O sport, you are...

Abstract

The comparison between the sport of the highest achievements and the mass, or amateur sports raises some questions about the nature and ideology of the sport. The sport of the highest achievements is designed to outline the extreme achievements the human body is capable of. Amateur sports are aimed at strengthening the health, at the harmonious development of the body and at bodily pleasure. Sport as an institution builds its ideological foundation through the heroization and idealization of the desire for records. Athletes are recognized as national heroes, role models, their reputation goes far beyond their motor ‘competence'. Thus the essence of the sport is rather controversial and a far cry from humanism is masked and hidden. Its real mission is to outline the limits of a person's capabilities through a rigid specialization of human activity. Even the Olympic games were not free from such ideology, which camouflaged this task with a whole range of nationalist and socio psychological myths.