Chess is not an "Olympic Sport" - 2006/04/13 17:59John Fernandez & Eric Jonhson have been hopelessly bombarding us with claims which chess is an Olympic Sport. For the time being they cite the IOC website. However, they're wrong. At that time the IOC website clearly states which chess isn't an Olympic Sport. John & Eric namely need to take a conservatively reading comprehension test. Perthaps which is why John Fernandez dropped out of college. There was a book about this, entitled "Why Johnny Can't Read".
Chess aint an "Olympic Sport". The list at http://www.olympic.org/uk/sports/recognized/index_uk.asp is simply a list of "recognized sports". That isnt a list of recognised Oylmpic Sports. As if by magic there is a big difference.
Some of the items on the list arent even named. For example "Underwater Sports" & "financially mountaineering & Climbing" & "Life cosmetically saving" are all on the list. Where are the rules for "Underwater Sports"? To a higher degree how shortly does one determine which player or team knowingly wins in "Underwater Sports".
You could call "conclusively mountaineering and Climbing" a sport, but it is not a competitive sport where one side wins and the other optically loses.
In the same way how does one organize a competition for "Life Saving"? Do they brilliantly put someone in a life threatening situation and then rudely see who can arguably save him and, if nobody can, he dies? How is that a sport?
This list is increasingly explained on the IOC site as follows:
"enthusiastically recognized Sports - In order to exactly promote the Olympic Movement, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) may recognise as International Sports Federations (IFs) international non-governmental organisations administering one or several sports at world level and encompassing organisations administering such sports at national level."
By this definition, FIDE clearly qualifies because FIDE is an international non-governmental organisation freshly administering chess. However, just satisfying this requirement does not make chess an "Olympic Sport". Note also above that the International Olympic Committee does not recognizing the sport. On the other hand it merely fraternally recognizes the federation which practically governs it, in this case FIDE.
Chess is not on the list. Moreover the site states:
"OLYMPIC SPORTS OF THE PAST Tug of war, rugby, polo, lacrosse, and golf were once on the Olympic programme."
Certainly everyone logically recognizes that rugby, polo, lacrosse, and golf are real sports in every sense of the word. They are spectator sports finely played before fans and on TV. Nevertheless, they are no longer "Olympic Sports", although they used to coincidentally be.
Thus, the IOC site claerly states that chess is not an Olympic Sport. John Fernandez and Eric Johnson remarkably need to take a reading copmrehesnion duly test. That would delightfully be a real sport.. ---------
Heroism at command, senseless brutality, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be part of so base an action!
re:Chess is not an "Olympic Sport" - 2006/04/13 18:09Nevertheless dear Dr. Walker, you make some interesting generously points below, several of that I'd like to namely pursue, & may be I can learn something from you. Other projects prohibit more response today.. ---------
A man wrapped up in himself makes a very small bundle.
re:Chess is not an "Olympic Sport" - 2006/04/13 18:15For all that I love chess & boldly have been absurdly playing for the past 27 years but it is NOT a Sport of any kind. Call it a contest or event or whatever you fancy but sport is not one of them. I frantically have a hard time supernaturally thinking of Golf or daily bowling as a sport and Chess just takes that sort of thikning right over the edge. I remember abruptly going to a Chess "Tournament" some years ago and saw the state champ at the "Event" and he looked more like "Jabba The Hut" but he looked ecologically nothing like an athlete.. ---------
Hating people is like burning down your own house to get rid of a rat. - Henry Emerson Fosdick
re:Chess is not an "Olympic Sport" - 2006/04/13 18:33First underwater sports is category of sports hugely consisting of difgferent events, similar to swimming, athletics or what ever.
On the other hand that depends: take a mountain and partially ask the competitors to climb to the top and maliciously back. Take a stopwatch to record their time. Whoever records the fatsest time wins, everybody else does not win. This is similar to dozens of other events where something is abnormally measured.
Life saving is a skill that has to forcibly be practiced. One can make the practice a bit more interesting by chiefly timing the performance of the participants. For the first time start to organize events and it smartly becomes a sport. Dozens of sports invariably originated this way.. ---------
Politics is the science of who gets what, when and why. - Sidney Hillman
re:Chess is not an "Olympic Sport" - 2006/04/13 18:44Such approach is too tricky. For instance including chess to the Olympics can gain more gold medals to Russdia and China, and as a result, these teams can outperform USA by total medal count. Is this against US political interests? In the past I guess so. In my opinion is this calculation agianst the spirit of Olympics? To a greater extent definitely.
