Brock experts reflect on the changing nature of Olympic sports – The Brock News

Breaking, better known as breakdancing, will make its debut at the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris.

For those who think these and other relatively new sports, such as skateboarding, surfing and sport climbing, are odd choices for Olympic competition, Taylor McKee disagrees.

“The Olympic program will continue to change in the coming years, with new sports being added to reflect the sporting character of the individual host countries,” said the associate professor of sport management at Brock University, referring to a process established in 2020 that allows hosts to propose additional events for their specific Olympic Games.

McKee says that before petitioning the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to include a particular sport in the Games, the proposed sport is subject to strict assessment and evaluation criteria and the sport must adhere to international anti-doping policies.

The process involves many officials from the IOC and national sports organizations.

Despite this rigorous approach, defining sport and who can participate is “notoriously fraught” with assumptions and subjective opinions, he says.

The culture of the day also influences what is considered a sport.

“The continued transformation of Olympic sports is an opportunity to maintain, or perhaps regain, cultural relevance for generations less likely to welcome the Games to their countries,” he says.

McKee points to the “rich heritage of nontraditional ‘demonstration sports’” that were popular in the past, including trampolining, clay pigeon shooting, dog sled racing, ski ballet, water skiing and even live pigeon shooting at the 1900 Paris Olympics.

But determining what is and isn’t a “sport” that should be included in the Olympic Games is a challenge that dates back to the first modern Olympic Games in 1896.

“It is remarkable that even in antiquity it was difficult to define what was considered a ‘sport,’” says Michael Carter, professor of Greek and Roman history in the Department of Classics and Archaeology.

According to Carter, every culture in the world throughout the ages has done what are now considered sports, and yet in ancient times there was no word for “sport.”

Today, many cultures and languages ​​use the English word ‘sport’, even though there is no equivalent word.

“When this kind of usage of a single word occurs in other cultures, it tells us that the word is some kind of imported habit,” Carter says. “When you import a foreign word into a language, you’re also importing meaning and potential biases.”

In ancient times, the Games consisted of a physical competition, with fixed rules and procedures. The goal was to win the competition.

Although all Greek men were encouraged to compete at Olympia for personal glory and to demonstrate their true strength and worth to the Greek gods, the process was primarily geared toward the elite and those who had time to train individually, Carter says.

“By participating in and winning athletic events, people were seen as chosen by the Greek gods to be honored for their excellence. It was not about working together as a team, as we see in the modern Olympics,” he says.

“Many of the events that still exist today – long jump, 200-meter dash, wrestling – are based on what we knew about the ancient Games in the late 19th century, when the Olympic movement was revived, leading to the first early modern Olympic Games in Athens in 1896.”

Carter reflects on the new additions to the modern Olympics and says that a similar mindset was seen in the ancient Greek and Roman worlds, particularly in athletic events that involved competition in musical performances and poetry.

“What remains is the breadth of the definition and concept of sport and competition,” he says.