RichZ wrote:
Marty wrote:

That doesn't make it a sport or its participants athletes.



No insults intended here, but I wonder why so many tournament fishermenget
defensive about this subject. Do they need to legitimize their activitywith
the "I'm an athlete" claim?

Nothing to do with tournaments and competition at all. When the magazine
was named SPORTS AFIELD some time around the turn of the previous
century, they weren't talking about fishing tournaments. Just the
traditional outdoor sports. IE, fishing and hunting.


SPORT and ATHLETIC COMPETITION are two entirely different things. As an
angler, I am a sportsman, not an athlete. When I was young and agile
enough to play basketball I was involved in athletics and athletic
competition. I probably stayed involved too long after my skills and
body deteriorated, and I wasn't really competitive any more, but that's
another subject entirely. For a long while, I was heavily involved in
fishing competition, and while I was competing in a sport, it was not an
athletic endeavor at all. Not sure when athletic competition usurped the
word sport from it's rightful place describing the traditional outdoor
activities (blood sports, if you will), but for athletics to claim the
word as its own and not allow the true sports to claim it is simply wrong.

To back you up, Rich, the definition of sportsman from Merriam-Webster
online dictionary at http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/sportsman :
Main Entry: sports·man
Function: noun
1 : a person who engages in sports (as hunting or fishing)
2 : a person who shows sportsmanship