There is an ongoing debate over whether or not angling can be classed as a sport, with critics stating that angling is simply a matter of luck and lacks enough physical exertion to be considered a genuine sport. Many anglers will disagree with this and say that the skill, physical effort, tactics and techniques required to be a successful angler mean that fishing is very much a sport. In 2016 attempts were made to end this debate once and for all when the Confederation Internationale de la Peche Sportive (International Confederation of Sport Fishing), the world federation for angling, made a bid for angling to be included as an official sport at the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo. This led to a considerable amount of media attention and renewed the debate over whether or not angling could be classed as a sport.
Bid for Olympic Status
News that attempts were being made to make angling part of the 2020 Olympics came to light in October 2016 when Ferenc Szalay, the president of the Confederation Internationale de la Peche Sportive, announced that he was officially launching the campaign to get angling recognised as an Olympic sport. With the Confederation Internationale de la Peche Sportive representing fifty million anglers in more than seventy countries, he stated that angling had the popularity to gain Olympic status and that angling’s “ancient and fair competition system” matches Olympic ideals. Any fishing which did take place at the Olympics would be carried out on a catch-and-release basis and all fish caught would be returned to the water unharmed. The BBC, however, reported that critics claimed that angling relied too much on luck, was too complicated for non-anglers to understand and would be boring for TV audiences. Angling was only one of a number of new sports seeking Olympic status with snooker, bridge, surfing, chess, netball, karate and climbing all submitting bids for the 2020 games.
Unfortunately, Szalay was unsuccessful in getting angling featured at the 2020 Olympic Games. On 9th June 2017, the official programme for the 2020 Summer Olympics was approved by the International Olympic Committee executive board. Sports such as baseball, surfing, karate and climbing were accepted but the others, including angling, failed to gain Olympic status.
Angling at the 1900 Olympic Games
Angling has once been featured at the Olympics. This was at the 1900 Summer Games in Paris, and although many of the details of exactly what happened have been lost over time, several results and images of angling as an Olympic sport have survived. The 1900 Olympics were part of the World Fair – a large international exhibition which was held to showcase the achievements of the nation where it took place. The 1900 Summer Olympics took place over five months from May to October and a huge number of sports and events were featured at the games. These included sports that are still mainstays of the Olympics today such as rowing, football, shooting, athletics, swimming and gymnastics although a wide range of events and sports that seem very unusual by today’s standards were featured in the 1900 games. These included:
- Cannon shooting
- Life-saving
- Underwater swimming
- Tug of war
- Ballooning
- Obstacle course swimming
- Basque pelota
- Fire fighting
- Pigeon racing
- Motorsport
While this list may seem strange compared to the events featured at the modern Olympic Games it is important to note that in 1900 the International Olympic Committee (which had only been founded six years earlier) did not make any distinction between which sports had Olympic status and which did not in 1900. Contemporary classifications that state there were nineteen official Olympic sports at the 1900 games (and everything else was unofficial or only had demonstration status) have been applied retrospectively. At the Olympics in 1900, there was simply no distinction between which sports and events had Olympic status and which did not.
Angling at the 1900 Olympic Games took place between Sunday 5th and Wednesday 8th of August on a stretch of the River Seine. Around 600 anglers from six nations are believed to have entered the event, with competitors being between French anglers and foreigners (possibly because local knowledge would have given the French anglers an unfair advantage against people who were fishing in the area for the first time). Several qualifying rounds of around one hundred anglers took place, with sixty anglers being selected for the final.
The exact details of who was eventually crowned Olympic champion are unknown. This may be because the organisers of the games used the names of the fishing clubs and societies which the winners represented, rather than their actual names. Indeed, it is unclear what species of fish the anglers were targeting or whether they were aiming to catch the largest fish, the most fish or both. Furthermore, information on the types of rods, reels and bait used by anglers at the Paris 1900 games does not seem to have survived to the present day. Some reports state that an angler named Élie Lesueur was awarded the gold medal, although this cannot be verified.
The Future of Angling at the Olympics
Angling did not feature at the Olympic Games in Tokyo 2020 (which were held in 2021 due to the coronavirus crisis) or in the 2024 Olympics, which were again held in Paris. The 2028 Summer Olympics which will take place in Los Angeles offers more hope. America has a strong culture of competitive fishing for species such as bass, with support strong enough for competitors to be full-time professionals and tournaments attracting considerable levels of public attention and corporate sponsorship. Against this backdrop, angling has its best chance of regaining its Olympic status, and once and for all ending the debate about whether or not angling is a sport.