Sportaccord

Hey guys. Right tonight i was looking into Darts on wikipedia, looking at the history and so on of the sport. Now some of you may know that the sport split about 20 years ago in the uk, and i thought about the proposed team split in F1 not so long ago.

So i looked into how you can come to be the governing body of a sport. As Football has FIFA, F1 has the FIA and so on. I wondered who actually says to them that they are the official governing body of a particular sport, and thus can decide upon official sports World Championships and so on. It turns out its a body called SportAccord which is the international federation union. Below is a link to its site, where you can view all 108 of its members. Some are obvious such as Footballs FIFA, Automobiles FIA. But some are alot less obvious such as a board game called "GO" or DragonBoats. Theres even a lifesaving federation!

http://www.sportaccord.com/en/members/

Now its obvious now i would like to start a discussion about wether we should put the FRA forward for this. So i will say why i think we should.

Firstly, alot of people who i tell that i say do this as a Sport argue that its not. I then make the argument is chess a sport, are esports a sport. The answer is of course they are, they are mind sports. It would just generally be nice to have our sport actually recognised as a sport. And according to SportAccord these are the requirements for a sport.

The sport proposed should include an element of competition.
The sport should not rely on any element of “luck” specifically integrated into the sport.
The sport should not be judged to pose an undue risk to the health and safety of its athletes or participants.
The sport proposed should in no way be harmful to any living creature.
The sport should not rely on equipment that is provided by a single supplier.

Now as you may have seen in India, there was a clear breach of that 3rd rule. In the aftermath many people have lended their help, knowledge and expertise to India to help fix this for next year. However what happens if someone in China gets killed next year? Do we offer these services again to the individual country? Do we have to wait for people to get seriously injured before we act on an individual basis? A problem can be that if i wanted to start up fighting in (lets say) Japan. i as an inexperienced roboteer, need to form up rules and regulations.
Our resources are of course available to anyone, but is someone from Japan likely to read them? Whereas if the FRA was the official international regulating body, it could help raise awareness for the sport and to promote the safety of the sport. This is of course a key part of the FRA's constitution.

SportAccord gives certain powers, such as "the International Federation is recognised as the official governing body of a sport and will be considered the authority on all matters concerning its sport." This means the rules of the FRA will be a international standard. National Associations could also be formed, and work together to making the sport better as a whole.

There is of course one problem, and that is that in order to achieve this status the FRA will need to be the sole international representative of the sport. In europe this is undoubted, and whilst i know the american rules are based upon FRA rules, i honestly dont know enough about the US to say the situation.

So what does everyone think about this idea? I realise its a big idea, but if it works it could pay off hugely for the sport. Making an international standard which can help to ensure cases like inida does not happen again, and if it does the competitors themselves could turn to the FRA to help their regions problems.

Last thing ill post is this, its the recognition factsheet.

http://www.sportaccord.com/multimedi...ecognition.pdf

"In europe this is undoubted, and whilst i know the american rules are based upon FRA rules, i honestly dont know enough about the US to say the situation. "

Incorrect. The American rules are based on the RFL rule set, as well as the Australian, and Brazilian, and probably others. Although they are similar, there are differences, including weight classes (12lb vs 6kg was never unified). Also removable links vs switches. The use of fuses (only FRA). Flamethrowers. The arena standards (the American RoboGames heavy weight spinner arena didn't meet FRA specifications but safely ran heavyweight spinners for 8 years). You will need to get the world wide rule set unified before you can do anything else.

Good luck convincing half the world the one rule set is correct and the other isn't.

The only real difference in the rules is the paperwork and some small safety issues that follow from that paperwork.

ok, allow the use of whyachi switches in the FRA or convice the RFL guys that they should use removable links instead. Interesting to see the internet fighting over that.
Do you remember trying to convince the americans that switching Hobbyweights from 12lb to 6kg was only a small difference? And vice versa? Rememeber how it didn't happen?
The idea of a unified governing body for the entire world is that there is also a unified set of rules. That would require getting one or both of the governing bodies to change their own rules to comply with the other. It was tried before and the only thing that happened was featherweights in the FRA and Australia increased weight. (We had RFL rules but FRA weights, now we are entirely RFL)

You're right, the "ruling bodies" won't agree.

But in the same time, Sewer Snake came over to the UK and competed with succes.
Nick is planning to come to the UK, and is adapting his machine to the local rules.
Some UK machines did compete in battlebots.

How is that possible?

Out of interest- what is Nick's machine?

A fairly massive eggbeater with brushless and titanium everything! Latest page on his build thread here: http://robowars.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=74&start=4890

The latest build starts around page 322. But it's worth reading the entire thread from the beginning. Fantastic stuff.

edit: sorry for off topic...