Contact sport

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Tackles like this one (Women's Australian rules football) are used in contact sports including many varieties of Football.

A (full) contact sport or collision sport is a sport which includes significant physical contact between the athletes involved. Examples of contacts sports are: Rugby league, Rugby Union, American football, Ice Hockey, Australian Rules Football, Lacrosse and Amateur wrestling. Full-contact martial arts include e.g. boxing, MMA, puroresu, Muay Thai, judo, and full-contact styles of karate. Also, kick-boxing in the early seventies in the USA was born which introduced a controlled version of full contact to martial arts. Examples of non-contact sports are: Table Tennis and Badminton.

[edit] Semi-contact sport

A semi-contact sport is typically a combat sport involving striking and which contains physical contact between the combatants simulating full-power techniques. The techniques are restricted to limited power, and rendering the opponent unconscious is forbidden. Such sports usually use a point system to determine the winner and use extensive protective gear to protect the athletes from injury. Examples of semi-contact sports include Taekwondo (under ITF rules), amateur kick-boxing and various styles of Kung Fu that incorporate semi-contact rules sparring. Soccer is sometimes considered a contact sport.

[edit] Light-contact sport

A light-contact sport is sometimes distinguished from the above. In martial arts it refers then to sparring similar in style to fencing, where only touching the opponent (or, in case of hits and kicks to the head, just marking the blow) counts. Occasional or deliberate hits are counted against the hitter and may be the reason for disqualification. Light-contact combat sports include some styles of karate (e.g., shotokan).

[edit] "Contact" versus "Collision"

Current medical terminology in the United States uses the term collision sport rather than contact sport to refer to Rugby, American football, lacrosse, and ice hockey. The term contact sport is used to refer to sports, such as basketball and association football that allow limited contact. For example, the American Academy of Pediatrics issued a policy statement in 2001 entitled "Medical Conditions Affecting Sports Participation" that included the following definitions:

“	In "collision" sports (eg, boxing, ice hockey, football, and rodeo), athletes purposely hit or collide with each other or inanimate objects, including the ground, with great force. In "contact" sports (eg, basketball and soccer), athletes routinely make contact with each other or inanimate objects but usually with less force than in collision sports.	”
	— Committee on Sports Medicine and Fitness, American Academy of Pediatrics, [1]

This terminology may have evolved from a quote attributed to both Vince Lombardi and Duffy Daugherty: "Football isn't a contact sport; it's a collision sport. Dancing is a contact sport."^{[original research?]}