THE AMERICAN MEDIA have not yet found a home for chess news. They heralded the 1972 and 1992 victories of Bobby Fischer over Boris Spassky in feature news articles. They print weekly chess columns in the leisure sections of newspapers. They also run an occasional human-interest story about chess, often accompanied by a cute photo of young children playing the royal game. But they have not yet accepted chess as a competitive sport. Nevertheless, chess is a sport and deserves regular coverage in the sports pages.
That various sports directories exclude chess is not evidence that chess is not a sport; instead, this omission merely reflects that large segments of our culture do not currently view chess as a sport. The National Sports Federation of the Netherlands, however, classifies chess as a sport, and chess plays a significant role in many athletic departments in Belarus and in other eastern republics. Many people consider chess the national sport of the former Soviet Union.
The ancient Greeks greatly valued activities of the mind and included a variety of intellectual performances (including poetry reading) in their sporting events. Negotiations are now under way to make chess an Olympic exhibition sport.
The noun sport comes from French and Latin as a contracted form of the verb disport, which means to make merry. Thus, the core meaning of sport is simply pastime, diversion or recreation. Like many other sports, chess is also a game (a competitive activity governed by rules) and a competition (a rivalry involving the demonstration of skill or ability). Furthermore, and typically unlike ice-skating, chess is an adversarial sport: the outcome of each chess game is profoundly affected by the opposing interaction of the players.
Chess requires extreme physical demands: A single game migh last six hours or more, and several such games might be played in one weekend. A study at Temple University reported that tournament chess causes "physical changes similar to a comparable session of boxing or football." For these reasons, chess competitors undergo extensive physical conditioning.
Although chess knowledge is relatively more important tha physical stamina, physical conditioning can affect match outcomes. For example, Garry Kasparov's superior physical conditioning was an important factor in his world championship matches with Anatoly Karpov. Vishy Anand, contender for the 1995 World Championship explained, "give or take a very small difference [in chess preparation], the stamina ... will make all the difference. ... The physical aspect assumes really huge proportions." Years earlier, World Champion Bobby Fischer admonished, "I've got to stay in shape or it's all over." In addition, dexterity is vital in fast-paced "blitz" chess.
