Sport?

As I trotted out of the library the other day, chess books in hand, I had a sudden thought : Is chess a sport? After all, it would be quite disheartening to write a glorious fifteen-page story on the beauty of chess only to find out "'tis but a game, good child, not a sporting endeavor."

Then the question shifted: What is a "sport"?

As with all questions that require an answer, I turned to Wikipedia.

"Sport is an activity that is governed by a set of rules or customs and often engaged in competitively."

I suppose that settles the issue.

But what about "competitively"? If you and I go head to head in some impromptu drinking game, does that justify our activity as "sport"? Laser tag? Kickball? Mario Kart?

What about exertion? If I play Solitaire to beat my previous time and you're competing in a triathlon, are they comparable sports? Does mental exertion matter as much as physical? Are they equal or will the physical always be more appreciated?

A friend argued once that sports which require judges are NOT sports due to their subjectivity. Of course, I vehemently disagreed. What sport isn't subjective? Hello, referees. (I then proceeded to storm away and fell down as I turned the corner, making a particularly effective argument for why gymnastics is a sport.)

Today, I passed a flyer in Van Hoesen advertising some sort of mystical class called "Writing Sports Literature." One of the black-and-white images on the yellow paper was a chess piece. I'm not skilled enough yet to identify which one, but it may have been a pawn or rook.

But the grainy image was all I needed to see. Through whatever definition you wish to use, chess qualifies as sport.