Post #211637 by paranoid123 on Mon, Jan 30, 2006 10:06 PM

I was having a discussion with some friends about certain "sports" and we wondered if it made the participants athletes. What is the defining line? For example, we think if you can play it while you're drunk, it's not an athletic sport or if you can play the whole thing without breaking a sweat, it's not athletic. I'm really not sure if these are good definitions.

We came up with some dubious games/sports that we just find it difficult to call the players athletes. Of course, some of these require a skill and/or talent, and I couldn't possibly do any of them well. And undoubtedly, there are some people who really excel at it. But if you're good at this particular sport, does it necessarily make you an athlete? I don't agree with all of these, but we came up with them when we were talking about it. Apologies to anyone who does these and takes offense:

-darts
-bowling
-race car driving
-equestrian (we're talking about the human rider, not the horse)
-baseball (now, there's no denying there are some real world class athletes in baseball, but there are some total lardasses in baseball.)
-golf
-curling

I'm not sure what the point of my post is, but if you have any thoughts I'd like to hear it.