How Many Different Sports Have Been Hosted by Football Stadia?

[ursus arctos]

I think it is a side show in this context.

Even if one stipulates that they are different sports, an athletics meeting is a single event.

[ursus arctos]

BTW, USian usage is even broader, with "athlete" being a synonym for "sportsperson" and "athletics" not being a thing (we call it Track & Field)

[ad hoc]

I think it is a side show in this context.

Even if one stipulates that they are different sports, an athletics meeting is a single event.

Sure. I get that. I've always seen such a meeting as a kind of festival of multiple sports taking place simultaneously.

[ursus arctos]

Ooh

We can do the Newport Jazz Festival next.

[Sporting]

I confess to being utterly baffled by this contention, by sane, intelligent people, that hammer throwing is the same sport as the 3000 metre steeplechase. Seriously. Blows my mind.

This.

[ursus arctos]

I do think that the line drawing exercise is far from obvious, though.

Sporting's categories don't work for me because it groups sprinters and marathon runners while separating sprinters and long jumpers, who are frequently the same individuals.

At the same time, I can't get behind a taxonomy that considers the 60m indoor, 100m outdoor and 200m outdoor to be different sports.

Do you consider different swimming strokes to be different sports? Or the 50m Freestyle vs the 800m Freestyle?

[Sporting]

Would people say that dressage, horse racing and show jumping are the same sports? I hope not!

[Sporting]

At the same time, I can't get behind a taxonomy that considers the 60m indoor, 100m outdoor and 200m outdoor to be different sports.

Do you consider different swimming strokes to be different sports? Or the 50m Freestyle vs the 800m Freestyle?

Agree with the first sentence. To the second I would say no.

[ad hoc]

I'd say that sprinting (100-400 m plus relays) is one sport. Middle distance running another and long distance another. Hurdling another. All the field events are different sports (though I'd be prepared to listen to arguments linking long jump to triple jump)

[Sporting]

Nor do I think that, say, epee and foil in fencing are separate sports. Nor weightlifting categories. Many other examples. But discus and the marathon? Completely different.

[ursus arctos]

That is certainly defensible.

You get into a grey area between sprinting and long jumping (more than triple jumping, see Jesse Owens, Carl Lewis, Marion Jones and dozens of others). There are also disciplines that are disputed using different distances or equipment indoors and outdoors solely because of space constraints (60m - 100m sprints, hammer and 35 pound weight being prime examples).

There is also the issue that when I was a child, the 400 was a middle distance race.

[Sporting]

How about shooting live pigeons? Same as the clay pigeon variety?

[ursus arctos]

And yet it is now very rare for an individual to double in epee and foil, but not to double in the 100m and long jump

[Sporting]

This is an interesting debate. How different are, for example, pool, snooker and billiards? Or futsal and football? Or rugby union and rugby league? Many of these have, for me, far more in common than many track and field events.

And as for mini-golf...?!

[tee rex]

I suppose it's "sports" vs "sports headings". Obviously many distinct sports (e.g. rugby union and league) have much more in common than chucking plates has with sprinting. So athletics is logically not a single sport.

But if we take the historic Grandstand test, it's a menu of Football Focus / Boxing / Athletics / Rugby League. Or the updated menu:

https://www.bbc.com/sport

And ... Tug of war, athletics or not?

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

Cross-country running always seemed to pop up on Grandstand quite a bit, normally when someone like Dave Bedford or Peter Elliott was running around a muddy forest in Northumbria. I've always wondered why that doesn't get into the Olympics, other than the stadium based approximation of it in the 3000m steeplechase, as it seems quite a distinct discipline.

[Walt Flanagans Dog]

Cross-country running always seemed to pop up on Grandstand quite a bit, normally when someone like Dave Bedford or Peter Elliott was running around a muddy forest in Northumbria. I've always wondered why that doesn't get into the Olympics, other than the stadium based approximation of it in the 3000m steeplechase, as it seems quite a distinct discipline.

I was reading a piece about cross country the other day - specifically it was about why the men's and women's world championships are ran over different distances, and included input from Paula Radcliffe and Zola Pieterse (nee Budd) who have each won two world championship golds. It pointed out that the women's race was initially around 4km, was around 5km when Budd won, and has only recently got up to 10km.

Anyway it also wandered into the declining popularity of it as a discipline, at both elite level (it used to be used as winter training by distance athletes but now they prefer training camps in warmer climes) and at club/public level, where people have switched to Parkrun and trail running, each of which of course can be similar to cross country. There is a cross country "circuit" of events round here each winter but its a bit niche and the running club I belong to are always trying to get people to make numbers up for team events.

[Walt Flanagans Dog]

And re it being in the Olympics, according to Wiki:

Cross country was contested as a team and individual event at the 1912, 1920 and 1924 Summer Olympics. Sweden took gold in 1912, and Finland, led by Paavo Nurmi, captured the gold in 1920 and 1924. During the 1924 race in the Paris heat wave, only 15 of the 38 competitors reached the finish. Eight of those were taken away on stretchers. One athlete began to run in tight circles after reaching the stadium and later knocked himself unconscious, while another fainted 50 meters from the finish. Jose Andia and Edvin Wide were reported dead, and medics spent hours trying to find all the competitors who had blacked out along the course. Although the reports of deaths were unfounded, spectators were shocked by the attrition rate and Olympic officials decided to ban cross country running from future Games. Since 1928, cross country has been contested only as the fifth discipline of the modern pentathlon, and until 2016 it was the only discipline where the Olympic competition was only part of the modern pentathlon.

I'm not sure that stands up as a reason nearly a century on but still, there you go.

[longeared]

Cross-country running always seemed to pop up on Grandstand quite a bit, normally when someone like Dave Bedford or Peter Elliott was running around a muddy forest in Northumbria.

BBC still show a meeting from Edinburgh on a Saturday afternoon around the beginning of January (not this year obviously). It always seems to be won by Steph Twell.

[Guy Profumo]

Cross country running for me always used to pop up on freezing early Monday mornings during January and February

[Satchmo Distel]

Middle and long distance is not that clear a split; athletes have competed in both 1500m and 5000m.

[ad hoc]

Middle and long distance is not that clear a split; athletes have competed in both 1500m and 5000m.

Yeah this occurred to me while I was setting up my arbitrary dividing lines. The line could be between 1500m and 5000m (with the acceptance that some people participate in both sports), or between 5000 and 10,000m (likewise). I think the marathon is a different thing to the 800m, but there really isn't a clear place where to draw the line.

[Capybara]

It's interesting that Mo Farah holds the UK 1500m record.

[1974ddr]

Stamford Bridge has had loads. Greyhound racing, speedway, American football, cricket and baseball all spring to mind. Before being developed for football it was an athletics ground.

I'm pretty sure that Stamford Bridge has hosted boxing too, though a quick glance at it's wiki entry didn't turn any evidence up. It does mention shinty, though.

[Nocturnal Submission]

Can't say I can recall any fights (well, not under the Queensberry Rules at least) but I might have a leaf through one of my CFC history books to see if anything is mentioned.