Some fragrances are so unpleasant that they make me wonder if their creators are clinically depressed. Burberry Sport for Men is one such item, a dry-spicy citrus fragrance with the usual woody gestures (cedar, juniper) and an overdose of ginger. I'm starting to think of ginger as the "note du jour" for pretty much every house's sport release, with the pickled approach being an obvious way to bypass the swamp-ass effect, ginger's main shortcoming. Ginger usually winds up smelling very watery and weak after a few minutes on skin, but an analog of sushi-style ginger lends the note a camphoraceous warmth and intensity that isn't easily outdone. Such is the ginger in Burberry Sport, but I'm still not impressed. This fragrance is boring.
Does it deliver as a sports frag? Yes and no. On the one hand, its grapefruit, ginger, and woods structure is coherent enough to wear through tough work-outs, and it survives sweaty skin with no problem. On the other, there's no reason to choose this over any one of the bazillion other sport scents out there, many of which are cheaper. I can think of one right off the top of my head - Sport Field by Adidas. Amazingly this ten dollar cologne possesses a better (more realistic) ginger note, a grassier evolution on skin, and a more cheerful fruit accord that waffles between pink berry and unripe banana. That's preferable to the angry, hissy grapefruit in Burberry Sport.
Another better option is Polo Sport. At least with Polo you're getting an honest-to-goodness fresh fougère with a sprightly pineapple, to pucker the lips of the staunchest Aventus lover. And there's always Aqua Quorum, which is my sport scent of choice. I have limitless respect for how well it deals with Calone in conjunction with the original Quorum's herbal-piney heart accord, which is made fresher and breezier for summer heat. I'll take all of that over Burberry Sport's indeterminate chypre-esque form and generally unpleasant astringency. I do like how the Burberry avoids the predictable trappings of heavy Calone and "aquatic" notes, but whenever I wear it, I feel like it's the sort of thing my seventy year-old commercial graphics professor would wear playing racquetball. He was smart, but lacked an anus, as does this frag. Too bad, but nice Darth Vader bottle.