After listening to endless
debates regarding the legitimacy of certain
olympic events I have decided to redefine the word
sport.
Competitive Sport: any athletic competition whose outcome can be determined solely by the skill of the participants and not as a result of opinions made by a neutral third party. Function follows form. Examples include basketball, baseball, boxing, curling, car racing.
Competitive Exhibition: any athletic competition whose outcome can only be determined through opinions of a neutral third party. Often times, exhibitions rely heavily on style or artistic merit. Examples include figure skating, marching band, gymnastics, hot dogging
Noder's Note: I fully acknowledge that you will not find a sport that, when played professionally, does not rely on referees, umpires, judges, etc. My point is to distinguish between competitions that "can" be played without those third parties and those that can't. The winner of a basketball game is the one who scores the most points. The winner of a baseball game is the team that scores the most runs. The winner of a boxing match is the one who doesn't get knocked out. The winner in figure skating cannot be determined without a judge deciding that competitor A was better then competitor B.
This new definition is not intended to rate baseball as better then freestyle ski jumping. It is merely meant establish a more clear method of discussing athletic events.
This definition does not include events which can be called sports but are now exhibitions after someone decided that judges needed jobs. For example: ski jumping. There are style points in ski jumping because, for some reason, being the one who jumped the farthest is not enough.