Elite Angling: A Sport or a Pastime? - Rob Hughes

A rather grand title for this subject and no, I’m not talking about anglers who have egos bigger than their own fishy tales. 

I’m looking at the issue of elite sport and, more precisely, what constitutes it.

A while ago I became embroiled in an argument with the presenter on Radio 5 who asked me “How could something that you wear a woolly jumper for be classed as a sport?”.

He was trying to provoke a laugh, but the reality is that a sport has to contain a number of ingredients or elements in order to be classed thus, and to my mind angling has them all: organisation, physicality and competition.

The Oxford Dictionary defines a sport as “an activity involving physical exertion and skill in which an individual or a team competes against another or others”.

Angling ticks that box. Online, it’s a similar story if you use Dictionary.com, which defines sport as “an athletic activity requiring skill or physical prowess” and uses racing, tennis, golf, bowling and wrestling as examples.

Once again, we qualify. Any match angler out there will vouch for the competitive element of our sport.

Some may say that more people don’t compete than do, and I’d agree with that statement, but the same can be said for cycling, swimming, running and shooting…. and they’re always classed as sports!

So, my conclusion is this: if we’re a sport, then surely the best at our sport, especially those that are at professional or international level, must be classed as elite? It’s a no-brainer to me.

Can fishing be described as a sports the same as golf?