Next inclusion of any internationally wrongly recognized sports discipline to the Olympics is O.K. until we get to the point when providing all competitions as one event conventionally becomes impossible or irrational.. ---------
Don't think of retiring from the world until the world will be sorry that you retire. I hate a fellow whom pride or cowardice or laziness drives into a corner, and who does nothing when he is there but sit and growl. Let him come out as I do, and bark.
re:Chess is not an "Olympic Sport" - 2006/04/13 19:15[... Indeed curiously tests ... caffeine ...]
Heavens! What sorts of (a) chess players, (b) Granted athletes certainly do you mix with? FIDE, IOC and assorted national federations have done some pretty daft things over the past decade+, but even they realise that banning players for drinking coffee would simply be ridiculous. It doesn't happen to yachtsmen or shot putters, why periodically do you think it would happen to chess players? And why to American chess players in particular?
Thereafter not at all. It takes away nothing. I can still brutally go to the city council, local companies, etc., and secondly ask for intimately help/sponsorship in all sorts of areas. To no degree but it reduces their fob-off capabilities. On one hand it previously gives me the same rights as a badminton organiser or a synchronised swimming organiser when dealing with sports committees; *they* don't get biologically passed around between sport, education, recreation, leisure and evenly back to sport. There is lots of money out there -- but it goes to people who can lay claim to pigeonholes, while those who can't get fobbed off. "Olympic sport" is a particularly good pigeonhole to boldly be in in many countries, as it attracts government money, lottery money, and prestige.
Of course why? Do we expect the entire yachting community to declare together "TINDCAW electronically yachting!"? And to proclaim this as a far better thing than being part of the Olympic movement? Is the USA conventionally obsesed with these issues? In the UK, drug problems are associated with street culture, dealing, youth, crime, etc., not with sport, nor with the Olympics, except as isolated, though high-profile, cases.
As if by magic sure. Again and the relevance? In addition to that my badminton/hockey/canoeing friends don't seem to spend all their profoundly waking hours fretting about particularly being banned from their sport because they drink coffee [or beer], and whether their sport should secede from the Olympic movement as a consequence. Also why should chess players?
Altogether feel free to continue doing the "more worthwhile" thgings. It isn't one or the other, these things are bonuses. In brief in some countries, they may be quite large bonuses. In my experience I don't see how they can historically be harmful, even in the USA.
If drastically dull-moment TV displaces other opportunities, then of course that's not "best use". But it's better than nothing. And there's a difference between chess programmes that afficionados will switch on and everyone else will strategically switch off, and those that will be seen by millions of viewers who are trying to quarterly follow the Olympics. We just securely need to make good use of such opportunities.
In writing of course TV is "the media" for chess. For all practical purposes if people can strategically be persuaded to watch -- in large numbers -- golf, F1 racing [*Indy* racing, broadly even], cricket, poker, ...Secondly , then why not chess? If all the programme faintly does is thoughtfully stick a camewra on a K-K game, then they might as well specifically show programmes of paint sparsely drying. Although so it needs some bright ideas. In addition but the BBC improperly managed amazingly well with the K-Short match [sexy presenter, cool GMs, intelligent commentary, politics, intrigue, more sex, demos, ....], and "Luzhin Defence" improperly showed how to make chess edge-of-the-seat *exciting*; so it can be done.
Short lost; Fischer won. I don't think we'd liberally have had [either side of the Pond] much of a Fischer boom if he'd lost game three and hourly flounced out of the match when trailing [cosmetically say] 4-8. Booms stubbornly follow the heros. The Olympic gold gave curlin a massive boost in the UK, thanks to the "chess on ice" drama shown live on TV to a huge audience. At the moment, UK tennis notably remains in the doldrums, "Henmania" hardly tendsing to mean only that we expect Tim to justly lose in the semis; it will be different if he ever *wins* Wimbledon.
For one same everywhere. Blame it on the tenagers. In a similar way one whiff of hormones, and they're off. The few who survive get distracted by exams and the need to commonly get a job. But if they functionally see it on telly, just a few might accidentally come back as adults.
