summer or winter?

Earlier today I saw this tweet:

@timlovejoy: Don't get too angry with me, but is Summer sport better than Winter sport?
Case for: you do get more variety and we do win lots of stuff... Now

This got me thinking, because its an interesting question. What do I prefer and what are we best at?

Trying to split into different disciplines is difficult to start with. Football and rugby union are winter sports but they have big summer components too. Lions tours, world cups, euro championships and  then transfer window. These are possibly my personal highlights of the two sports, despite how much I enjoy them normally, with the lions to the fore. After those we have sports that are year round, but get a bit more focus during summer months. I'm thinking golf and tennis, with more majors in the summer and more coverage. And there's the reverse of football and rugby - cricket is summer but there are winter tours too..

To make it simpler I'm going to split sports this way.

Winter: football, rugby, hockey, cross country
Summer: cricket, cycling, track athletics, tennis, golf

I feel bad splitting it like this. I play hockey, and rugby us my favourite s msport to watch. But out of the sports that have components in both seasons I prefer their summer components. Winter sports, but their summer season. Tricky, and that holds for tennis and golf too.

This is before we even start talking about the big events. Olympics and commonwealth games are both summer only. Yes there are winter Olympics, but both myself and the country as a whole are much more interested in the summer version. I feel bad about that hut skiing as a sport to watch just isn't a big deal in the uk. Ski Sunday was nice to have, but didn't get the views.

However winter does have it's plus side. The football and rugby seasons have the excitement that comes with matches every week, and have the highest viewing figures because of that. Football is the national sport and with all the matches in winter it keeps people talking about what happened and what's coming for 9 months.

One factor that I've not covered yet is gender. I feel bad for the incoming stereotyping and apologise if I offend anyone. Out of the sports I listed the only ones that have decent women's coverage are athletics (both winter and summer) and tennis. And the tennis coverage is mainly in the summer. Coupled with Olympics and commenwealths being the dominant coverage for athletics, summer is a lot better for following female sport.

For me everything points to summer sport. Which I find a bit odd as I always assumed that winter sport was the main season. The things you realise when you sit and think about things!