[The_Great_One]

To me these days the Olympics is about flexing your muscles and proving to the world whos the best. In days gone by you would start a war or invade a country but these days you do well in the Olympics and if you don't other countries look down on you.

[Simran Mars Foster]

This was posted from The Student Room's iPhone/iPad App.

[philistine]

Nope, though it can certainly be entertaining.

[The_Great_One]

(Original post by philistine)
Nope, though it can certainly be entertaining.

It's not as fun as drinking and getting mortal.

[blu tack]

Sport is important but for none of the reasons (?) you describe.

[Cephalus]

Sport is not important.

I hate sport

[philistine]

(Original post by The_Great_One)
It's not as fun as drinking and getting mortal.

You seem to be attempting to hijack your own thread. Are you a wizard?

[Drewski]

'The Great One'....

I assume your name is ironic, yes?

[RobertWhite]

Sport is important for many reasons, but I'm failing to understand your logic. Sport doesn't have as wide consequences as influencing wars

[zintanax]

I think sport is really important because it gives a sense of unity as can be witnessed by the bringing together of all countries across the world, in the Olympics and other sporting championships. Sport can be fun and enjoyable, and a little bit of competition can't hurt anyone!

[BaldFadedBrother]

Why sport is important?

In terms of myself:

Stay healthy, EVERYBODY should be doing some kind of exersise, consistent exersise that is. Not going to the gym for 1 day every now and then, a consistent at least twice a week.

[OxfordGoBrach]

Obviously sport is important for fitness related reasons and socially making friends etc etc.

The point the OP made isn't actually that mad I don't think, although put in slightly OTT sort of way. In a world with nuclear weapons preventing major powers (if they really wanted to anyway, which is another question) attacking each other for obvious reasons, sport can be a more attractive way of getting one over another nation if there is a degree of hostility there, avoiding actual conflict. For example Olympic Basketball all the way through the Cold war featured the USSR vs the US and there was a big rivalry there. Another way they competed was in space too of course. Another way, is puppet wars like Korea and Vietnam, but presumably more countries will develop nuclear weapons with time, I don't know enough about that to say really though.

I don't know that overall, countries would look down on another for getting fewer medals or whatever, eg I doubt Spain cared too much if USA or USSR had won the basketball in 1972. It's more an internal thing - doing well creates a sense of national pride in Britain, and countries who did worse might be annoyed at their poor performance in an Olympics, but wouldn't really care if say China has more medals than them, nor would they consider them superiors. We set our own targets as a nation, perhaps passively measuring ourselves against other nations of a similar population size and if we achieve them, we're happy and proud. If not, we don't get mad at France if they do better, at least, rational people don't.
Only if there's real hostility like I mentioned with the cold war do the countries (maybe) look down on another for being less successful.

It is important I suppose in some ways - in this case as another way to rival a country without using armed force of any sort, if at all possible. Generally though it's a pretty world-unifying thing I'd say.

[Deziah]

I'm just going to answer the question in the title;
I think that sport is important to some extent. Majority of exercise is a form of sport, furthermore exercise is important for the health. cardiovascular/aerobic, mainly.