Clarification: The Olympic Games Do Not Confer Taxonomical Status
SHOATS has received a significant volume of correspondence regarding Breakdancing’s inclusion in the Paris 2024 Olympic programme and its subsequent removal from the Los Angeles 2028 programme, with many correspondents asking whether these events alter Breakdancing’s taxonomical status or accelerate its assessment for BOARS inclusion.
They do not. Olympic inclusion is not a taxonomical instrument. The International Olympic Committee does not possess the authority to classify, elevate, or confer legitimacy upon any sport under the BOARS framework. The IOC’s criteria for inclusion (which appear to involve a combination of television audience projections, geopolitical considerations, and what a senior IOC official once described to the media as “vibes”) bear no relationship to the mechanical analysis that governs BOARS classification.
Breakdancing has not been assessed for BOARS inclusion. This is not because it was admitted to or removed from the Olympics. It is because no formal submission has been received through the appropriate channel. SHOATS operates on its own schedule, which is not synchronised with the four-year Olympic cycle, the preferences of broadcasters, or the cultural moment.
On Whether Esports Constitute Sport Under the BOARS Framework
The Board has received, at last count, four hundred and twelve separate requests to rule on the taxonomical status of esports. The Board has read every submission. The Board wishes it had not. Nevertheless, the Board has a duty to adjudicate, and so it shall attempt to do so.
The threshold question is whether a digital object can satisfy the BOARS definition of a "contested object." Under Principle 1.1, a contested object must be "a discrete physical entity that exists independently of the participants and whose state or position is altered through athletic action." A digital ball in a video game does not exist independently of the participants. It does not, in fact, exist. It is a pattern of electrical signals rendered as light. The Board acknowledges that this is also, in a certain reductive sense, what all objects are. This is the problem.
The Board convened an emergency session with two physicists from the Australian National University, who were asked to confirm that physical objects are "real" in a way that digital objects are not. The physicists were unable to provide this confirmation. One of them used the phrase "it depends on what you mean by real" and the other mentioned wave-particle duality. The session was adjourned after forty minutes when Board Chair Edwina Calstock declared that she "did not come here to have an ontological crisis on a Tuesday."
The Board has therefore resolved to defer this matter indefinitely, pending satisfactory resolution of what the Board is calling "the Consciousness Question," namely: at what point does a simulated object acquire sufficient reality to be contested? The Board does not expect this question to be answered in its lifetime and is, on balance, comfortable with that.
Petition for Recognition of Competitive Eating as a Parent Sport
The Board has received a petition from the International Federation of Competitive Eating (IFOCE) requesting that Competitive Eating be recognised as a Parent Sport under the BOARS framework. The petition, which arrived in a grease-stained envelope and was accompanied by a complimentary packet of hot dog buns, argues that Competitive Eating satisfies the core definition of sport: "a structured physical contest involving a contested object, governed by rules, and producing a measurable outcome."
The Board has given this petition serious consideration, as it is obligated to do under SHOATS Operating Procedure 12(b), and has identified a fundamental taxonomical impossibility. In all recognised sports, the contested object is distinct from the objective. In Football, the ball (object) is placed in the goal (objective). In Golf, the ball (object) is placed in the hole (objective). In Competitive Eating, the hot dog is the object, but the objective is also the hot dog. The hot dog is contested only in the sense that it is being destroyed. Once consumed, it ceases to exist as an object, at which point the contest has no object, at which point it is not a sport.
The Board considered whether the stomach might serve as a distinct objective (i.e., the goal into which the object is placed), but this interpretation was rejected on the grounds that it would require the Board to classify all eating as sport, which would have catastrophic implications for the taxonomy and, frankly, for the Board's credibility. The petition is denied. The hot dog buns have been disposed of in accordance with SHOATS biohazard protocols.
Emergency Motion for Reclassification of Cricket from Ping Pong (Parent Sport IV) to Golf (Parent Sport III)
The Board has received and reviewed the emergency motion filed by the International Cricket Council (ICC), hereafter referred to as "the Appellants," requesting the immediate reclassification of Cricket from its current taxonomical position as a Tier 2 Derivative of Ping Pong to a Tier 2 Derivative of Golf. The Appellants contend that Cricket is fundamentally a projective sport, citing the batsman's primary objective of striking a ball into open space, the fielding team's largely non-reciprocal positioning, and what the Appellants describe as "the obvious vibes of the thing."
