Abstract: Competitive sports hold a significant position in the development of sports in China, and the new Sports Law dedicates a chapter to competitive sports. In the comprehensive revision of the “Sports Law”, there are many highlights in the competitive sports section, reflecting the democracy and science of legislation, and the progress in legislation is evident. The whole-nation system of competitive sports under the planned system and professional sports under the market economy, the protection of athletes’ rights, and the cultivation of reserve talents for competitive sports are intertwined and form the basic framework of the “competitive sports” chapter, and they are also the main issues and the objects of institutional evaluation in this paper. During the revision process, multiple versions of legal text suggestions were proposed, and the two revision texts proposed by the national sports administration department and the major project teams of the National Social Science Fund are undoubtedly authoritative and representative. Taking these two revision texts as the basis for a comparative study of the old and the new version of Sports Law, this paper aims to define the main issues related to the revision of “competitive sports”, analyze the transformation of related policies and the construction of legal systems, and evaluate the legislative progress in the new Sports Law through examining the reform of the competitive sports system, the development of professional sports, the protection of athletes’ rights, and the cultivation of reserve talents.

Key words: Sports Law, competitive sports, professional sports, athletes’ rights, reserve talent cultivation