Talk:Sport in the United Kingdom

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Could American readers please note that the first two words are correct in British English and should not be changed to "Sports play". Thank you. Philip 02:04, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

should this include greyhound racing, and possibly bloodsports?


 * To be honest I'd not count either as a sport. One is just organised crulety and the other simply lottery balls on four legs (but I'd say that about horseracing too). Probably not a very NPOV justification for not including them though.....Grinner 09:40, Mar 2, 2005 (UTC)
 * Not greyhound racing. It isn't a list of every minor sport that is practised in the UK, but a survey in which coverage is intended to be roughly proportionate to the signficance of the sports in the UK scene. Greyhound racing is almost invisible in the media unless you go looking for it. Horeseracing involves human athletes and is mainstream. Bloodsports aren't competitive sports like the others, and don't belong here imo. Wincoote 11:36, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Table of sports popularity is not cited - and looks very dodgy.
Interested In Association football TV viewing = 90% - unlikely. Millions have no interest. Participating	= 65.5%	- even less likely. (The FA say 20% of adults, sport England say 1.9 million)

In fact, the dept of media, culture and sport survey shows that only 6.8% of people play football. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.148.220.87 (talk) 18:39, 27 September 2016 (UTC)

So where do these numbers come from? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.148.220.87 (talk) 18:35, 27 September 2016 (UTC)

What is the correct name of the UK's Olympic team?
Is the UK's Olympic team "Great Britain" or "Great Britain and Northern Ireland"?

see Cfd discussion: Categories_for_deletion --Mais oui! 22:06, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

Damon Hill
The article Damon Hill is a current Featured Article Candidate. It's not generating a great amount of discussion, so if you have an interest in UK sports biography or UK motorsport, why not comment on it's suitability?

Speedway in the United Kingdom
I'm trying to figure out where to place Speedway in this in the article, it's a professional sport with 3 British leagues and a World Cup team as well as the Grand Prix of Great Britain for individuals. But is it minor or major? What would qualify a sport as either? - Foxhill 11:51, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
 * American football, basketball and winter sports are described as 'minor' in the article. What are the criteria used to determine whether a sport is 'minor' or 'major'? - BobKilcoyne (talk) 22:13, 15 August 2020 (UTC)

Formula One Section
I know that it's recent and everyone loves him, but the F1 section is listing Brittish Racing Drivers who have won the World Championship, so Lewis Hamilton doesn't deserve a place in the section as it is: he didn't win the championship. If someone thinks he "should be noted" for coming second, it should be in a different part of the Formula One section, with other drives that won second place eg. David Coultard or Stirling Moss (a.k.a. 'The Greatest Driver never to win a Championship') etc., both of whom came close seconds multiple times and Moss recently was awarded a Medal from the FIA for outstanding contribution to F1. Otherwise, he could simply be listed as a current driver.

So I have no objection to him being listed in a different part of the section with other British drivers, who, at least I feel, are more worthy of mention then him. But he is not a World Champion yet so it's unfair to all the others to list him in there without having won it. If he wins this year then he can be added. TJ 13:37 UTC 09/06/08

Folk sports ?
Can some editors here take a look at British folk sports and see if it needs to be retained, renamed, and/or if the topic needs to be covered here ? Abecedare (talk) 02:25, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

fishing
Why is fishing not included as it is the UKs largest participation sport ? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.3.252.8 (talk) 20:45, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

Tables
on the page for major league sports teams in the United States and Canada, there are tables for the major league's teams and cities why is there not one for the UK?--99.101.160.159 (talk) 13:43, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

British vs. English, Scottish, Welsh, etc.
Hi. I'm an American editor cleaning up Olympic swimmer articles and adding the standardized Template:Infobox swimmer to them. For UK Olympians, they have always competed under the Great Britain umbrella; later UK swimmers who participated in the Empire or Commonwealth Games also competed for the UK constituent nations. That's easy enough to follow for purposes of medals tables, etc. My question is how do we categorize them in these three scenarios:

1. UK swimmer who competed in the Olympics as a Briton, and never competed in the Empire/Commonwealth Games?

2. UK swimmer who competed in the Olympics as a Briton, and competed in the Empire/Commonwealth Games as an English, Scottish, Welsh or Northern Irish athlete?

