You may have seen Richard Boock's article in the Sunday Star Times yesterday. If you didn't, here's the online version.

Boock is a writer I don't agree with very often, and this latest article is no different. In trying to write this, I first turned to my ever-faithful Oxford dictionary which offered the following as one of 5 definitions of sport:

An activity involving physical exertion and skill in which an individual or team competes against another or others.

And yet I still don't quite agree with this - I think that there is a far wider scope than the 'physical exertion' aspect.

What does Hot-Dog Eating have in common with the World Rally Championship? What does the WRC have in common with Golf? What does Golf have to do with Poker? The answer is that all involve a serious mental aspect. All of the above I would define as sport - because not all sport is about physical exertion, sometimes it's about putting the mental focus first, like in golf and poker. Sometimes it's almost entirely physical, like UFC [boxing not so much, even that has a mental aspect both within and without the ring] and BMX [go Sarah Walker woohoo!]. And other times it requires a balance of both.

And yet there are still more times when an athlete has to compete on a pre-determined scope of mental and physical actions, while being able to be flexible if events in front of them change without warning - this is the bulk of sport, NFL, rugby union, football, V8 Supercars, basketball, etc etc.

So in trying to argue Boock's case, I have found myself needing to come up with an improved, but simple, definition of sport. One which I propose, having devoted my lunch break to the task, as being:

An activity comprising of a significant amount of physical or mental exertion and in which an individual competes alongside others or alone against another opponent, ranging from a number of single competitiors to a team.