Who Gets to Sport the Title?
Dhrithi Mijar
FY B.Sc. (2025-2029)
Reading time: 8 minutes
The 2026 Milan Winter Olympics offered moments unlike anything the Olympics had ever seen before, but the Free Skate competition was an entirely different level of memorable. Watching figure skaters glide effortlessly through their routines, it becomes easy to forget that medals are at stake. For a few captivating minutes, it looks more like theatre than sport– the music swells, the choreography unfolds powerfully, the blades carve graceful arcs like calligraphy into the ice.
And then there was Alysa Liu’s gold-winning performance, which went beyond that; there was nothing that needed to be controlled, her body movements the most relaxed yet explosive, truly putting the “free” in “Free Skate”. It seemed like ballet, but performed on ice. Only the stats of airtime and height scores on the corners of the broadcast screen break the illusion and remind the viewers that this is also a competitive sport.
Moments like this quietly unsettle our neat categories. If something can look this much like art while still being judged as sport, where exactly does the line between sport and performance lie?
Within the Olympic framework, figure skating is unquestionably a sport with a meticulous scoring system that awards points for technical elements, execution and artistic interpretation according to criteria set by the International Skating Union. Judges compare performances according to standardized criteria and rankings, translating visually enchanting routines into numbers that determine who takes the medals home.
Much like figure skaters, ballet dancers are similar in that they blend athleticism with impressive choreography. Ballet dancers, too, spend years honing their physical endurance, balance and extraordinary bodily control while performing carefully structured routines set to music. The training demands are strikingly similar, even if the setting is a stage instead of an ice rink.
This leaves an intriguing question: if skating qualifies as a sport, why not ballet?
Both demand rigorous discipline while presenting themselves through artistic expression. The difference is not immediately obvious to the average viewer, yet few would instinctively classify ballet dancers performing Swan Lake in the same category as Olympic athletes. The difference, it seems, has less to do with how physically demanding the activity is and far more with the structures that surround it.
The Rules of the Game
When people talk about what makes a sport, physical exertion is usually the first defining feature. Running a marathon, wrestling an opponent or lifting weights clearly fit this description. Activities that resemble performance drift into more murky territory– dance, skating, climbing. They might look athletic in some sense, but their heavy reliance on the aesthetic aspect brings a certain hesitation before calling them outright sports. In everyday language, the term “sport” remains pretty vague.
However, the Olympic movement offers more structure. As the world’s foremost international sporting institution, the framework established by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) carries considerable authority in determining how activities are formally classified. Within the Olympic system, sport is not determined solely by physical intensity, but is described as an activity governed by international federations and regulated competition structures. Scholars studying Olympic philosophy often describe Olympic sports as institutionalised contests of physical skill governed by formal rules and competitive structures. In this sense, Olympic sport is more of an organised system rather than the spontaneous energy that people will associate with the term.
This institutional logic explains why some activities gain sporting legitimacy while others remain in the cultural margins. The Olympic programme itself relies on recognised international federations to govern disciplines and organise world championships. Without such standardisation, an activity cannot realistically enter the Olympic system. What we call sport is not, and has never simply been about what people do with their bodies. It is about how those activities are organized by much larger bodies that govern them.
One such body governs DanceSport, or competitive dancing, illustrating this institutional pathway. For decades, competitive dance has existed in a sort of disciplinary purgatory– part performance and part competition. This began to shift with the rise of the World DanceSport Federation (WDSF), which set out to formalise dance competitions. The WDSF, recognised by the IOC as the international governing body for DanceSport, has spent decades building the organisational structures necessary to position competitive dance within the language of sport. It organises international championships, maintains ranking systems and enforces standardised judging criteria intended to align dance competitions with the structures familiar to sporting events. In many ways, the format already resembles Olympic judged disciplines such as figure skating or gymnastics.
Moving the Goalposts
A glance at Olympic history shows that the definition of sport has never been particularly rigid. Surprisingly, Olympic medals were not confined to athletic contests alone. Between 1912 and 1948, architecture, music, literature and even urban planning were included in the official Olympic arts competitions. This was carried out under the vision of Pierre de Coubertin himself, who believed the Games should celebrate both artistic and athletic achievement. This might sound bizarre to modern audiences, but Olympic history is full of such instances. Even within athletic events, the idea of what counts as a sport has shifted multiple times. For instance, tug-of-war appeared as an Olympic event from 1900 to 1920 before being discontinued.
Taking a look at more recent Olympic inclusions prove that these conventions continue to be pushed. Skateboarding was introduced in the lineup at the 2020 Summer Olympics, bringing a once counter-cultural street activity onto the world’s most formal sporting stage. Breaking, or breakdancing, with efforts from the WDSF, followed at the 2024 Summer Olympics after the IOC approved it as a medal event in 2020– unfortunately with skepticism turning into downright trolling as the event went viral for the wrong reasons.