3. UK swimmer who never competed in the Olympics or other international competition as a Briton, but did compete in the Empire/Commonwealth Games as an English, Scottish, Welsh or Northern Irish athlete?

We have categories for British (70), English (217), Scottish (44) and Welsh (19) swimmers:. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to the break out in many instances. Guidance, please? Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 20:16, 29 December 2014 (UTC)
 * In the example swimmers case, my usual format is to categorise the person by all their relevant top level national and sub-top-level-national identities, regardless of how they have competed internationally. This logic follows the assumption that (a) categorisation by top level nationality (British here) is standard, and (b) identity does not require representation – we do not require that for Category:Chinese swimmers, nor Category:Swimmers from Liaoning. In essence, my argument is that the four constituent countries can be treated like any other geographical categorisation. I expressly oppose diffusion from, say, British-->English. A person's (sub-)nationalities do not replace their being British. All British people should be categorised as so. SFB 23:00, 29 December 2014 (UTC)
 * So, you're suggesting I add both British and English (or Scottish or Welsh) swimmer categories? FYI, there are apparently no British Olympic swimmers from Northern Ireland (or at least no one has created a category for them).  Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 23:59, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

External links modified
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Popularity Table
What is the source of this data? And what are the percentages of? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.234.133.113 (talk) 01:36, 17 May 2016 (UTC)


 * At least one comment in the page history indicates that some of the values are taken from SportEngland participation data - which is clearly insufficient to cover the whole of the UK as this article should do. But some of the values are clear vandalism / spurious data. --David Edgar (talk) 11:08, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

Bowls & Wrestling
I'm suprised there isn't more sports registered on the list of sports in the UK. Despite bowls being present in the the opening paragraph to the article, there are only three other mentions on the page; and it isn't listed in the sports section at all, despite there being bowls played in most village halls (Short Mat Bowls); and bowls arenas across the United Kingdom (including long mat "lawn bowls", indoor bowls and crown green). There are so many different codes to the game, it may be easy to overlook; but the sheer amount of places that exist to play it are overwhelming. It also only has one mention of Olympic success in Curling; despite being a very successful event; and rather more popular in Scotland.

There is also zero mentions of Wrestling. That being the professional variety (With notable pro wrestlers such as British Bulldog, Dave Finlay, William Regal); or the grecko-roman style of wrestling which was common around the 1900s throughout the UK.

Just a thought. There should be a lot more sports covered in this article. Lee Vilenski(talk) 15:40, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

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Figure skating
No mention of figure skating? Despite the success of Torvill and Dean as the greatest figure skaters of all time? John Curry? Robin Cousins? Fridasharmonizer (talk) 22:34, 7 July 2019 (UTC)

Invention of tennis
The lede states that Britain invented tennis. This is misleading and should be qualified to distinguish modern lawn tennis from the original French game - where even the name and terms like ‘luv’ derive from. Would be fairer to say baseball was invented in England, even though the modern sport was redefined in the US, rather than tennis. Harsimaja (talk) 21:32, 9 August 2019 (UTC)


 * This was in the lede of the article, stunningly POV and ignorant... "The UK has given birth to a large majority of the team sports, including association football, badminton, billiards, bowls, boxing, British baseball, rounders, cricket, croquet, curling, darts, golf, fives, field hockey, netball, rugby (union and league), tennis, table tennis, snooker, Motorcycle Speedway, squash, water polo, and shinty. Moreover, the standardisation of various sports, such as in rowing, dancesports, and motorsports occurred in the United Kingdom." So, UK sports came from the UK, except for when they didn't. And team snooker, team darts, team table tennis? Misleading. - Demokra (talk) 23:41, 20 April 2022 (UTC)