SPORTS

Sports are physical contests that are pursued for the sake of achieving goals and overcoming problems. Sports are a component of every culture, past and present, yet each culture defines sports differently. The definitions that clarify the relationship between sports and play, games, and competitions are the most beneficial. "Play is purposeless activity, for its own sake, the reverse of labour," declared German scholar Carl Diem. Humans labour because it is required of them; they play because it is their desire. Play is autotelic, which means it has its own objectives. It is a completely choice and non-coerced act. Recaciltrant children who are forced to compete in a game of football (soccer) by their parents or teachers are not truly involved in a sport. Neither is a professional. Motives are commonly mingled in the real world, making it nearly impossible to distinguish them. Nonetheless, a clear definition is required to make practical decisions regarding what is and is not a play example.

There are at least two different types of games. The first is uninhibited and uninhibited. There are numerous examples. A child notices a flat stone and picks it up, sending it skipping across the pond's surface. With a laugh, a grownup realises he's made an inadvertent joke. Neither action is premeditated, and both are, at the very least, unrestricted. The second type of game is controlled. There are regulations that govern which actions are legal and which are illegal. These restrictions turn unstructured play into games, which are referred to as rule-bound or regulated play. Leapfrog, chess, "playing house," and basketball are all games with different rules, some with simple rules and others with more complicated ones. In reality, rule books for sports like basketball can run into the hundreds of pages.

Nobody knows when sports started. Since it is impossible to conceive a time when children did not spontaneously run races or wrestle, it seems apparent that sports have always been a part of children's play, but the origins of sports as autotelic physical contests for adults can only be speculated. Hunters are shown in prehistoric art, but it's unclear whether they pursued their prey with the deadly determination of a hunter or with the joyous abandon of a sportsman. Hunting, on the other hand, became an aim in itself—at least for royalty and nobility—as evidenced by the rich literary and iconographic evidence of all ancient civilizations. Ball games were also widespread among ancient peoples as diverse as the Chinese and the Aztecs, according to archaeological evidence. Ball games, such as the Japanese football game kemari, were sports in the strictest sense if they were contests rather than noncompetitive ritual acts. The evidence supplied by Greek and Roman antiquity, which demonstrates that ball games were for the most part fun hobbies like those suggested for health by the Greek physician Galen in the 2nd century CE, shows that they cannot simply be presumed to be contests.