The Board acknowledges that Cricket does involve a projective action (batting) and that the batsman does indeed strike a ball with considerable force, often into regions of the field where nobody is standing. However, the Board must direct the Appellants' attention to BOARS Principle 7.2(a): "A sport is reciprocal if any participant is required, at any point during regulation play, to return, deflect, or otherwise redirect a contested object toward or past an opponent." The bowler delivers the ball. The batsman strikes it. The fielders retrieve it. The bowler delivers it again. This is a reciprocal exchange. The bat makes it reciprocal. The bat has always made it reciprocal. The Appellants are invited to re-read Principle 7.2(a) as many times as is necessary.
The Board further notes that the Appellants' submission contained the phrase "but it just feels more like Golf" on four separate occasions. The Board reminds all parties that taxonomical classification is not a matter of feeling. It is a matter of structure. Feelings are for sports psychologists and the unclassified.
Amendment v2.3: Removal of Dressage from the Official Taxonomy
Pursuant to the Horse Sovereignty Ruling (SHOATS-COM-038), the Board has undertaken a comprehensive review of all sports affected by the reclassification of riders as equipment. Most mounted sports survive the reclassification without structural difficulty (in Polo, the horse-athlete wields the rider-equipment who wields the mallet-equipment, which is taxonomically unusual but not impermissible).
Dressage, however, presents an irreconcilable problem. Under the new framework, Dressage is a sport in which the athlete (the horse) is judged on the aesthetics of its own movement while being directed by a piece of equipment (the rider). This is structurally equivalent to a paintbrush being judged on the quality of a painting while the painter is classified as part of the easel. The Board spent several sessions attempting to resolve this paradox and has concluded that it cannot be resolved without either (a) reversing the Horse Sovereignty Ruling, which the Board is unwilling to do, or (b) reclassifying Dressage as "a horse being decorated," which the Board concedes is closer to millinery than sport.
Dressage is therefore removed from the Official Taxonomy effective 1 January 2024. Practitioners of Dressage are encouraged to contact the Australian Taxonomical Standards body for Performing Arts (ATSPA), which has indicated a provisional willingness to accept Dressage as a subcategory of Contemporary Dance, pending the horse's completion of a satisfactory audition.
On the Taxonomical Status of the Rider in Polo and All Mounted Sports (The Horse Sovereignty Ruling)
Following eighteen months of deliberation, fourteen expert depositions, and one regrettable incident at the Board's site visit to the Flemington Racecourse (see sealed record SHOATS-INCIDENT-009), the Board is prepared to deliver its ruling on the question of athletic primacy in mounted sports.
The question before the Board was simple: in Polo, who is the athlete — the rider or the horse? The Board applied the Standard Athletic Capacity Test (BOARS Appendix C), which assesses locomotive autonomy, contested-object engagement, and the capacity for independent tactical decision-making. The horse satisfies all three criteria. It moves of its own volition. It positions itself relative to the ball and to other horses with evident spatial intelligence. It makes tactical decisions in real time, many of which the rider merely ratifies after the fact.
The rider, by contrast, satisfies only the contested-object engagement criterion (the mallet). The rider does not move independently; the rider is moved. The rider does not determine positioning; the rider requests positioning, which the horse may or may not grant. Under BOARS Principle 4.1(c), "An entity that is transported by the athlete and whose removal would not prevent the continuation of the sport is classified as equipment." The Board acknowledges that removal of the rider would technically prevent Polo from continuing in its current form, but submits that this is a limitation of the horse's anatomy (no thumbs) rather than evidence of the rider's athletic status.
Correction to Fig. 2 — Schematic Diagram of Hockey (Rat-Pushing Variant)
It has been brought to the Board's attention that Fig. 2 of the Official Taxonomy, in its depiction of the ancestral variant "Tavern Rat-Pushing," contains an annotation describing the rat as "willing." The Board wishes to correct the record. The rat was not willing. At no point in the documented history of Tavern Rat-Pushing has any rat been demonstrated to be a willing participant.
The error originated in a 2022 draft prepared by then-Junior Taxonomist R. Hensley, who has since been reassigned to the Disputed Descendants division. Hensley's original annotation read "willing (presumed)," which was shortened during typesetting to "willing" without the parenthetical, thereby transforming a dubious speculation into a stated fact. The Board regrets this oversight and acknowledges that it may have caused distress to rat advocacy groups, several of whom have written to the Board in terms the Board would describe as "forceful."
The corrected annotation now reads: "unwilling (confirmed)." The Board further notes that the willingness or unwillingness of the rat has no bearing on the taxonomical classification of Hockey or its ancestral variants. The rat's emotional state is not a classifying criterion under BOARS and never has been, regardless of what Hensley may have implied in his since-retracted conference paper "Towards a Consent-Based Framework for Object Classification in Stick Sports."