[gaze]

I don’t understand the argument here if there even is one. He didn’t like the way it was judged and he didn’t understand why raygun was there, so the whole thing should be thrown out? Also — he says the judging is too conservative for such a new sport, so we should in turn be even more conservative and get rid of breaking. This makes no sense.

[krisoft]

The argument is that it is not a sport, but an artistic expression.

It is not that someone shouldn't have been there, or that the judges got something wrong. It argues that the whole endeavour is misguided.

The article lists a long list of awesome and very cool things which has no business being an olympic sport. It takes the opinion that breakdancing is that kind of thing too.

[randomdata]

While the author may give that superficial suggestion, he never really broaches the subject.

Per the dictionary definition of sport, the only thing that set sport apart from any other artistic expression is notable physical exertion and recognized competition. In breaking, the physical exertion is certainly there and the will to be competitive is also there. It it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck. –– Especially when it is not unlike figure skating, which has been an Olympic mainstay for a century. There is clear precedence for this type of sport being considered Olympics-worthy.

[mcphage]

> The argument is that it is not a sport, but an artistic expression.

It can be both. And really, if that's his argument, then he needs to take it up with the World DanceSport Federation. From my understanding, the IOC is kinda like the Unicode Consortium—their job is not to codify some alphabet, it's to take an already defined, used, and supported encoding, and bring it into the fold. The IOC doesn't make up what the sports are, they take sports that are already judged at the world level, and put them into the Olympics.

[krisoft]

> And really, if that's his argument, then he needs to take it up with the World DanceSport Federation.

He is taking it up with the whole world. Wrote an article to do it.

[mcphage]

That's fair, I suppose, but unfortunately I neither agree with him, nor am in a position to do anything about it, even if I did.

[krisoft]

> I neither agree with him

I don't agree with him either! Or rather I don't have an opinon. I neither agree nor disagree with him. It's just that I can understand his argument without having to form an opinion about it.

> nor am in a position to do anything about it,

Same. The day when dancers need my help to decide anything about dance we all are in a big trouble. Hopefully it never happens. :)

[VyseofArcadia]

> The argument is that it is not a sport, but an artistic expression.

Yeah! We can't judge an artistic expression in an international competition every four years! Please ignore the skaters in the sparkly costumes diligently practicing elegant movements on the ice rink.