NASCAR...

So today I was just sitting around watching TV and started thinking about NASCAR being a sport. This came up in discussion a little bit in the last few weeks of class. I was watching clips of it, and trying to think about why I thought it wasn't a sport, or while other people thought that it was a sport. The main arguments from others supporting it as a sport were that it was physical and required skill. Now I understand that driving in a car for hours at a time, especially at those speeds, requires a lot of strength. Strength to deal with the G-forces, strength to control the car and just pure endurance to sit in a hot car while going around in circles. But just because it requires skill and strength does not make it a sport, especially since the car is doing all the work and the driver is just trying to control it. With this argument, came the opposition asking if horse racing is a sport and I said that it was. I believe that horse racing is a sport because although the horses do do most of the work, and the jockeys are just controlling the horses, they require much more skill and physicality to succeed. Firstly, the jockeys stay in a semi-crouched position the whole time and try to control the horse with their legs, while drivers simply turn the wheel. They also have to make the horse go faster by applying a physical stimulant, whereas a NASCAR racer just has to step on the gas. NASCAR is indeed physically challenging, but anything physical could then be made a sport as long as there were competition, and i just don't think that physical requirements and competition makes something a sport.