ABSTRACT
Sports have a grip on our lives. Either as active practitioners or as weekend athletes, as active spectators at the stadium or as passive audience at home, we all come (one way or another) into daily contact with sports. They affect society in different ways. Social attitudes and character traits are framed by the values derived from – many would even say embedded in – sports. Some of these are positively judged: self-discipline, teamwork, fair play. Others are seen as clearly negative: uncritical obedience to the team authority, a disposition to beat or even hurt rivals to secure victory, an exaggerated competitive spirit. Critics of sports tend to draw a clear distinction between mass sport activities and elite sports competitions. While they ascribe the positive traits to the former, these declared enemies of elite sports strongly underline the (some of them admittedly) negative features of the practice. This resistance to elite sports is often expressed with the help of a variety of arguments, ranging from a (more or less concealed) snobbish contempt for massive celebrations or for physical activity (or for both), to pointing out the fact that enormous resources are invested in elite sport activities (seen by these critics as completely useless) that could instead be diverted to other, more important areas of social life. And, to be honest, we should grant to those critical voices that there probably is something morally dubious about a practice whose most conspicuous element is victorious athletes being raised to the level of heroes by a cheering crowd. In a word, elite sports seem to provide an ideal forum for fruitful ethical discussion.
