Light permitting, you could photograph sports with a high speed shutter and get razor sharp images; but with no sense of movement. So the trick is to reduce the shutter speed so the photo shows some motion blur, but not so slow that all you get is shaky hands blur.
When shooting polo I find 1/640th second gives sharp images, with some blurring in the hoof area to confirm that the horses are not just frozen in mid-air. As the day wears on and the light fades, I reduce the shutter speed and hope for some extra action blur, but without Spike shaky hand blur. Success is limited.
But this one worked quite well. Light was crap and the colours were faded, so black and white was the answer.
Canon 1D with 300mm lens, 1/200th second