Sporting means to do with games and contests, or fair in spirit. A sporting event, a sporting chance, very sporting of you.
The second sense is the interesting one: a sporting gesture is one that gives an opponent a fair chance when you were not obliged to. A sporting chance is a real one, and it comes from giving prey a start before the hunt.
1adjectivesportingTo do with games and contests, or fair in spirit.
“The Olympics is the biggest sporting event in the world.”
sporting is a quality.
Middle English
sporten
English
sport
English, today
sporting
Built from
by surface analysis, sport + -ing. sport comes from Middle English sporten, from disporten. From Middle English sporten (“to divert, disport”) and sport, spoort, sporte, apheretic shortenings of disporten and disport, disporte, from Old French desporter (“to divert, amuse, please, play; to seek amusement”), etymologically meaning "to carry away (the mind from serious matters)," from des- + porter, from Latin dis- + Latin portāre, ultimately from Latin deportāre, from de- + portāre, from Proto-Indo-European per- (“to lead, pass over”)). Replaced native laik, lake (“sport, fun, amusement”), and spile, spyl (“fun, sport, play”). More at disport. a doublet of disport and deport.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA