147 replies to this topic

[SportsGuy]

Well, there is defense in NASCAR. Guys block each other quite often.

[Pedro Cerrano]

[mweb08]

Btw, the senior tour doesn't permit golf carts on their majors based on what I saw, so yeah, 65 year old players can walk a course. Palmer played in the Masters at age 74.

[Cisc-O's]

Ooh...are we getting into what are and aren't sports?! One of my favorite semantical arguments.

Golf isn't a sport. Neither is NASCAR. Or snowboarding. Or track and field or swimming.

Sports need an offense and a defense, gotta be able to directly impact what the other guy/team does. Without that it's an athletic competition. Gotta be based on physical movement as well, so bocce or billiards are games not sports despite having a way to impact the other guy.

All semantics, but that's what I think.

Hate to break this to you Mackus but you just defined Nascar.  You know they have teams and draft off eachother?  Also the team members that do not win normally do a lot of the blocking which usually leads to wreaks when the person behind them has had enough.  Now physical movement is hand eye cordination with being in a blistering hot car that runs in about 120 degrees while trying to keep the steering wheel under control and configure your next 10-30 laps and how to make yourself faster.  So there is strategy, teamwork, an acutual race and you can greatly impact the outcome of your compeitiors race.

[Pedro Cerrano]

Hate to break this to you Mackus but you just defined Nascar.  You know they have teams and draft off eachother?  Also the team members that do not win normally do a lot of the blocking which usually leads to wreaks when the person behind them has had enough.  Now physical movement is hand eye cordination with being in a blistering hot car that runs in about 120 degrees while trying to keep the steering wheel under control and configure your next 10-30 laps and how to make yourself faster.  So there is strategy, teamwork, an acutual race and you can greatly impact the outcome of your compeitiors race.

 

None of what you described is "physical movement."

 

I'll be driving to my local Court House this afternoon wearing a suit in 100 degree heat.  Does that make me an athlete?

[SportsGuy]

http://www.google.co...GZui1gNKaAnRDM:

[Cisc-O's]

None of what you described is "physical movement."

 

I'll be driving to my local Court House this afternoon wearing a suit in 100 degree heat.  Does that make me an athlete?

 

G-force, a measure of stress on a body during rapid acceleration, is a familiar term to military jet pilots. It also applies to auto racers.

One G is the force of gravity, the weight you feel standing around. At a race like the Indianapolis 500, where speeds surpass 220 mph, that's significantly multiplied in the turns.

"Elite drivers will put up with 4 to 5 G's sustained in a corner for between five and 15 seconds, maybe even 20," says physicist Brian Beckman, a software architect with Microsoft in Redmond, Wash., and an amateur sports car racer. Since 1990 he has authored a series of articles on the physics of racing. "If you weigh 200 pounds, at 5 G's you're being pushed sideways at 1,000 pounds."

 

Ok with that said handeling the steering wheel to the gass pedal under extreme conditions is not easy to do and requires yes physical activity.

 

To answer your question no it does not try going 220 around a turn in your car thats a sharp left and see if you can hang on.  Then if you survive the wreck I'll text my wife an RN at hopkins to say I told you so.

[Mackus]

Hate to break this to you Mackus but you just defined Nascar.  You know they have teams and draft off eachother?  Also the team members that do not win normally do a lot of the blocking which usually leads to wreaks when the person behind them has had enough.  Now physical movement is hand eye cordination with being in a blistering hot car that runs in about 120 degrees while trying to keep the steering wheel under control and configure your next 10-30 laps and how to make yourself faster.  So there is strategy, teamwork, an acutual race and you can greatly impact the outcome of your compeitiors race.

 

I don't consider driving a stock car to be an athletic event.  I understand and respect the endurance aspect of it, but I don't consider fighter jet pilots to be athletes just because they fly jets (some are for other reasons, I'm sure).

 

I suppose I could support the idea that a NASCAR driver can have an impact on other drivers, with blocking and drafting and everything, though it's a bit of a stretch.  You could say any non-laned race involves positioning and jockeying, but that's not exactly the same as having an offense and a defense to me.  But mostly, I don't consider NASCAR a sport because I don't think the contestants are really athletes.  Not saying anyone can do it or that's it's easy, it definitely requires training and endurance, but it just doesn't fit the bill for me.