ABSTRACT
This chapter examines different approaches to understanding sport. It explores a broad internalist or interpretive approach as both an explanation of the broad appeal of sports and as basis for assessing their value and for approaching controversial normative issues that arise in athletic competition. Competitive sport as a mutual quest for excellence not only emphasizes the cooperative side of athletic contests and the acceptance of the challenge from the point of view of all the competitors but also explains much of our society's fascination with competitive sports. The mutualist approach to competitive sport sets an ethical standard that may be and indeed too often is violated in actual practice. On the mutualist account, winning normally is a major criterion of competitive success but hardly the only one. In a hard-fought contest between worthy opponents, both can meet the challenge of competition through exhibiting excellence even though only one can win.
