Two world wars, one world cup and the cgs final.

It has often been said, mostly by me, that, as a country, Britain sucks at sports. Lets be honest, its true, we do. Cricket is summed up by a BA add that states 'You invent a sport no one understands, and the whole world still whips you at it', the fact that we still go on about the 1966 world proves how bad we really at football (soccer for our american friends) and we always get knocked out of wimbledon well before the final.

There is however, one sport we dont appear to completey suck at, and that is e-sports. Sky two has been broadcasting the CGS (championship gaming series) finals for the last week, culminating in the world final on sunday night. The final two teams? Britains Birmingham Salvo and the San Francisco Optyk's. As you may have guessed from the title of this post, Salvo won and claimed the 2008 CGS world championship.

Unfortunatly, this wont go down in the history of Britain as one of our glowing achievements, alongside the 1966 world cup. No, this will be largely overlooked and written off as a group of over weight geeks who have nothing better to do trying to pass themselfs off as participating in sports. The simple fact of the matter is, though, that e-sports has gotten really rather big, and one of the biggest names in it, fatal1ty, even has his own range of gaming equipment. His company sponsors future e-sports stars and events, and the fact that the CGS finals were on a relatively primetime channel, albiet at 10pm, shows that e-sports has come along quite nicely in the last few years.

Is it a sport though? well yes, if clay pigeon shooting is a sport and fox hunting is a sport and even cheese rolling is a sport then gaming is definatly a sport, just because you dont have to be ultra-fit and able to run the 100m in 10 seconds flat dosent dimish the fact that natural talent, skill and alot of practice, just like 'Real' althetes, is required to get anywhere near good enough to compete on an international level.

Several years ago I went to my first football match with my brother-in-law, a huge leeds united fan. We were high up in the stands and could only see a bunch of white figures running about with this white dot. Seriously it was like watching sensible soccer, and frankly i would have had more fun playing sensi then being there. I so completely bored than when leeds scored and 10, 000 people jumped to thier feet in happiness (it was back when leeds didnt lick balls), I stayed seated and read the programme.

I was thinking about that match while I watched the CGS finals, and I was more moved, joyous and excited by that than almost any real life sporting event I have spectated, and surely that proves that gaming, our beloved hobby and billion dollar industry, has reached heights no one could have predicted. Maybe one day, the British sports person of the year could be 'Messi' the DOA 4 player that fought a tenacious 5 rounds and managed to beat his opponent. It could happen right?