Outgamed on question of defining sport

Proposal for video games in the Olympics leaves Ian Cole on the back foot

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games in the Olympics! To quote Billie Jean King, erupting at a tennis linesman whose eyesight she was questioning, “You gotta be kidding”.

I guess I’m just an oldfashioned traditionalist who found himself in hot water with a group of young people when I rubbished the idea of video games at the Olympics.

The suggestion is that video games be introduced for the Paris Olympics of 2024.

The first argument the young ones hit me with was, “Look how many young people play video games compared to those who might throw a discus or a javelin.”

The Olympics, they declared, needs to be relevant. I quickly pointed out that discus, javelin and so on are traditional events from the original Olympics in ancient Greece and therefore have a rightful place.

I wondered to myself however whether golf and tennis have a rightful place considering they have their own majors which they consider the apex of their sport rather than the Olympics.

Most Olympic sports consider the Olympics as their summit, with soccer of course, with its own world cups, being in the tennis and golf category as well. That seems a reasonable basis for inclusion and even exclusion.

One new sport for the 2020 Olympics is skateboarding, about which I also raised my eyebrows.

However, the young ones quickly pointed out it requires physicality, fitness, skill, concentration while also being a competition that creates a winner.

So I turned my attack to video games.

Yes, I agreed it requires skill, concentration, hand-eye coordination and it is a competition, but what of other attributes like fitness and physicality?

Well what about rifle and pistol shooting, was the reply.

They rely heavily, I was told, on skill, concentration, hand-eye coordination and not necessarily on other attributes.

I was getting out of my depth so I played my trump card

Yet shooting, they pointed out, is regarded as a valuable Olympic event with at least 15 different categories for medals.

I was getting out of my depth so I played my trump card.

“But it’s not a sport,” I exclaimed. “It’s only a game!”

“Exactly!” they said, putting me to the sword.

“It is after all the Olympic Games not the Olympic Sports.”

I exited, out of ammunition and somewhat subdued.

Despite their arguments, but probably due to my traditionalist ideas, my lack of any appreciation of video games and my seemingly unfair view of them as some puerile, pedestrian, timewasting distraction, Billie Jean King’s voice was still reverberating in my head,

“You gotta be kidding.”