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And the Gold Medal for Counter-Strike Goes to?

By pete_gallagher

If curling and synchronized swimming can become Olympic sports, why can't videogames?

An article on Macleans details the battle for Olympic acceptance being helmed by Ted Owen, CEO of the Global Gaming League. Owen has already made some headway, getting the Chinese Olympic Committee to agree to feature a gaming tournament as an official welcoming event at the 2008 Beijing Olympics (though it was later cancelled).

Matt Wood, who was a pro-gamer in the short-lived Championship Gaming Series, sees similarities between gaming and more traditional sports:

It's the same skills as if you were a hockey player or a baseball player, anything like that. Mostly it's mental. You don't have a good mental game, you could be the best player, and all of a sudden you're on stage, on live TV or with cameras in your face, and if you get nervous, you're going to lose.

Ross Rebagliati, a gold medal winner in snowboarding at the 1998 Nagano Winter Olympics, disagreed:

Sport has to have some kind of physical act.

Owen's efforts to include videogames, in any form, at the upcoming Vancouver games have so far gone unrealized.

Full post as published by GamePolitics.com on January 29, 2010 (boomark / email).