ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that sport has surreptitiously changed and become complex, to the extent that its functioning imperfectly responds to one of the basics of sport as envisaged by Norbert Elias: role distance. That is the propensity of the participants to avoid being caught in the game, which is only a game, defining in this way the social distance which classes sports performers and the relationship of their practice to the contingencies and material necessities of life. The choice of this focal point is another attempt to understand what happens when sport, by transforming itself, becomes more than or even another type of sport. The 'win at all costs' mentality, to borrow an expression used by the media, contaminates numerous areas of sporting life. Sport is a distraction from sex and bad thoughts. Sports violence is trivialised by the recourse to the media narration, the serial presentation of the information and the lack of critical objectivity that such behaviour warrants.
