What Is Happening in the Sports World?

By Awake! correspondent in Italy

DO THE reports on the opposite page describe the latest coup d’état in a Latin-American country or another terrorist attack somewhere on European soil? No, these and other similar reports are, as one Italian daily put it, of a “terribly ordinary day of sport.”

Sports and violence seem to go hand in hand these days. For example, many still recall the evening of May 29, 1985, when 39 people died and 200 were injured in incidents between fans before the final of the European Champions’ Cup soccer championships.

However, episodes of violence caused by participants and spectators are not restricted to just one sport, such as soccer, but they erupt in all types of sports​—baseball, boxing, hockey.

The sayings, “May the best man win” and, “It is more important to participate than to win,” have become the dinosaurs of the sports world. Why do players and spectators give vent to their baser instincts, to uncontrollable aggressiveness, at competitive sporting events? What is behind the violence in sports? And how serious is the problem?