Rachael Gunn, alias ‘Raygun’, sums up breaking’s fleeting time at the Olympic Games. Few would know how to name the medalists of that modality in Paris, but millions of people around the planet can identify this Australian dancer. On August 9, dressed in the green and gold uniform of her country, she took to the court located in the Plaza de la Concorde and starred in an unforgettable performance. After three battles in which she was seen doing the kangaroo, crawling on the ground and writhing without apparent sense, she received three colossal ‘zeroes’ from the judges. Within minutes, the networks were already burning. “Hilarious”, “ridiculous”, “joke in bad taste”… “Is that a sport?” many asked themselves, unable to find the Olympic spirit in a dance of urban origin whose result depended on the evaluation of some. judges with criteria unknown to the majority. And yes. Breaking has been a sport for approximately five years. It was included as an exhibition discipline in the 2018 Buenos Aires Youth Olympic Games, which gave it a boost. From there, the IOC urged the national dance and sports dance federations of each country to incorporate it into their statutes. This happened in Spain and also in France. A year later, it was added to the Olympic program for the Paris Games along with skateboarding, climbing and surfing. Curiously, its incorporation meant the departure of karate, with another modality also discussed: kata. Breaking will not be repeated in the Games. Los Angeles 2028 decided to bet on other disciplines: baseball, softball, cricket and lacrosse will return, and flag football and squash will debut, in addition to open sea rowing. However, its controversial presence has survived the end of Paris 2024 and has served to fuel the debate: what is sport and what is not? Who decides that and how? The definitionThe first and most obvious thing is to go to the Royal Spanish Academy, which offers the neatest definition: “a physical activity, exercised as a game or competition, the practice of which involves training and subjection to rules.” It is not very different from those made by the majority of sports sociologists in the last half century, from Allen Guttman to Bernard Suits. They all agree on the basics: for a sport to be considered such, it must meet three characteristics: institutionalization, regulation and motor character. That is, there must be national and international organizations that administer it, a set of fixed and common rules, and it must require its own physical skills. According to this, breaking would meet the requirements. Because, in addition to its artistic component, it has its own federation, regulations and the requirement of physical skills for B-boys and B-girls. But academicism seems already surpassed in this case. “It is very difficult to give a universal and unitary definition of a concept that has varied over time,” Raúl Sánchez, a sociologist at the Sports Sciences Research Center at the Rey Juan Carlos University, tells ABC. “What can be traced is a genealogy, a history of what the word sport has meant at different times in history, and thus understand what activities it refers to.” The researcher explains that the Spanish “sport”, coming from Provençal, began to be used in the 11th century to refer to recreational and leisure activities. This was the case until the 19th century, when even Mariano de Cavia used that word in his bullfighting chronicles. “The same thing happened in England, where the most traditional sport was fox hunting.” The expansion of the English term ‘sport’ was what added the competitive component to these leisure activities. In Spain, sport and ‘sport’ began to mean the same thing. “If we see it with a perspective of centuries, we notice that it is not a solid concept, but that it has been changing and will continue to do so in the future.” Related news standard Yes American Football The sport that is never suspended Pablo Lodeiro Fernández standard Yes Sports Center Table football wants to be Olympic: 12,000 federated players in Spain Pedro CifuentesFor Sánchez, the introduction of new disciplines has more to do with the IOC’s desire not to lose the favor of the new ones generations: «Conventional sports, although they seem to us to be the majority, do not have that attachment in young people. They have many stimuli linked to leisure that are not traditional sports, and to engage them you have to go towards more spectacular or entertainment formats. As Dr. Ray Stefani, professor emeritus at California State University, says: “The organizers of the Games in 65 BC. C. they sought to satisfy the emperor Nero. Today, organizing committees schedule events to satisfy the television audience. The Higher Sports Council (CSD) is in charge of recognizing a sports modality in Spain. According to article 44 of the Sports Law, this would be “any form of physical-sports activity practice with its own structural characteristics, that has tradition, recognition and regional and national regulation.” From there, its Board of Directors uses discretionary criteria to decide: real implementation in Spain, that the physical activity is notable, that there is no significant coincidence with another sport, among others. The Spanish Croquet Association was denied this recognition in 2021. “The regulations are very meager, so much so that we could say that the recognition falls within the powers of the Administration,” says Mario Chamorro, director of the Law area. Deportivo from BDO Abogados, the firm that appealed the CSD decision. “They asked for a lot of documentation and, in the end, they issued an unfavorable opinion.” The Spanish Croquet Association appealed and, on September 12, the Central Administrative Court number 12 handed down a ruling against the CSD resolution. “They exceeded the deadline to resolve the request, which implies a positive administrative silence.” From now on, croquet, which has 2,500 players in Spain and occupies sixth place in the world ranking, will be able to formalize its registration as a Spanish Federation , number 67. «And that has multiple advantages –continues Chamorro–. It will have access to subsidies from the CSD, it will be classified as a Public Interest Entity, with better taxation, it will be able to access credits from the ICO and it will provide this sport with a legal structure, with the power to organize championships, create regulations and regulate disciplinary sanctions. The next step for croquet, like for the rest of the recognized disciplines, is to enter the race to be an Olympic sport. Take the path, for example, of kayak cross and 3×3 basketball, which have managed to win the affection of fans in a short time, occupying the top positions on the audience lists. Currently, there are 43 international federations with one or several of its disciplines included in the Olympic program, both in the summer and winter Games. However, the list of candidates is long. There are 35 other federations that organize 63 sports recognized by the Olympic Committee. This means that they meet the requirements of the Olympic Charter, and that at any time they could be considered for inclusion in the calendar of future Games. Almost everything fits on that list: motorsports, bowling, cheerleading, motorboating, sumo, rope tug, billiards or flying discs. Getting in is not easy, so when you do, it is cause for celebration. Studies by the World Academy of Sport reported the benefits that golf and rugby obtained by becoming Olympic in 2016: increases in audiences and global popularity, development of infrastructure, access to financing, credibility and growth in emerging markets. Squash«We have not yet We are officially within the Olympic cycle, which will begin in March. However, things have already started to move – says Pablo del Río, outgoing president of the Spanish Squash Federation. We had a first meeting with the CSD, where they explained to us how the aid we will receive will work and how to focus it. Del Río details that the federations and the Council look for results, which is why they prefer to bet on athletes with a high probability of competing instead of distributing you help them equitably. The extra help for being an Olympian is, therefore, for them. However, Del Río hopes that this new condition will result in more resources and sponsorships. «Being Olympic helps find sponsors. It will open new doors. Now we also don’t have a centralized training center. In the future, it may be easier for us to request improvements or access high-performance centers. The best thing is that it will allow athletes to dedicate themselves to their sport without worrying so much about the economy.” Armelle Couëtoux, Head of Marketing at Rocket Digital, delves into the benefits of achieving that status: “It marks a before and after. Not only to reach a broader audience and gain greater visibility, but because it opens the door to a range of highly effective marketing initiatives, such as collaborations with athletes, organization of events related to the discipline, interaction with fans and development. of specialized content.” Couëtoux recommends planning the strategy with a long-term vision to retain and build loyalty among new audiences who are approaching a sport for the first time. “It is a golden opportunity that must be taken advantage of from a social and economic point of view.” Emerging disciplines not only challenge the foundations of what is understood as sport, but also highlight the constant evolution of this concept in a world where the borders between competition, art and spectacle are increasingly blurred.
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