Yes, although I like much of susu's definition, I still think that competition is an essential part of sport.

tuco wrote:There seems to be some confusion about competition vs cooperation. We can do it the other way around and ask what kind of sport is not competitive?

Mountain climbing. Various funsports (which doesn´t mean they won´t be in the future, it took quite some time for Skateboarding, BMX and Surfing to develop competitions for instance) and even some of those that do have competitions don´t depend on them (that there are quite a few professional Skateboarders that haven´t taken part in competitions in years is a good example. In some cases it´s been decades even!).
Of course you could take a broad view of competition and say that somebody climbing a mountain is competing against geography or that a Sufer is competing against the waves. But in that case you end up with the definition I gave earlier: Trying to push your own limits. It´s also worth noting that some people are so far ahead of everybody else in their discipline that the competition against other athletes isn´t important any more. They compete against their own records.

Competing against her/himself, fair enough, more of semantics than real disagreement it seems. My bad. Mounting climbing is a good example, always made me wonder why they do it, aside from adventure/discovery. Do other animals sport?

Can sports involve animals , like horse racing?

rJD wrote:I agree that it's a tricky question, & I'm not sure there is a definitive answer. My personal definitions work as follows:

A pastime or leisure pursuit is anything you do for enjoyment;
A game is a pastime that involves rules and competition;
A sport is a game that has an organisation to enforce the rules and/or record the results.

So, if you use a racquet to bang a ball against a wall, you are taking part in a pastime;
If you do this under a mutually agreed version of the rules of squash, you are taking part in a game;
If your game is part of a league (a "squash ladder"), you are taking part in sport.

If you are riding a bike, it is a pastime;
If you race your pal to the next lamppost, you're taking part in a game;
If you take part in an organised race, it's sport.

I'm certainly not claiming these as definitive but they are what I use to differentiate.

Yes, I like these definitions.

However, I like to play sports on weekends — usually a game of rugby to pass the time.

http://r-p-e.blogspot.co.uk/2007/01/defining-sport.html has a good entry on this- by one of my esteemed colleagues..