The sport of kings, queens and aces makes its bid, but is it a bridge too far?

A competitive hand of bridge, that well-known and certainly challenging ‘mind sport’

A competitive hand of bridge, that well-known and certainly challenging ‘mind sport’ (Mario Tama)

It is arguably the most popular argument in sport – what is a sport?

On beer-mat covered tables throughout the land sit tedious men debating the same points over and over again, entirely oblivious to the fact that the pub they sat down in has been demolished around them and converted into a luxury apartment block, the Filipina maid still patiently waiting for them to leave. But they rumble on: “Formula One? Do me a favour.” “Darts? Come on.” “The marathon? You’re ’avin a laarrrrf. If the arse end of rhino can do it, it’s not a sport.”

A relief, then, that this great, unfalsifiable debate is to have its day in court, thanks to the unlikely efforts of the English Bridge Union.

You probably won’t be too shocked to learn that the nation’s sports funding body, Sport England, isn’t that keen to recognise a card game as a sport – and not even a youthful, edgy one, like shithead. Doing so would make card games eligible for Lottery money to invest in the grassroots. Roots which, we imagine, are purple.

But the Aylesbury-based – of course it’s Aylesbury-based – union is having none of it; it appears a judge agrees, and Sport England’s entire charter will be subject to judicial review.

This is an argument I happen to know well. Almost a decade ago, this nation’s pigeon-fanciers deployed all the same points the bridge people are currently making, as they battled to have their humble pastime recognised by the sporting powers that be, an injustice I bravely fought with them with all the power of my student TV journalism documentary project.

What a journey we went on. From rising at 3am to capture sunrise over the Angel of the North, only to discover most of the way back down the M62 outside Bury that we hadn’t managed to press “record”, and then on to the old Tottenham Hotspur manager Gerry Francis’s pigeon-packed back garden. He is still angry at pigeon discrimination now.

There is even some remarkable footage, when the issue was finally debated in Parliament, of the then all but unknown John Bercow, now the MPs’ Chastiser in Chief, sitting on the back benches, growling at the unfairness of it all. It’s on YouTube somewhere.

The climactic Cook Report ending, set, inexplicably, to Tchaikovsky’s “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies”, had us storm Sport England’s headquarters, scattering breadcrumbs at the doorway, demanding answers that never came.

In that case, there was much at stake. Not being granted sporting status meant that the little lofts where pigeon-fanciers stored their baskets on race day were liable for business rate tax, and they were closing in great numbers. They still are. The English Bridge Union, too, is also fighting a separate battle for tax exemptions.

Then as now, pigeons and card players, it is all quite predictably the EU’s fault. Sport England takes its definition of what is a sport from the Council of Europe’s European Sports Charter. To be a sport, an activity must “aim at improving physical fitness and well-being, forming social relationships and gaining results in competition”.

All very well, but the French acknowledge pigeon racing as a sport (so do the Chinese), and in the case of bridge, the Netherlands, Ireland and Poland are all very much in the EU, and all give the game sporting status.

More to the point, of the 149 sports on Sport England’s approved list, the physical fitness component is not exactly overwhelming. Model aircraft flying, anyone? Angling? And, yes, darts.

“You are doing more physical activity playing bridge, with all that dealing and playing, than in rifle shooting,” was the view of Mr Justice Mostyn. “There are a number of physical activities, such as running on a treadmill in a gym, which are physical recreations but not sports.”

So on what does it rest? Sport England’s lawyers made the point, and they will do again, that in bridge, or chess, someone else could make your move or lay your card for you. In rifle shooting, snooker or darts, you may not need to be physically fit, but the physical skill of the competitor is the centre of the contest.

Many a snooker player has won the Sports Personality of the Year contest, and racing car drivers too. When Lewis Hamilton won this year’s award, the verdict of the Independent on Sunday’s columnist Michael Calvin was short and to the point: “Not a sport. Not a Personality.”

Intriguingly, the International Olympic Committee recognised bridge and chess as “mind sports” some time ago. You don’t have to be too avid a watcher of the Olympic movement to know what bridge has to do to up its game.

Next year in Rio will see golf back on the agenda for the first time since 1904, and many of the richest, most over-endorsed sportsmen on the planet will be there. The ancient sport of wrestling, meanwhile, as purely Olympian as it gets, has been binned.

However long the arguments, whatever the detail, the criterion that counts above all else is cash.