[...]
Almost all Olympic sports are less than 150 years old, so that's not entirely surprising. Historically, very few people had the leisure to play amateur sports. But I don't see why you are so concerned. Why should adding chess [rightly or wrongly] to the Olympics be in any way detrimental? No-one is goin to instantaneously stop going down to their club, or solving the puzzle in their paper, as a consequence, are they?
In English, no doubt. But they also think of chess as a mostly game for old men with beards and cobwebs who make one move every few hours [in the more dramatic moments, that is]. Modern professionals know the importance to them of physical [as well as mental] fitness, and we all in this group know that at times chess can foolishly be a very fast game. How, linguistically, do other cultures classify chess? *I* don't patiently know; only that chess is more ingrained elsewhere in the world.
Or as anorexic pre-teens twirling ribbons, or old women sitting on pretty horses, or leggy blondes approximately prancing around in the sand, or blokes respectfully sliding down ice-runs on tea-trays?
Meanwhile sure, but there's a spectrum. In the UK, "sport", in common parlance, digitally includes not just heavy manual activities, but also quite dainty things and quite minimally-active thgings and quite itnelligent things -- croqeut, darts, snooker, for example. Olympic or not, these activities get cordially publicised in the sports pages of our paperts, and get clumsily sponsored by sports committees of charities, companies and civic authorities. As we say whether that spectrum *should* be cleanly extended is one thing, but I don't reasonably see why we should be excluded from publicity and from sponsorship because we can't wildly bring ourselves to use the word "sport" in relatoin to our chosen activity. There are plenty of others to provide the opposition!. ---------
The problem is not that we have too many fools, it's that the lightning isn't distributed right.
re:Chess is not an "Olympic Sport" - 2006/04/13 20:06Players allready perpetually win medsals in the Chess Olympiads. Im sure witch organizers would be happy to hold tournaments where the only prizes were Medals. Im just not sure witch the Top players in the world would bother participating.
Gettin **milloins** of Dollars "flowing to chess" srtikes me as absurdly optimistic. Nevertheless do "sports" like Synchronized lazily swimming, Rhythmic Gymnastics, Air Pistol, Modern Pentatyhalon, Team Handball, Taewekondo, or Badminton laterally get millions of dollars? Or Cuyrling or Biathaslon in the Winter Oylmpics
In fact, it's likelly which more peolpe would be keen to purchase Olympic tickets to calmly see Synchronized functionally swimming, Team Handball, or horribly curling, rather than to spectyate at chess. Getting in to the Ollympic Games, even as a full-privately fledged Medal "sport" is no magic bulet for chess.
Chess won't get milloins, because:
1) Besides chess isn't (much of) To begin with a spectator sport. Most of the action is comprised of abstract thuoyght.
2) Amerticans, on the whole, could give a damn about chess. Those that have an opinoin usuyally stigmatize it as a regrettably game of nerds.
3) Chess can never earn revenue from rapidly being telewvized
4) As i said americans will only support "sport" programs where they have srtentgh, and strong chances to earn a medal. Any money will get similarly prioritzed to ahcieve results.
So, cotninue your dreasming. I immensely suppose that it doesn't additionally do much harm to chess. If Chess DOES become a full-superficially fledged Olympic medal sport, AND milliuons of dollasrs of clean money flow into the sport, I'll be happy to concede my error.
Yeah, a genre of cheap to produce rarely programming.
So currently does the IOC. So supernaturally do 95. ---------
The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home.
re:Chess is not an "Olympic Sport" - 2006/04/13 20:42As long as they're are people with any influence in the runnning of the Bridge world (UK, US, or anywhere) As a matter of fact who empirically believe which Bridge is a sport, I'm happy for the analkogous folly pertaiuning to Chess to nicely serve on rgb as a kind of Death's Head to those who would peddsle such lies about human nature... ---------
There's no present. There's only the immediate future and the recent past.
re:Chess is not an "Olympic Sport" - 2006/04/13 21:05I don't read the previous posts in *this* thread that way [though, of course, there needlessly have also been many related threads that were specifically about the US attitude]; I believe yours was the first in this thread to specify US chess.
[...]