The interesting thing is that these activities did not suddenly become more physically demanding in the years leading up to Olympic recognition. Skateboarders have long been enthusiastically launching themselves down rails and staircases long before the IOC took notice. Breakers have been battling on dance floors for decades. What changed was the institutional structure. Once international federations developed standardized rules, ranking systems and qualification pathways, these activities were deemed “legitimate” enough to be taken into the Olympic fold. Olympic history makes the logic of institutional power very clear. With enough structure, even street culture can start to look official.
Choreographing a Sport
From concrete skate parks to polished ballroom floors, human movement has found many stages– but not all have been able to evolve into the sporting arena. Under the grand lighting of the ballroom, costumes sparkle as dancers sweep across the floor in perfect harmony. Music fills the hall, making the result look less like a contest and more like a scene out of a fairytale. The poise of a swimmer just before they dive is upheld throughout the routine by the dancers. Enraptured, the audience looks on tensely, knowing that a slight falter or a small stumble could have a high cost in the contest. Beneath the brilliance lies the countless hours of conditioning core strength, intricate footwork repetitively drilled to perfection and timing refined until every move lands in tandem with the partner. Those gruelling efforts fade quietly into the background of the spectacle.
Competitive ballroom dancers must maintain impeccable posture and synchronisation while executing challenging movements across the dance floor. Judges evaluate timing, technical execution, musical interpretation, expression and visual coherence of the performance– criteria familiar to gymnastics, figure skating and artistic swimming (formerly called synchronised swimming), among other sports. Yet, dance continues to be perceived primarily as artistic performance rather than sport. When audiences encounter an activity through the language of art, they instinctively interpret it as performance or “not quite” competition. In contrast, the visible exertion from a sprint or the measurable outcome of a basketball match feel more intuitively athletic to us.
As a result, dance continues to be perceived primarily as artistic expression rather than sport. This gap reveals how slowly cultural perceptions of sport tend to adapt, even with institutional formalisation already in place.
The Big Leagues
These perceptions do more than shape how an audience interprets a performance. They also translate into how institutions recognise and support different disciplines. The discussion on whether dance is just art or art that extends into the realm of sport, then, is not merely a debate over terminology. In reality, the label “sport” carries significant practical consequences.
Once an activity receives formal sporting recognition, it becomes eligible for national federations, government funding and high-performance training programmes. Athletes gain access to coaching systems, youth academies and sports science support.
Just the label “athlete” itself carries institutional weight. A ballet dancer may train with the same discipline and physical endurance as an Olympic figure skater, but only one operates within the global sporting ecosystem that provides widespread coverage.
This institutional backing can dramatically transform a discipline almost overnight. After skateboarding entered the Olympic programme, national sporting bodies in several countries began building formal development pipelines and funding systems aimed at producing Olympic-level athletes. A once loosely organised subculture began acquiring the infrastructure of elite sports very quickly, which is documented in funding programmes such as those announced by UK Sport following skateboarding’s Olympic inclusion.
Scholars note that this is precisely what reshapes physical practices into global sports. Once a sport is embedded into organised competitions and governing bodies, it is no longer an isolated activity, but becomes part of a broader sporting ecosystem. Sport status rarely remains symbolic.
Who Makes the Call?
If institutional structure determines which activities are recognised as sports, then the criteria for that cannot remain vague and implicit. As sport continues to evolve in the twenty-first century, this brings us back to the important question: how exactly do we decide what counts as a sport and what doesn’t?
Presently, the procedures through which activities gain entry into the global sporting scene often appear opaque to those outside it. International sporting bodies could have clearer governance frameworks, establishing publicly accessible criteria that activities must meet in order to qualify as recognised sports. Participation thresholds could serve as one fulfilment, whether national or international. The regularity and scale of championships held could be another.
Independent review panels can be established, bringing together sports scholars, governance experts and administrators to periodically evaluate emerging disciplines. The purpose should not be to determine whether an activity is aesthetically impressive or physically demanding, which many are, but whether it can develop the organisational architecture required to sustain competitive sport at a global level.
To be fair, none of this can ever entirely put an end to the debate on what is a sport. But some clarity would at least make the transition process from cultural practice to recognised sport more transparent.
From this perspective, Alysa Liu’s Olympic routine becomes more than a stunning performance. Figure skating sits comfortably at the intersection of athletic competition and artistic performance. The choreography, musical interpretation and emotional storytelling would not feel out of place on a theatre stage, and still the discipline operates within one of the most intricate scoring systems in modern sport. Turns out, sport and art are not mutually exclusive as we often assume.
The question is not whether skateboarding, breakdancing or ballroom dance are “real” sports. The definition of sport itself has always been more flexible than it appears. What matters more is how institutions decide who gains access to the federations, funding structures and competitive platforms that define the modern sporting world.
Human movement, in all its energy and artistry, has existed since the dawn of civilisation. Across the ages it has taken several forms as ritual, performance and competition, evolving gracefully alongside the societies that shape it. The sport we recognise today is simply one chapter in that long story, where ancient traditions meet modern institutions. What matters now is how we choose to organise these movements.