![\"is](\"https:\/\/www.thetrailmaster.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/06\/Montecito-Hiker-guy-192x300.jpg\" "\\"Hiking")
<\/a>Is Hiking a Sport?<\/p><\/div>\n
Over the years editors of all these sections of the paper explained why hiking could fit into their particular purview: readers want to get out into nature.<\/p>\n
One Los Angeles Times editor, though, was dead certain he didn\u2019t want Hiking in his section.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo way is hiking a sport,\u201d longtime Times Sports editor Bill Dwyre told me. \u201cA sport has to have competition.\u201d<\/p>\n
I was thinking fondly of Bill Dwyre, who recently retired after writing a three-times-weekly sports column for the Los Angeles Times since 2006. I enjoyed his columns–even if Dwyre did not consider hiking a “real sport.”<\/p>\n
Doubtless most sports writers and sportscasters, along with most fans of the major sports, would agree with the old school sports columnist, though the word \u201ccompetition\u201d is nowhere to be found in the dictionary definition of sport. In fact, with sport usually defined as \u201cany activity that gives enjoyment or recreation,\u201d hiking is a sport according to Webster\u2019s and other dictionaries.<\/p>\n
Sport or not, admittedly, there\u2019s little competition in hiking. Hikers sometimes race each other up a mountain. But that\u2019s really trail-running, which is really running which, at its most competitive, is definitely a sport. Likely there are record-holders for completing various trails in the fewest number of hours or days, but neither hikers nor anyone else pays any attention to such feats.<\/p>\n
So, is hiking a sport?<\/h2>\n
Recently one of my jock-ish friends spelled out the difference between \u201creal sports\u201d and a recreation like hiking: \u201cSports take place on fields and courts and so on that are made by man; hiking is something you do way out there in nature.\u201d<\/p>\n
And hikers wouldn\u2019t have it any other way.<\/p>\n
Hike On.
\nJohn McKinney<\/p>\n
P.S. Just like any other sport, hikers have their own language. Check out my hiker’s dictionary:\u00a0