Stop me if you've heard this one about racers as athletes ...

Every once in a while a story will pop up somewhere about how NASCAR is not a sport, or somebody looking for a little bit of attention will spout off about how race car drivers are not athletes.
It'll even come up every once in a while in a setting where people ought to know better. Last year, when I was doing a regular weekly NASCAR segment on ESPN's "Cold Pizza," a regular contributor on that show named Skip Bayless started in on the whole racers aren't athletes thing.
Bayless, and I am paraphrasing here, basically said that any competitor who doesn't have to run while competing is not an athlete. That, of course, is poppycock. By his definition, swimmers are not athletes. Neither are skiers, nor hockey players.
They don't "run" while competing, do they?
That's an arbitrary definition of what makes an athlete, and it just doesn't work. In countering that argument, I made this analogy - if a guy who plays guitar with incredible skill and talent cannot play the piano, does that mean he's not a musician?
There are many, many types of musical talent. Someone who plays the French horn in a symphony orchestra might not be able to play the fiddle for a country music band, but both of them have musical talent and ability.
Those guys in the "Blue Man Group" or the ones who wham on garbage cans in "Stomp" are immensely talented and skilled, but their performances hardly fit any classical definition of music. That doesn't make what they do any less entertaining for those who enjoy it.
I went to dictionary.com and looked up the word "sport." Here's the most pertinent meaning given there: "An activity involving physical exertion and skill that is governed by a set of rules or customs and often undertaken competitively."
Without question, driving a race car involves physical exertion and skill. And the definition of "athlete" fits, too.
"A person possessing the natural or acquired traits, such as strength, agility, and endurance, that are necessary for physical exercise or sports, especially those performed in competitive contexts."
The skills it takes to be a NASCAR driver are specific, in many cases, to the sport itself. But that's true of just about any sport. Each game requires its own level of things like hand-to-eye coordination, vision, concentration and, yes, physical ability.
A racer doesn't necessarily have to be able to run a mile or throw a baseball without looking uncoordinated, but he does need strength and agility and reflexes in various aspects of his job.
It's not the same skill set as a basketball player, but it's still a set of athletic skills.
Football fans should be able to understand this as well as anybody. That game has become so specialized at the highest levels, but even at its most basic football is a game where certain positions require certain skills.
A good offensive lineman can have quickness without having raw speed. Receivers must know how to catch, to run patterns, to improvise when a play breaks down and to block when that's what a play requires.
Does a defensive back need to know how to kick a 35-yard field goal to be a good football player? Of course not. So let's put this argument to rest, shall we?