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Message: [QUOTE="aliengenius, post: 531856, member: 11924"] I think the classification in Russia is basically a way to get funding/state sponsorship for competition, and has nothing to do with whether or not they really consider it a "sport." I am sure that chess, a Russian obsession, is also classified as such. International chess organizations have in the past actually attempted to petition the Olympics for inclusion! They were pretty much laughed at... Clearly it is ridiculous to to mix "athletics" with "games". The whole argument is simply a matter of semantics, an argument about the meaning of the [I]word[/I] "sport"-- athletes want exclusive use of it, while players of games like chess, poker, backgammon, etc. want access to the word because of the [B]competitive nature [/B]of their disciplines. Athletes want "sport" to mean athletic contests, skill game players want "sport" to mean any skilled contest. But clearly there is a distinction to be made here. [/QUOTE]