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I’m not suggesting that sports and other forms of creative expression that we claim as “art” are directly equivalent. In the same way that activists and theorists have blown the doors off high and low arts distinctions, I want to expand our definitions of creative expression. These distinctions and the bourgeois judgements that follow in their wake become murky quickly: where’s the line between rhythmic gymnastics (ostensibly sport) and ballroom dancing (art) for example? Or the sport of figure skating and art of ballet? There are minor differences that become greater with other examples (say football and sculpture), but I do think it’s useful to place all of it on a continuum of creative expression, with varying and shifting relationships to competition, and imbue all of it with relevance and potentiality.

Who and what has defined “sport” and “art” is helpful in understanding the trajectory, and that’s a conversation I am going to return to later in a little more depth, but let me just note that those are not absolute categories, and the definitions are wholly constructed. As Louis Menand writes, talking about the 2012 Summer Games: