Who was the better athlete? Which was the better team?

Often, there is disagreement about who is the better athlete, or the better team. The aim of this paper is to clarify a recent disagreement between the author (Mika Hämäläinen) and Arvi Pakaslahti about different views of ‘betterness’ in sport competitions. I introduced a ‘three criteria’ model of b...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Mika Hämäläinen
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Karolinum Press 2016-09-01
Series:Acta Universitatis Carolinae: Kinanthropologica
Subjects:
Online Access:http://www.karolinum.cz/doi/10.14712/23366052.2016.1
Description
Summary:Often, there is disagreement about who is the better athlete, or the better team. The aim of this paper is to clarify a recent disagreement between the author (Mika Hämäläinen) and Arvi Pakaslahti about different views of ‘betterness’ in sport competitions. I introduced a ‘three criteria’ model of betterness, which suggested the following three criteria: the official result, the ideally adjudicated result and the display of athletic skills. Pakaslahti criticised my account and introduced his own model, which has two built-in ideals of sport competitions: the Athletic Superiority Ideal and the Just Results Ideal. I argue that when we look behind the terminological differences, there is surprisingly little genuine disagreement between my account and Pakaslahti’s.
ISSN:1212-1428
2336-6052