| From memory the powers that be in the BMFA decided that our hobby was a sport at about the same time as the SMAE was renamed the BMFA as ‘it better reflected the essence of aeromodelling today’ or some other torture speak. Call me reactionary if you like but I strongly disagreed with both of these ‘initiatives’ and I will never admit to participating in a sport when I take my model down the field, even if it’s a glider and I do a fair bit of running about (well more walking about these days). Also from memory the change from hobby to sport was made as it became easier to get grant money, but to me they sold their soul for a bag of gold.
There was a campaign to get ballroom dancing recognised as a sport and to get it into the Olympics, this didn’t happen (so some sanity remains somewhere); but now that we are officially sportsmen maybe we should campaign to get aeromodelling into the Olympics. I write this with my tongue firmly in my cheek, I say this so that no-one in the hierarchy of aeromodelling reads this and thinks ‘that’s a great idea – think of all the grant money we could get if we were Olympic sportsmen’. |