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“So, is that a sport?”
My friend set down their glass and gave a light laugh.
It was not said to wound.
No running.
No jumping.
Not much sweat, either.
While I was looking for an answer, the talk drifted on to something else.
Only the question is left on the table.
In the language of the law
The preamble to Japan’s Basic Act on Sport contains a line calling sport “a culture common to all humankind throughout the world.”
It goes on to define sport as “athletic competition and other physical activities.”
Something done with the body, to compete and to enjoy.
A generous definition.
The world governing body for billiards was recognized by the International Olympic Committee in 1998.
In 2001, at the World Games held in Akita, it was played as an official sport for the first time.
There, it was classed among the “precision sports.”
Billiards sits in a box sorted not by the amount of sweat, but by accuracy.
A number: 2.5
There is an international table that compares the intensity of physical activities.
Taking quiet sitting as 1, billiards rates 2.5. The same as darts.
Archery is 4.3; curling, 4.0.
Driving a formula race car is listed at 8.5.
Going by the numbers alone, my friend had reason to laugh.
And yet research that examined the bodies of F1 drivers has turned up a somewhat surprising result.
Their endurance and physique, it says, do not particularly stand out compared with other elite athletes.
What did stand out was the strength of their necks.
From outside, all you see is someone sitting, hands on the wheel.
The load falls where no one can see.
Reading friction
An F1 tire grips the track to take a corner.
A single change in track temperature changes how it grips.
A pool ball, too, is ruled by friction and spin on the cloth.
The tip is in contact with the cue ball for roughly one to two thousandths of a second.
The spin given in that brief touch changes shape on the cloth, meets the cushion, and rebounds in yet another direction.
How a spinning ball rebounds off a cushion has been set down in equations, in a mechanical engineering paper.
On a humid day, the same stroke will not stop in the same place on the cloth.
Read the conditions, and come to terms with physics.
Perhaps the opponent is not the machine in front of you, but the friction you cannot see.
Control, to the millimeter
How far to press the throttle.
Where to come off the brake.
What decides speed is the finest adjustment of a foot.
With a cue, too, the slightest difference changes where the ball goes.
One study compared how skilled and less-skilled players stroke follow and draw shots.
In joint movement and cue speed, no large differences by skill level were found.
The difference, it reports, lay in the movement of the head.
The more skilled the player, the less the head sways forward and back in the stroke.
They use their eyes differently, too.
In an experiment where players predicted the path of a ball hidden partway through, professionals, according to one report, did not trace the invisible trajectory with their eyes, but chose to look at points on the cushion that served as cues.
The line the ball must run is drawn in the body first.
F1 drivers are often spoken of as bundles of reflexes.
Yet a study comparing racing drivers with non-racing drivers found no clear difference on a task measuring reaction speed.
What differed was how they moved their gaze through corners, and how they turned their heads.
There is also a report that the brains of elite drivers handled the same tasks efficiently, using fewer regions.
Perhaps what is fast is not the reflex, but the way of seeing.
In the end, the one who strikes
In the cockpit, the one who finally turns the wheel is you.
At the table, too, the one who finally strikes can only be you.
Every stroke, you try to send it along the same line.
It has also been reported that the more advanced the player, the more precise they are both in stroking straight and in reading angles.
That is a matter of skill, and perhaps at the same time a matter of the heart.
Whether, after a miss, you can play the next ball with the same hand.
The closing laps of a long race and the last rack of a long match probably share the same kind of stillness.
To that night’s question
If only what makes you sweat can be called sport, then pool may lie outside it.
But to meet physics with the body, to refine control down to the millimeter, to come to terms with one’s own heart —
if that can be called sport.
If F1 can be called a sport.
Then is pool not a sport as well?
That, at least, is what we believe.
The next time I am asked, I think I’ll answer like this.
“Why not play a rack first, and then decide whether it’s a sport?”
👉 See the Yokohama Billiard Hall Guide
Sources
- Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT), “Basic Act on Sport (Act No. 78 of 2011) (full text, in Japanese)” https://www.mext.go.jp/a_menu/sports/kihonhou/attach/1307658.htm
- World Confederation of Billiards Sports “About” https://wcbs.sport/about/
- International World Games Association “Billiards” https://www.theworldgames.org/sports/Billiards-43
References
- Herrmann, S. D., Willis, E. A., Ainsworth, B. E., et al. (2024). 2024 Adult Compendium of Physical Activities: A third update of the energy costs of human activities. Journal of Sport and Health Science, 13(1), 6–12. doi:10.1016/j.jshs.2023.10.010
- Tyler, C. J., Felton, L., Ferrari, A., et al. (2026). Physiological and health demands of Formula 1 motor racing: a comprehensive review with driver performance coach insight. British Journal of Sports Medicine, 60(9), 649–659. doi:10.1136/bjsports-2025-110977
- McKnight, P. J., Bennett, L. A., Malvern, J. J., & Ferguson, D. P. (2019). V̇O2peak, Body Composition, and Neck Strength of Elite Motor Racing Drivers. Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, 51(12), 2563–2569. doi:10.1249/MSS.0000000000001961
- Mathavan, S., Jackson, M. R., & Parkin, R. M. (2010). A theoretical analysis of billiard ball dynamics under cushion impacts. Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Part C, 224(9), 1863–1873. doi:10.1243/09544062JMES1964
- Pan, J. W., Komar, J., Yang, C., & Kong, P. W. (2024). Influence of expertise level on techniques of applying top and back spins in cue sports. Sports Biomechanics, 23(12), 3589–3601. doi:10.1080/14763141.2022.2148554
- Crespi, S., Robino, C., Silva, O., & de’Sperati, C. (2012). Spotting expertise in the eyes: billiards knowledge as revealed by gaze shifts in a dynamic visual prediction task. Journal of Vision, 12(11), 30. doi:10.1167/12.11.30
- van Leeuwen, P. M., de Groot, S., Happee, R., & de Winter, J. C. F. (2017). Differences between racing and non-racing drivers: A simulator study using eye-tracking. PLoS One, 12(11), e0186871. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0186871
- Bernardi, G., Ricciardi, E., Sani, L., et al. (2013). How skill expertise shapes the brain functional architecture: an fMRI study of visuo-spatial and motor processing in professional racing-car and naïve drivers. PLoS One, 8(10), e77764. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0077764
- Pan, J. W., Kong, P. W., & Komar, J. (2023). Adaptive Regulation in a Stable Performance Environment: Trial-To-Trial Consistency in Cue Sports Performance. Motor Control, 27(2), 242–257. doi:10.1123/mc.2021-0094
