The Essence of Sport

Competition is the essence of sport, not records. It occurred to me that the endless chase for higher and higher performances in Track& Field and Swimming for example has taken away from the essence of the sport with is competition. Competition is striving together with the competition not fighting against them. Top marks and world records should be the result of competition not staged races with pace makers or prearranged races or time trials. In a conversation at the USTCCA Coaches convention with another coach about why Track & Field has lost following we came to the conclusion that this is one reason. If a record is not broken there is disappointment! How absurd, you can’t break records every time you compete. If the stress were on competition and the top competitors met more often then I believe that the sport would have more appeal. I also think that the constant stress on records is one of many factors that have caused a rise in the use of performance enhancing drugs.