The start of the year is when all the sports, that some don’t really consider sports have their major championships.
In recent weeks, we’ve seen Michael Van Gerwen take the PDC World Darts Championships, Stephen Bunting win the BDO Darts and Ronnie O’sullivan take the Snooker World Masters, which poses the question of this weeks Linc Sport talks:
Are darts and snooker ‘proper’ sports?
Adam Allcroft
Of course they aren’t. They are simply games. Sports should force the participant to actually do something which requires energy. Darts and snooker does not do this. After all, you can end up playing both sports right up into your sixties and not see much of a dip in ability, unlike proper sports, and the ‘athletes’, using the term loosely, aren’t exactly the finest examples of fitness.
Chris Gray – Sports Editor of The Linc
Of course darts and snooker are sports! The amount of skill, concentration and sheer dedication, not to mention the ten’s of thousands of hours practice it takes to get to that level of your profession makes it a sport. They may not be overly physical, but if you take that into account, is archery a sport? Is bowls a sport? Is Curling a sport? And if somebody is going to say that a sport requires movement, then surely horse racing and F1 aren’t sports as the human isn’t really doing any of the important work? One more thing, 16 world titles makes Phil Taylor Britain’s most consistent sporting colossus, maybe even the best ever?
Liam Ray
I would say yes. The rebirth of darts over the past 5 years has been phenomenal and even snooker has been involved in a slow but steady revamp during the same period. Both games have a strong and dedicated fan base as well as players who have risked their livelihoods to pursue careers in each. I think a sporting world without snooker or darts would be worse off!
James Price
Both games are undoubtedly sports. These sports are now very entertaining, particularly darts with the help of Sky and prominent sponsors pouring money into it with snooker going the same way I think. The amount of skill needed for both are enormous plus the concentration and dedication that are both required to be the very best in the world at these two particular sports.
Allow me to throw a spanner of sorts into the works. Have you considered e-sports? The world of professional video gaming as some people call it. Similarly to darts and snooker it isn’t physically taxing, but like chess it is mentally exhausting, and takes years of practice to be at a professional level (most pro players practice every day of the week). Different games require different skill sets, a strategy game like Starcraft 2 might be more like chess in the skills needed, but a First person shooter like Call of Duty or Counter-Strike might need what are known as “twitch reflexes” (extremely fast reaction speed and hand eye co-ordination). The prizes are massive too. The biggest ever prize in e-sports was handed out last year of $1.4 million to the winner of Dota 2’s The International. Going back to chess, it was recognised officially by the olympics committee as a sport, which for me begs the question if any game that requires a large amount of time to become competent, and has high enough of a skill ceiling can be considered to be a sport. Personally I think any game that takes that long of a time to master and has enough of a competitive aspect to it can be considered a sport.