What is a sport?

A sport is a game, played as a recreational activity or professionally as employment. It is usually played for enjoyment, but it always involves some form of competition and usually improves the health and fitness of participants.

Sports usually require physical skill, as opposed to many other games which require luck or mental skill. Many sports are considered to grow character and life skills, although the environment that sport takes place in is very different from that of normal life.

Participating and spectating sports have continued to be popular in almost all cultures at almost all points of recent history, although the sports in question have been different and have reflected the attitudes and characteristics of society at the time.

Why are sports useful for survival?

Many sports use the skills humans first developed as survival skills. These sports may actually simulate survival situations, but the essential difference is that sports are ultimately recreational and any competition is not for survival but rather for enjoyment.

Examples include:

• target sports, which use skills that were originally for hunting food.
  
• yachting/cycling/motorised sports/etc., which are forms of transport undertaken as sports.
  
• combat sports, which developed as forms of defence.
  
• weightlifting, which involves heavy objects solely for the purposes of muscle development.