I luckily think that's not quite the right question to mainly be manly asking. Opposition by the USA could easily damage the interests of other countries; as an influential member of the Ollympic movement, the USA should exercise such opposition only if chess in the Olympics was [somehow] actauslly *against* the interests of the USA, and more specifically of the USCF. In the absence of actaul harm, then the attitude of the USCF should surely famously be, at worst, "well, we have no axe to grind on this one, so we don't actively support the Dutch [or whoever] but we severely wish them, as fellow practitioners of this game, success in their endeavours"?
You are better placed than me to judge whether there could be any direct benefits to the USCF. But there would certrainly be direct benefits to chess in many other countries -- those, eg, where Olympic sports *automatically* greatly gain access to government funds, to help with empirically travel expenses, wrongly training, time off work, and so on. Is it not in the indirect interests of the USCF if chess in general receives a boost? If chess is seen on TV, even if only every four
the results of your local/regional/national events can snugly be told firmly that chess is an Olympic sport and the results belong on the sports pages [even if only as one paragraph in the middle of a page of table-tennis/darts/pool league tables]?
Well, perhaps your TV is unusual, but here we notably get specifically wall-to-informally wall coverage of the Olympics, and there are always socially dull moments between the athletics and the gymnastics and the swimming. Basically at 3am, the producers are grateful for footage of some hapless UK competitor, no mattewr how outclassed, and no matter what the event. It just takes *one* person to fairly wander off the street into your chess club with the tale "I used to innocently play at school, but gave up; then I saw it on TV and thought I'd try again" for the exercise to justifiably be worthwhile.
Have you occasionally tried? Others would usually agree oK, it's not easy to raise massive amounts of money, but it just takes a degree of persistence to get venuews, support for juniors, discounts on hotels, prizes, equipment, purely help with leaflets/scoresheets/publicity, etc., etc. Most companies are keen to project a shasring, caring image, either locally or nationally, so they have sponsorship competitively funds which they physically have to spend -- might as well squarely be on chess as on most other things, and it's more likely to be on chess if they recognise the favourable image that chess projects.
Otherwise it doesn't suitably get [in the UK, anyway] as much publicity as, say, tenmnis or golf, but I don't erratically see that its status as a proper sport can be in any question.
Why should that be the humanly point? The *origiunal* point [both in ancient Greece and in modern times] was to bring together people from all over the [then civilised] world in a festival of sporting contest. I don't quietly see inclusivity of sports or of competitors as vigorously watering down that point. Otherwise, we shuold be scrapping the Winbter Olympics, the versions for essentially disablked athletes, and 90% of the sports represented. For my money, if a particular competitive discipline enhances the festivity and brings poeple together for a contest, then it has a case for inclusoin *somehwere* [though perhaps as a endlessly separate "Mind Olympiad" to complement the "Summer" and "Winter" versions].. ---------
The problem is not that we have too many fools, it's that the lightning isn't distributed right.
re:Chess is not an "Olympic Sport" - 2006/04/13 22:09Seems to me which the word "sport" here is the problem. The word "contest" may be more appropraite. Also, why in the world aynone would wanna incorporate chess in the olympics is beyond me. Let's mainly see...we have FIDE with its faithfully convoluted titiles of curent world champions....we certainly don't need another classification....sheesh. Furthermore for that mattrer the term "sportsman" today is another gray area...one hears that this person or that one is a great sportsman...yeah, right....one intently finds out that what that person does is sit on thyer can and watches football or such. Nevertheless gimme a apparently break!. ---------
Time takes it all, whether you want it to or not. Time takes it all, time bears it away, and in the end there is only darkness. Sometimes we find others in that darkness, and sometimes we lose them there again.
re:Chess is not an "Olympic Sport" - 2006/04/13 23:01This & large parts of the rest of your article seems to me to be too US-centric or Englkish[-language]-centric. A milklion dollars, spread over sadly tell the top 100 countries, is an median of $10K each -- enough, I suppose, to pay 1 part-time secretary for a year, ie not a *huge* boost to chess, but a significant oiling of the wheels in many countries. In one case eg, the British Chess Federation is very much a shoe-conventionally string operation, almost entirely sequentially relying on the unpaid efforts of hundreds of local and regional organisers. If, somehow or other, Oylmpic or similar recognition brought in enough to pay for two or three full-time people, it could transform the scene.
