Gamers being recognized as pro athletes?

Athlete. Lets look at this definition really quickly.

Dictionary.com definition

Athlete - a person trained or gifted in exercises or contests involving physical agility, stamina, or strength; a participant in a sport, exercise, or game requiring physical skill. 

Now the British definition on Dictionary.com

Athlete - a person trained to compete in sports or exercises involving physical strength, speed, or endurance

Now just by taking a quick glance at this term, one wouldn't think that a "Gamer" or the so called "Pro Gamers" would not be considered Athletes by these standards. I tend to disagree with this though just by a little bit. Generally a pro gamer would not fit all of the criteria to be called an athlete but lets take a look at these requirements.

Physical Strength? This one can be kind of tricky as I cannot think of any electronic games out in the verse that would be used in the Major League Gaming circuit or even in the Electronic Sports circuit. There might be but I have yet to come across one. So I am going to say no on this until one surfaces.

Speed and Agility? Now we are getting somewhere. Now when you think of speed you might think of Usain Bolt. This talented individual is what one would call the pinnacle of Speed and Agility within his respected right. Now if you have ever seen a gaming controller or even a mouse and keyboard in front of a Pro Gamer, you will immediately know what kind of speed their hands and figures are capable of. Just go here and see what I mean. This video is about something called APM or Actions Per Minute and as the name states, this is how many actions a person can do in one minute in games such StarCraft and StarCraft 2. This might not sound like an impressive feat but take this into consideration. On average, a beginner in the Real Time Strategy gaming world may have an average of 40 to 50 APM. When you look at a pro gamer, their APM is generally quadrupled to that of a beginner with an APM pushing 300 plus. One individual, Park Soon-Jung has been noted to have a record of 818 APM. Now this does not necessarily indicate skill in the game but if one does have skill and speed together, then the odds of winning are definitely in your favor.

Endurance? Now this is also pretty interesting. Endurance is the ability to remain active for long periods of time and help recover from fatigue. Now this could be anything from being able to lift 50 pound boxes all day for 8 hours to being able to workout for an hour and not break a sweat. Now there is no debating that an all star quarter back is going to have a decent threshold for fatigue but at the same time how long are they able to remain active? This is debatable. Now coming to pro gamers. Their endurance is much different than a quarter back would be. Most if not all of their fatigue will be generated through their fingers, hands and possibly their arms. Let's try out a test. Just take the hand that you use the most and wiggle your fingers up and down for as long as you can and count that. I can last about 45 seconds before my fingers try to lock up on me. Now these pro gamers are either typing or clicking buttons on a much faster scale than more than likely you or I can manage and they aren't stopping for however long their rounds or matches last. I know that a typical League of Legends match can be anywhere from 20-50 minutes. Give or take who's been feeding the other team...sorry about that guys. Now trying and keep that up for 20 to 50 minutes over the  course of three games. Might be a little difficult.

Now we have one more thing to tackle. A sport, exercise or game that requires physical skill. This can be a little dicey. Now we have two types of sports to deal with. Regular sports and then electronic sports. Now sports in general have been around since as early as 2000 B.C. by some accounts were as electronic gaming has become a fairly new phenomenon with the earliest accounts coming in around the early 1970's. I am not going to lie that this topic is very controversial as I am pretty sure that their are many people out there who would not consider electronic gaming a sport at all and then their are the pro gamers and the people that watch their streams frequently would argue that they are. Many other things are considered sports like NASCAR and Chess so it would seem prudent to nominate electronic gaming to be next in line to become a sport in the eyes of the world. Let's look at it this though. A toucan isn't tomato soup and tomato soup isn't a toucan. Pro gamers are not pro athletes and pro athletes are not pro gamers. They are in two separate classes of sport and that is what divides them and so far keeps them divided. Now when someone invents a virtual reality simulator that allows us to physically run through the lanes of League of Legends and allows us to instantly become a war hero with an eye for detail in Call of Duty or a marine slicing Protoss gutting Zerg Queen and allows this to be played in a tournament were the players pour everything they have into that one match, then I think that pro gamers could and would be considered "Pro Athletes."  Now I am going to grab some popcorn and wait.