A1 Refereed original research article in a scientific journal
Who was the better athlete? Which was the better team?
Authors: Mika Hämäläinen
Publisher: Nakladatelstvi Karolinum
Publication year: 2016
Journal: Acta Universitatis Carolinae: Kinanthropologica
Volume: 52
Issue: 1
First page : 5
Last page: 14
DOI: https://doi.org/10.14712/23366052.2016.1(external)
Web address : http://dx.doi.org/10.14712/23366052.2016.1(external)
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.
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