^[1]

References[link]

External links[link]

• 3-2-1 Contact at the Internet Movie Database
• 3-2-1 Contact at TV.com