What is Slow Sport?

Sport might seem the last place you’d want to slow down. After all, speed is an asset in everything from football to tennis to ice-hockey. Often the first sign that time is running out for an athlete is when the acceleration and reflexes start to slow. And yet the Slow philosophy is gaining ground in the world of sport.

Just look at the explosion in slower forms of training. A generation ago, exercise regimes like yoga, Tai Chi and Pilates were dismissed as flaky and even a bit wimpy. Today, you find elite athletes in the most testosterone-drenched sports bending their bodies into the lotus position. Here are just a few converts to yoga: the Miami Dolphins and New York Giants (American football); Sean Burke (ice-hockey); Orlando “El Duque” Hernandez and Barry Zito (baseball); Ryan Giggs and David James (English soccer); the national rugby teams of New Zealand and Wales. Why so many? Because slower forms of exercise like yoga work. They strengthen muscles, increase flexibility, improve balance and protect against injury. They also cultivate an inner calm or slowness that helps the athlete keep his head while all around him are losing theirs. Sports stars talk about moments of perfect calm and lucidity in the heat of battle when the game around them seems to slow down to a crawl. They call it “being in the zone.”

You can even play sports in a Slow way. The key to success in any game, as in every walk of life, is knowing how and when to change gears. What marks out the best players is that they never seem rushed; they always seem to have enough time; they know when to be fast and when to be slow. A little while ago, a famous sports columnist in Spain hailed the rise of Slow Football (ie. soccer). He wrote that in the fast-paced modern game many players barely take time to think anymore. He argued that the real artists are those who can move quickly when needed but also know when to slow down, when to put their foot on the ball, size up the angles and movement around them and then deliver the killer pass or dribble. He cited Ronaldinho, the Brazilian ace, as the high practitioner of Slow Football.

Are there other ways that the Slow philosophy can be brought to bear on the world of sports? We invite the citizens of Slow Planet to share their views.