As far as I can tell, the only way that chess is formally recognized as a sport is by the International Olympic Committee. On the one hand, that's probably the most legitimate sports body on earth, but on the other hand, these people have no linguistic qualification, and I feel as though their decisions reflect little more than what is instrumentally good for the olympics. Their criteria probably has much more to do with what drives interest for the games as a whole, fairness to the international field, the protection of the dignity of their games as a whole (as close as they're gonna come to caring about the semantic argument, but the fact that Chess is a highly revered, internationally recognized game that's as old as dirt might alone be essential to protecting the dignity of the olympic games), etc, than it has to do with calling in Doctors of Linguistics and asking their opinion on whether it satisfies the definition and use of the english word "sport."*

*But maybe looking at it that way is offering an unwarranted pretension to linguistics. I guess? I mean, surely this conversation is purely linguistic. What the hell are we talking about if we're not talking about linguistics?

Anyway, I don't support the logic of: Chess is "officially" recognized as a sport; viz. chess is a sport; viz. physical prowess is not a necessary criteria of "sport." The jump from the first premise to the second is where I take the greatest issue.