The Meaning of Sport

Excerpts from a marvelous book - "The Meaning of Sport" by Simon Barnes, chief sportswriter at The Times

Sport is everything:sport is nothing. Sport is important:sport is trivial. Sport i packed with meaning:sport mean nothing. Sport is an escape from real life:sport makes real life uncompromisingly vivid. Sport is packed with contradictions: sport is the most straightforward thing on planet. Sport is simple:sport is complex. Sport is beautiful:sport is redeemably ugly. Sport is only about winning:sport is mainly about losing. Sport is about courage:sport's main subject is fear. Sport is for fools:sport is for intellectuals. Sport is about creation of a living mythology:sport is a soap opera of the tedious doings of tedious people. In sport you find the commonplace:in sport you cannot avoid the truly exceptional. Sport is about strength; about weakness. Sport is endlessly entertaining:sport is full of longueurs. Sport is predictable:the point of sport is that no one even knows what happens next. Sport tells us nothing new:sport supplies us with one revelation after another. Sport is about partisanship:sport is about the search for an abstract and unaffiliated excellence. Sport is about breadth of vision:sport has its being in the narrow and one-eyed. sport is about perfection:sport is about the endless fallibility of humankind. Sport is about the heroid:sport is about the craven. Sport is about the audience:sport is about the performers. Sport is about learning the new:sport is about the reconfirming of prejudice. Sport is about sex:sport is homophobic & homo centric. People care deeply about sport:people know that sport means nothing. For a champion:sport is matter of life and death:in sport, victory often goes to the person whom it matters least. Sport is a modern invention:sport takes us back to the most ancient parts of ourselves. Sport is basically uncivilised:sport is the first luxury of the civilised human, Sport owes everything to the age of television:sport is 65million year old. Sport is something you do: sport is something you watch. Sport is about action:sport is about personality. Sport is about ability:sport is about character. Sport is about discipline:sport is about excess.sport is about self-control:sport is about letting go. Sport is form of madness:sport is a great bringer of wisdom. Sport is waste of time:sport is something that can enrich all who come into contact with it.

Above all, sport is to be found in the testing:in the last strides of the 400meters when the body's oxygen debt seems unrepayable; int he innings you play when your side is 49 for five;in the way you stirke the free-kick in time added on;in the way you hit the penalty that must decide the game;in the way you deal with out swinging corner when you're clung to a 1-0 lead for 80minutes; at the point in the marathon at the uphill finish and you rival alongside; or int he way you rip the entry from the ten-meter board in your final dive; or in the southern ocean with time ticking away and only an albatross for company;or int eh way ball meets boot when you go for drop-kick in the game's last seconds; or in the apparent width of the balance bean you throw the gold meal back-somersault; or in the impossible weight you select for the final lift; or in the amount of air that you give the ball when Adam Gilchrist's on full song; or in the way you hit the long jump board in the sixth and final round; or in the way you respond to a crude tackle or a coarse insult in the biggest game of your life; or in the way you hit your second serve at match-point in the pin drop hush; or in the way you ride into the final vertical with nothing in hand after three days of competition; or int eh way you wait when you know that your horse has all the speed in the finish; or the way you row when you're still second with ten yards left and you've already given your all; or, above all, in the moment between hand grip and hand grip as you perform the Kovacs. The truth is always and only in action.