Breaking, commonly known as breakdancing, will make its debut at the Paris 2024 Olympics.<\/p>\n
For those who think this and other relatively new sports, such as skateboarding, surfing and sport climbing, are odd choices for Olympic competitions, Taylor McKee begs to differ.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Olympic program will continue to change in years to come, with new sports added to reflect the sporting character of individual host nations,\u201d says the Assistant Professor of Sport Management at Brock University, referring to a process instituted in 2020 where the host can propose additional events for their particular Olympics.<\/p>\n
McKee says before petitioning the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to include a particular sport in the Games, the proposed sport is subject to rigorous judging and evaluation metrics as well as having to adhere to international anti-doping policies.<\/p>\n
The process involves a wide array of officials from the IOC and national sporting bodies.<\/p>\n
Despite this rigorous approach, defining sport and who is permitted to play is \u201cnotoriously fraught\u201d with assumptions and subjective opinions, he says.<\/p>\n
The culture of the day also influences what is considered to be sport.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe continuing alteration of Olympic sports is an opportunity to maintain, or perhaps regain, cultural relevancy for generations less inclined to welcome the Games to their countries,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
McKee refers to the \u201crich legacy of non-traditional \u2018demonstration\u2019 sports\u201d that were popular in the past, including trampolining, trap shooting, dogsled racing, ski ballet, water-skiing and even live pigeon shooting at the 1900 Paris Olympics.<\/p>\n
But determining what is and isn\u2019t a \u201csport\u201d to be included in the Olympics is a challenge spanning back to when the first modern Olympics began in 1896.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is curious that even in antiquity, what was considered \u2018sport\u2019 was very hard to define,\u201d says Professor of Greek and Roman History Michael Carter, from the Department of Classics and Archaeology.<\/p>\n
Every culture around the world, across time, has done what would be recognized now as sport, says Carter, and yet there was no word for \u2018sport\u2019 in antiquity.<\/p>\n
In fact, many cultures and languages today use the English word \u2018sport\u2019 when there is no equivalent word otherwise.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen this type of use of a lone word occurs in other cultures, it tells us that the word is an imported custom of sorts,\u201d says Carter. \u201cWhen you import a foreign word into a language, you are also importing meaning and potential bias.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the ancient world, the Games encompassed a physical contest governed by established rules and procedures with the aim of winning a competition.<\/p>\n
Although all Greek men were encouraged to compete in Olympia for personal glory to show their true strength and worth to the Greek gods, the process privileged the elite and those who had time to train individually, Carter says.<\/p>\n
\u201cBy competing and winning athletic competitions, people were perceived to be chosen by the Greek gods to be honoured for their excellence \u2014\u00a0it was not about working as team as we see now in modern day Olympics,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of the events that still exist today \u2014\u00a0long jump, 200-metre dash, wrestling \u2014 are based on what we knew in the late 1800s about the ancient Games when the Olympic movement was revived leading to the first early modern Olympics in Athens in 1896.\u201d<\/p>\n
In considering the new additions to the modern-day Olympics, Carter says a similar way of thinking was seen in the ancient Greek and Roman worlds through athletic events that included competitions in musical performances and poetry.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat endures is the broadness of the definition and concept of sport and competition,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n