Sporting Sounds

This chapter considers some of the ways that sound forms an important aspect of sport by paying attention to how the senses play roles in performance and consumption – a range of topics that is almost always taken for granted, if not actively ignored, throughout sport studies. Nevertheless, a casual perusal of sport makes it abundantly clear that even the simple act of spectating at a local sporting contest encompasses more of the sensorium than “watching sport”. The auditory is a crucial element of any sporting experience. From the distinctive syncopated pattern of a table tennis rally to the visceral grunt of the front rows locking horns in a rugby scrum, the experience of playing and watching sport is made up of a number of unique soundscapes. A soundscape is a distinct form of “auditory weather” that contributes overall to each unique sporting experience. As the acoustical environment changes, sometimes dramatically and suddenly, in a sports event, it drastically affects the overall experience and atmosphere. Thus it behoves us to push for the development of an acoustemology (Feld 1996) along the lines of meteorology, a scientific approach that explicitly addresses how “sound is central to making sense, to knowing, to experiential truth” in sporting environments.