Be a Sport!

Kirkaldy, in Scotland, has at least three famous names of which to boast. Adam Smith, for one, the great economist, whose common sense ideas were buried under layers of socialist wishful thinking for two centuries.

Gordon Brown, MP for Kirkaldy, would no doubt deny it, but he's a disciple of Smith, except in his more sentimental or politically cynical moments.

And then there's Jocky Wilson, world champion darts player, a volatile character, but who endeared himself to all when, replying to the question, 'How's it feel to be World Champion?', he said, 'Good. I can afford to get that kitchen extension finished now.'

I thought about Jocky a while ago when the Today programme on Radio 4 stage one of those silly debates it has periodically when news is thin. This one was about whether darts should be an Olympic sport. One 'spokesman' said yes; the other talking head said no.

It reminded me of the days when I used to run a pub quiz and asked the question, 'In which sport might you score a ''shanghai''.' Answer: darts (it's an arrow in the single, double and treble of the same number. You can play a whole game on that basis).

Now quiz teams can be very competitive and one team captain complained that I'd misled them by calling darts a sport, when it was a mere game. I justified my position, with calm and informed argument. 'Piss off,' I think were my words. After all, it wasn't very sporting of them, was it.

Now there's an interesting topic for debate: why do we associate games with sportsmanship, and sports with gamesmanship?

The English language plays with us. There are so many nuanced synonyms that we are encouraged to be boastful or snobbish about which particular word we use. And there is certainly a kudos in having your particular leisure activity named Sport. Just as every village wants to be a town, and every town a city, every college a university, and every cook a chef, so every tiddlywinker wants to be a sportsman, nay, an athlete.

That is why these sterile debates so often centre on what is not a sport, rather than attempting the impossible task of establishing positive criteria to define what is.

So, darts - it can't be a sport, they say because it doesn't involve physical effort and doesn't tend to make you fit. How, these guardians of sport's good name aver, can darts be a sport , when one of its leading practitioners, Andy Fordham, weighs over thirty stone? And they sneer at Andy for saying, 'I must be a sportsman, because I wear trainers and I've been on Grandstand.' Obviously a fat, working-class bloke can't be capable of irony either.

Therefore, by this criterion, darts and angling are out, but body-building is in. I don't suppose anyone's going to argue with Arnie about that, are they?

And these people don't notice the damaging effects of many recognised 'sports'. I don't just mean those pub teams where a game of football is merely a prelude to a session of boozing, or of Shane Warne, whose idea of training is a few tubes and a packet of fags. No, I'm thinking of fast bowlers' backs, golfers too; and Joe Mercer contracting Alzheimer's through years of heading the ball; and there are jockeys starving themselves and sumo wrestlers stuffing themselves; and I haven't even mentioned drugs or Russian transsexuals.

Now, skill. A true sport involves skill, say the pedants. After all, we don't want shove ha'penny getting lottery funding, do we? The trouble is that everything involves skill, whether it's tying your shoelaces or getting served in a busy pub. And it lets darts back in.

What else? Oh yes, competition. True sport involves competition. This reminds me of one of Alan Bennett's Talking Heads series, the one where Maggie Smith plays a frustrated vicar's wife fretting about the church flower rota. 'If you think squash is competitive,' she says, 'you should try flower-arranging.' Do you remember John Goodman bowling in The Big Lebowski? That was competitive. Anything can be made into a competition - pie-eating, dwarf-tossing, synchronised swimming, ballroom dancing, and that gymnastics thing where they jump about waving ribbons on sticks. Even art. The Turner Prize. Of course, that can't be a sport because it doesn't involve skill.

