I dunno, do we think of races as having opponents? Tennis? Sure. But the 100m? They’re competitors, but not opponents?
Yes, we do. Here's an example of such usage from the Wikipedia article about the board game
Hare and Tortoise. Notice that it uses the word
opponent when speaking about characters in a German fable, not about opponents in the game itself:
In Germany, there is another fable by a similar name, Hase und Igel (Hare and hedgehog), made popular by the Brothers Grimm, in which the hedgehog wins because his wife is at the finish line, and the hare mistakes her for his race opponent.
"Hare's race opponent" has also been seen as a crossword clue, for which the answer of course is
tortoise.
Here's a quote from an article titled "10 Racing Strategies to Run Your Best" from active.com:
If there is a specific opponent you want to beat, learn his racing strengths and weaknesses.
Someone asked the question on quora.com, "How can I beat my opponent mentally in a running race?"
Clearly, it's common usage to identify contestants in a race as opponents.
Yes, all the participants are trying to perform the actions and movement of their turns as soon as possible. That's why it's a DEX check. It's about moving quickly.
Sometimes not acting first can be advantageous - you can see what the foes are doing and react with intention, rather than having to guess.
In D&D, 5th Ed., that's called taking the Ready action. You still want to take that action first so the opportunity you're waiting for doesn't pass you by.
The initiative rolls are simply to sort out what happens when, and to ensure that each participant (including the foes) gets a chance to do something each round should they so desire.
I might accept this if initiative was decided by a random roll, but it isn't. It's a DEX check, so it represents an effort to move and act quickly.
Again. It's a "contest", but not a CONTEST. The rules spell out what a contest is with regard to ability checks, and it isn't a situation where people are jockying for a place in order. It's a directly opposed check where you have one winner and one or more losers that fail completely at the attempt. For initiative to go from "contest" to CONTEST, it would have to allow only the highest person to act, and everyone else doesn't get to go. You may not agree with that, but that is what RAW says and gives for examples. When you have 10 people all vying to act in a round and all 10 get to go, they all SUCCEEDED, which contradicts the CONTEST rule that only one can succeed. It doesn't matter if that success came after another person's success, it's still a success.
You're ignoring that I said an initiative roll can be many contests. If there are only two participants in combat, there's just one contest. But if there are ten participants, there are 45 separate contests all happening simultaneously. The outcome of each contest determines which of the two involved participants goes before the other. The other participant fails to go before his/her opponent. To reiterate what I'm saying here, the participants are not contesting with each other for the ability to act. They are contesting with each other for the ability to act before the other participants when considered one at a time.
I know that Jeremy Crawford answered that initiative is not a contest, but keep in mind that it's much easier for him and the rulebooks to treat it as a special case than to explain it the way I have, especially considering his answer has to fit in a tweet.