Formula One is Not a Sport But Entertainment: What Do You Think?

Before I write anything, I think you should look at this news article in a leading publication and the video that goes along with it:

Here's the news item and here's the video.

The ministry is quoted to have said something along the lines of F1 is not a sport, but entertainment. It has apparently added that F1 does not contribute to the development of sports in India but it is merely a commercial initiative by the proposed organisers.

The full details of the Ministry’s statements are available for you to read on the first link.

What I am doing here is questioning the integrity of this Ministry and its opinion of what constitutes sport and what constitutes entertainment.

Let me begin with India’s “national sport” cricket. I agree test-match cricket is definitely a test of skill and human endeavour.

One-day cricket is to an extent acceptable in the sense, it’s not an easy task fielding for half a day under Indian conditions and one needs stamina just to stand there out in the sun.

Now Twenty-twenty, that’s a totally different kettle of fish. Men in coloured outfits pouncing around for four hours and doing nothing at all. How does that classify as sport?

Also, was not the Indian Premier League a huge money-making venture jointly plotted by BCCI and its cronies? How can a government call a micro-version of cricket a sport yet instead deem the highest form of mechanical engineering just entertainment?

I am not contesting the fact that F1 is called entertainment. Come to think of it, every form of sport is a form of entertainment.

The way I see it, the people at the helm of national affairs seem spineless and belong to the days of the 1857 war of independence. Their ability to think seems restricted to their limited vision of everything except self-preservation.

No matter how much money one pumps into the Indian sports fraternity, almost all of it will go to the BCCI’s coffers and what remains goes where? Everyone knows.

After seeing an Indian F1 driver and an Indian team, the dream of India to see a race on its soil seems shattered by the red-tape and bureaucracy.

God save the Indian F1 fan!