Sport has become our communal activity, our environment of mutual support. Sportsmen focus on challenging themselves. They liberate themselves from the presence of external competition. Humanity has always been fascinated by physical beauty. The aerobics revolution has been replaced by ashtanga and other forms of yoga that combine physical fitness with spirituality. The rise of interest in yoga is a turn to the combination of physical and spiritual health.
Sport is my favorite leisure activity. I go jogging and play chess, have a swim at a moderate speed and lift weights in the morning. I never do anything which is bad for me. I keep trophies gathered on high school athletic fields on a shelf. I cherish baseball cards and athlete’s autographs. Ronaldo’s poster is a signal that he is a compelling object of my devotion. I know all hometown heroes. I like extreme sports that offer a full body experience. I am crazy about sports, like all people around me.
But when I watch sports, it hurts me that athletes risk their health for my pleasure. They are super humans but their increased stress and inevitable sports injuries make me somewhat sad. Sporting injuries are inherent in commercialized sport; otherwise nobody would pay our great athletes well. Yet, there should be limitations, for sport is good for us when it brings about positive emotions in both active and passive participants of sports events. Sport events take place everywhere and on a regular basis. Viewing sports is one of the popular pastime activities. It is the feeling of connectedness that sports create – with athletes, with different kinds of sports that are of interest to us, with sports achievements that we personally have missed in our lives. How good is sport for us?
To profit from sports and to gain popularity, athletes risk their health because records go hand in glove with injuries. The camera follows every crash, every injury, every drop of blood spilt. It is disgusting and not good for me. I do not want to know the background of commercialized sports. For me, athletes are heroes. They make me promise myself to set on a program that would lead to achievement, not today but later, perhaps, tomorrow. I like sports enthusiasm, energy, force, and youth. Well, watching sport is good.
But is it really good to know that athletes cheat us, their fans, using special technologies to become supermen physically? Do I need this deception? What is the point of it for me? I wonder whether sport has not mutated into something else. I mean, I want to know whether it has not turned into genetically-modified activity, in which genuine human ability is no more competitive, and athletes are sports machines that manufacture sports result with their body machines.
I think that not sport but regular exercise is really good for me. I like jogging but I would never have a welcome as a baseball player. I am too clumsy even for beach volleyball. I like sports as they are – interesting, entertaining, competitive, and spectacular. I like watching how others succeed in their sports lives.
Sport is good for me, if it reveals how powerful our bodies are. But sport is of no use if it contradicts my human nature. It should be naturally but not artificially driven. I am for sport that does not cheat nature and is a real competition of strength and physical might.