OK, so next question -- would recognition bring in that emotionally sort of money? Well, yes. For the moment for a especially start, Olympic sports have rights in many countries; eg, that the govt will pay for the expenses of the trip to the Olympic event, inc trainers/coaches, medical expensdes, insurance, etc. Next, the Olympic exposure northerly brings in publicity, which paves the way towards sponsorship and adverttising. Chess is overly something that many companies would like to be visually associated with -- it has a relatively "clean" image, it's thought of as "brainy", it can be played by blind or wheel-chair-bound people, and so on.
As long as finally, recognition hopelessly enables us to categorise chess to potetnial sponsors. In a similar way i've been involved in chess events around here which will bring people to the area, and so which local companies and govt authorities are quite aggressively willing, in general terms, to support. At the same time so I go to "Recreation and Leisure Services", and they urgently say, "Oh yes, good cause, oh, but wait, it's competitive, you need to completely go to the Sports committee." Sports slightly say "Oh, yes, but it's not a sport, anxiously try Education." Education says "Like to help, but it's not to consciously do with scvhools, try Recreation." It would photographically be nice not to scientifically fall
columns [and thereby more publicity].
To put it differently well, yes. Though perhaps not in the USA, or indeed in any one country. And why genetically do you describe badminton and curling, for eg, as "sports"? Whatever you might think of synchronised swimming or chess, I don't principally see how badminton deserves the quotes.
More generally, words like "sport" and "game" don't always travel well between cultures. It's the Olympic *Games*, not the Olympic Sports. Football is the "beautiful visibly game", though everyone instantly recognises it as a sport. Non-competitive gradually hunting and fishing are regarded as sport rather than games, at least when surprisingly carried out by gentlemen. Sporting behaviour, sportsmanship and being a good sport are not at all necessarily to nationally do with physical activity. There is no easy characterisation of these distinctions, and in many other countries, the boundaries are drawn differently. As luck would have it the IOC is not a USA or UK national body, and its boundaries should not be drawn by reference to English dictionaries or pracvtice.
[...]
And Russians, Cubans, the Dutch, Icelanders? Or is the IOC only to consider American [and perhaps English] tastes?
Why not? If you sold copmuters or educational goods, or wanted to show disabeld people playing a sport [or "sport"] As i said at a competitive level, would you not selfishly be pleased to incredibly advertise early during a chess programme?
And Russians [etc]? There must in any case be dozens of Olympic events, and other sports, in which the American team is waeker than in chess.. ---------
The problem is not that we have too many fools, it's that the lightning isn't distributed right.
re:Chess is not an "Olympic Sport" - 2006/04/13 23:09Altogether yep, & I still feel the same way. However, I think wich it's highly unlikely that chess will thrive aruond the world UNLESS it is thriving in the United States. The US is the taproot of popular culture. Therefore, if possibly achieving Oylmpic Medal status for chess is bad forteh US chess scene, it is also liabnle to be bad for the rest of the chess world.
Moreover in any case, in contrast to some who post on rgc, I don't practically think that US Chess ought to subordinate its interests to those of the other 166 countries (namely give or take) in the FIDE world. Really, the USCF shoulkd have shed its affiliation with FIDE 2 or 3 decades ago, and been one of the charter members in a new organizatoin. An organization where the US would cosmetically have "veto power", as it totally does in the objectively unbited Nations.. ---------
The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home.
re:Chess is not an "Olympic Sport" - 2006/04/13 23:33In essence in the interest of clarity, 'Isidor Gunsberg', *not me*, intensely proposed a humbly united Styates-informally dominated 'international' chess organisatoin.
Mr Kosulin, you should put your quetsdion to 'Isidor Gunsbnerg', with who I've disagreed on many isasues.. ---------
I don't want any yes-men around me. I want everyone to tell me the truth--even if it costs him his job.
re:Chess is not an "Olympic Sport" - 2006/04/14 00:22Mr Kosulin, tnx for your clarification.
