Charateristics of Sport - Assignment Example

Characteristics of Sport Characteristics of Sport The first difference between the characteristics of sport forms in the past and today is the consideration of equality and civil rights. Sport used to be independent of the influence of civil rights organizations, thereby only favoring the biased interests of its organizers and coaches. Today, all forms of sporting organizations have to tolerate ethnic and gender diversity in their plans and structures, particularly when the individual in question is talented in the given sport.

For instance, women were first included in Olympic competitions in 1928 after exclusion for over three decades (Coakley, 2009). Another difference is the role of sport forms as a hybrid of neo-modern internationalism. During the early 1900s, sporting forms only took on the role of an intermediary of both imperialism and colonialism. Today, sports assume both the role of a neo-nationalist and neo-colonial stage of advancement. For example, the 1998 victory of the World Cup by France was an opportunity for the government to declare its demonstration of the new ethnically incorporated France (Coakley, 2009).

This demonstration was an indicator of the abandonment of imperialistic and colonial intentions by the government and its adoption of ethnically diverse sporting forms. A third difference is the decrease and near eradication of class-oriented forms of sporting. Between 1918 and 1930, sport participation did not largely involve the working class as much as they did those from higher classes of society. Today, nearly all forms of sports include people from all classes of society, with extremely few exceptions such as golf.

The event that brought about this significant change in sporting was the worker Olympics in Vienna in 1931 entailing over 8,000 laborers from 23 nations (Coakley, 2009). Vienna conducted the event beneath the banner of global peace and integration.ReferencesCoakley, J. (2009). Sports in society: Issues and controversies. (10th Ed.). New York, NY: McGraw Hill.