While on the subject of art - by the way, when does a craft become an art? - there are some 'sports' that are judged by 'artistic impression' and consequently a value judgment. Synchronised swimming, for example, and ice dance. Think of a football match on that basis. Imagine watching a 0-0 draw between Manchester United and Bolton and Man U being awarded the three points because they played more attractive football. In boxing, a fighter can get extra points because he shows more aggression. How would Man U get on now that Roy Keane has left? I can't help but think back to the Turner Prize and wonder if Torvill and Dean, had they kept falling over, might have been able to claim that their artistic impression was conceptual and that they symbolising the contingency of life and the absurdity of competition.

Many 'so-called' sports are, a sense not competitive. In sprinting and golf, putting the shot and tossing the caber (and darts), the athlete is not interacting with his opponents. His competition is with the course, the track or the board. apart from psychological pressure there is nothing he can do legally to prevent others doing better.

In any case, if certain teachers are to be believed, competition can be very harmful, especially to children. Failure, apparently, can damage the sensitive souls of the little sods, sorry, souls. Do they not realise that failure is the very essence of success. (Discuss)

There's a more recent factor in the exclusion of some activities from the sporting canon. Political correctness. Why do people use the phrase 'political correctness gone mad' ad nauseum? It's bloody crazy to start with. Anyway, boxing is frowned on. How can that be a sport when it's very purpose is to beat your opponent to a bloody pulp? Even cricket is dangerous for children, not to mention conkers. Angling is cruel and so is horse-racing. Hawking and polo are elitist and upper-class. Fox-hunting has even been outlawed.

And as for dwarf-tossing!

On the other hand, politicians like to encourage sport in schools because they think it shows they are doing something about the fact that kids are fat, lazy bastards. God knows why they think it's any of their business. If kids are fat, lazy bastards, it's because they've got fat, lazy bastards for parents. But sport, we are told, encourages other virtues. Self-discipline, for example, such as that displayed by George Best; nobility of character, such as Roy Keane's; team spirit, such as was always displayed by Geoffrey Boycott. Perhaps we'd better play down the fostering of a competitive spirit.

Enough of all this sniping. Making a list of of characteristics and non-characteristics does not define something. Otherwise we might manage to prove that a dog was an elephant. What, actually, is sport?

I'll start with Shakespeare. In the first scene of King Lear, Gloucester is talking to fellow-Duke, Kent. He introduces his 'whoreson', Edmund, and, abandoning iambic pentameters for man-to-man prose, says with a nudge and a wink, 'There was good sport at his making.' No doubt this making involved a degree of physical activity, even a modicum of elementary skill, possibly a little previous competition, but I cannot see it becoming an Olympic sport, however hard the French lobby for it. The English probably take the Richard III view, 'I, that am not shap'd for sportive tricks. . .'

I could talk about Doc Holliday, professional gambler, who described himself as a 'sporting man'. Jack Russell, breeder of the terrier, and inveterate rider to hounds, was known as the 'sporting parson'. The dictionary is crammed with meanings of the word 'sport'. And fundamentally it means 'fun'. So that's sorted.

I shall conclude by pondering on the original Olympic games. They were the basic sports of running, jumping and throwing. And they all had a military origin as well as a military purpose, just like shooting and riding in later centuries. It was much the same in medieval England and Wales, when the archer became the decisive force. Every Sunday, men within a certain age range and from the appropriate class were obliged by law to attend practice sessions. Football was outlawed, partly because it led to riots and dissolute behaviour, but also because it diverted men away from their vital training with the bow.

It is said that before the battle of Agincourt, Henry V's archers amused themselves by throwing their arrows at the circular bases of ale-casks, thereby inventing the game of darts and beginning its long association with beer. Following this pleasant interlude, they listened to the stirring words of the king and indicated to the French that their fingers were intact and itching to draw back the bowstring. Minutes later a shroud of arrows covered the enemy, whose army was reduced to so many bloodily squashed hedgehogs.

Gordon Brown wants to encourage a sense of 'Britishness'. I've no idea what that is but Gordon could do worse than promote the sport of Jocky Wilson, Britain's true national sport. Not only that, we have a realistic chance of winning something.

And if you don't agree, all I can say is that you're a spoilsport.