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Originally Posted by dirtyrascal7
Racecar drivers require a very significant amount of physical endurance, high awareness, and intense mental calculation. Besides... their events are shown on sports channels, they have full seasons and championships, clearly definied winners and losers, teams, and rivalries.
So, if you wouldn't classify them as athletes, what exactly would you call them?
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Full disclosure - I'm an athletic snob, so treat me as a representative sample of only me.
Drivers are just that - drivers. I don't doubt that the skill requires some endurance, but give me a break. Those folks literally sit on their asses. The only reason that you don't see fat guys doing it is that they weigh more. I have no doubts that they're incredibly brave and well trained to do what they do, but driving is a learned skill that anyone can learn to do well.
By the same token, golfers aren't athletes either in my book. Golf is all about hand/eye coordination and very little strength or speed muscles.
To me, an athlete has to demonstrate at least two of the following to be eligible - endurance, stregth, speed - in an amount that physcially taxes major systems of the body.
Many baseball players (I'm looking at you John Kruk and Mark Grace) fail that test.
Finally, Jetstream's running team fails the test because there wasn't any competition. Athletes compete. I'm not sure how to define what these guys did, but they didn't compete against anyone else.