Commonwealth Games, 2022

[srini]

1.A human activity involving physical skill and exertion.
2.Governed by a set of rules or customs.
3.undertaken competitively and capable of achieving a result.

So do we all agree to the above 3 requirements for being called a sport?

#3 item can become subjective if judgement is needed to decide the result. Gymnastics, Equestrian, diving, Boxing and to some extent wrestling can have judgmental bias. Probably would be good idea to move all the sports involving judges out of Olympics and call them Olympics performance events or something like that.

How about Yoga as a sport any opinions there? Saw it in Khelo India youth games which are happening now. Felt why not if sports like diving can have their place? Diving has a whopping 8 medals 4 each for men and women. Of the 4, two are individual and two are synchronized. how about having Synchronized Yoga for Olympics 2032?

[prasen9]

Yes, I think we should separate the subjectively scored events from the ones that require low subjectivity or ones that have more objective rules and are counting-based sports.

If we can have gymnastics, rhythmic gymnastics even more, diving, etc., then why not yoga? The real question is how many people worldwide practice these things or do these things on a "competitive" level.

[srini]

Well its a very popular choice for fitness along with running,cycling. I think the popularity and following has grown in recent times especially after Internation Yoga day was adopted by UN, most of the European and North American cities have Yoga studios.

Take a look at the Khelo India Gold medal winner Puja Patel doing her Asanas in the competition. One can choose an optional asan (like Dipa chose Produnova in Vault section of Gymnastics) and go for it.You can notice this woman looked over weight and probably that was the reason she started doing Yoga and continue to be fit and flexible for her body type.

[prasen9]

Absolutely. And, with the time requirements, it is not that subjective, I suppose.

[arjun2761]

Yes, this is absolutely capable of being an Olympic event. We could also have 4 weight classes, 45 kg, 55kg, 65 kg and 65+ to improve medal count and having more lower weight classes is also helpful to us.

[Atithee]

How are we so assured of medals in yoga? The competition would be world class.

[prasen9]

Yes, and systematic systems will eventually win out even if we have an initial advantage.

[srini]

How are we so assured of medals in yoga? The competition would be world class.

I would agree, once Yoga makes its debut in Olympics we will be staring at the Chinks and Japs executing Adho Mukha Vriksasana and gandabherundasana to the perfection and standing on podium. At our current state of sports, we can only dream about being competitive or at least participate in many of Olympic sports. Yoga will give us some window there as it doesn't require any costly equipment/animals to perform.

There are a whopping 22 events for Cycling which we mostly don't participate or not competitive enough, 16 in Canoeing,10 sailing, 6 in equestrian, 18 gymnastics and about 50 in aquatics (again zero participation here). There go about 150 medals for toss from available 300 medals. Having Yoga in at least 4 events to start with (Men,Women with Synchrnoized(doubles)) gives us a chance to participate. They can add weight classes to make it fair for participating athletes and if it can pull audience. I do find some asanas are fun to watch.