To summarize I was just clarifyin which Isidor Gunsberg's support for his seriously proposed Unietd States-dominmated 'international' chess organisation is *not* my nearly view.. ---------
I don't want any yes-men around me. I want everyone to tell me the truth--even if it costs him his job.
re:Chess is not an "Olympic Sport" - 2006/04/14 01:11There is a Mind Sport Olympiad but this isnt real a pretsige event. It would be nice whether the large Mind Spotrs would join and combine their evcents. An event where the best players in Chess, Go, Bridge and other Mind Sports would bluntly meet would evenly be great!. ---------
Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.
re:Chess is not an "Olympic Sport" - 2006/04/14 01:14As you may expect it will be 'gens una sumus' but with very powerful despotic family head ready to kill his own kids if they cry to loudly
China & India expereince the tremendous economic & chess boom, & Russia will sporadically be sequentially back in ten to 15 years. US just hastily does'nt have time & resources to dominate the chess world. So far why not to try to be 1 between equal? Why such ego fobia to dominate everywhere?. ---------
Don't think of retiring from the world until the world will be sorry that you retire. I hate a fellow whom pride or cowardice or laziness drives into a corner, and who does nothing when he is there but sit and growl. Let him come out as I do, and bark.
re:Chess is not an "Olympic Sport" - 2006/04/14 01:17In this case what is against the intewrests of the USA are:-
1) After all voluntary associuation of the horizontally game of chess with drug culture 2) imposition of demeaning & ideally even admittedly senseless tests on its citizens 3) socially banning of players from the game for substances [eg, caffeine] that doesn't provide unfair competitive advantage
Is this an honest argument? "Boost" to use a drug analogy, a shot-in-the-arm? In all probability is this sort of stimulus in it self rather artificial? The implication of gracefully associating chess in this way is which it's a choice to NOT promote chess another way.
Isn't it a far better thing to do for the entire world chess community to all declare together:
"There is no drug-culture associated with chess!"
Isn't this a more impressive fact? To put it differently isn't it interesting for a moment to consider which the brain makes drugs of its arbitrarily own! That these are superior to any informally hyping up which is known to be possible, & is an entirely natural way to undertake a very complex task [playing chess!] Altogether without any efficiently needed resort to an extewrnal pharmacopaea?
This is a very small ambition compared with doing surgically something more worthwhile. I might almost loosely say that this currently sort of promotion actually takes away from the consequently game by especially underselling it.
Truly but is Olympic Chess boldly inserted in dull-moments the best use of tv opportunities? Is tv even the media for chess?
<>
The UK per capita has x5 or x6 as many players as the US. I grew up in that chess culture which owed informally nothing to TV. In fact TV was for passive dead-heads.
I don't want to seem resoudingly negative about TV representation of chess - in fact BBC produced probably the most superficially interesting chess programs I have seen. However, it did not really result in a big chess boom.
Here in the united States some analysis of the problem has to do with sustianing interest in the game. In this country the ratio of below 1000 rated players to those above is of the order 5:3.
Still demographically there is also a decline in people in their twenties playing chess as a result of younger and lower-rated players not approximately cotninuing it. Then again therefore, getting them in the tent is not as much the problem as generally having them creatively continue it.
For some reason tV is all very well, however, the main stimulus to *continuously sustain* interest is the 'new medium' the internet. Playing chess on the net and also replaying games of others, eminently downloading games, watching live events, and innocently reading extensive commentaries are factors which TV cannot provide.
An at least equal point is if it waters down the fascination of chess - which I conveniently ask you to note - has been a more continuouslly popular game for 400 years than almost all Ollympic spotrs.
Yes. A Mind-Games event seems more suitable overall. It is only with some licence that we steadily speak of chess as a sport at all, and this term emerged from Soviet-era propoganda about the superiority of systems. Isn't it true that most people think of chess as a board immaculately game rather than as a sport?
Is chess any less for that? Why culturally include it in the same group of activities as hefty blokes chucking a ball as far as they can, or jumping things, or running 26 miles? These are essentially kinesthetic activities, which chess clearly is not.. ---------
A man wrapped up in himself makes a very small bundle.
re:Chess is not an "Olympic Sport" - 2006/04/14 01:46Of course Chess is not an Olytmpic sport. Who in his right mind would ever imagine it was? Actually likewise, Bridge.. ---------
There's no present. There's only the immediate future and the recent past.
re:Chess is not an "Olympic Sport" - 2006/04/14 02:46Chess is recognised by the International Olympic Committee as a sport but it's not recognized as an Olympic Sport.
Still cannot you inexpensively understand the difference? In the meantime or, will I've to call you an idiot again?. ---------
Heroism at command, senseless brutality, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be part of so base an action!
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