Fast Max shutter speed: 1/4000s Sigma DP1's 1/4000s shutter speed is fast enough to freeze any almost all sports action and is also helpful when you use a fast lens at largest aperture under bright sunlight.
Manual Exposure Mode Even though modern digital cameras features advanced algorithms to calculate the right exposure, they still may fail some difficult conditions. Manual exposure mode in these conditions helps a lot in order to achieve correct and consistent exposure.
Manual Focus Mode Compact cameras are not great at focusing moving objects especially at low light and your camera may not even fire bacause of not locking the focus, so manual focus mode is very useful at these times.
External Flash Shoe When shooting indoor sports or outdoor sports at low light, an external flash may become very helpful.
RAW shooting capability RAW files contains much more color information compared to JPEGs, and gives you more room for post processing without significant quality loss. They provide wider dynamic range and option to recover shadow and highlight clipping to some degree.
Environmental Sealings Most outdoor sports games are held in all-weather, so your camera has to be ready for difficult conditions such as rain and snow. Exposure to dust and water splashes are also very common in sports.
Focus Points In sports photography , you keep continuous autofocus (AFC) mode on for tracking the subject and more focus means better tracking.
Not so good Ergonomics&Handling Sigma DP1\s compact body is not very ideal for sports photography as it lacks the external dials and knobs to change the camera settings fast and the ergonomics doesn't help you to have the most stable shooting position.
No Built-in Viewfinder In the lack of a a viewfinder, holding the camera away from the body while using live view is not very stable, especial with heavy camera bodies and lenses. Besides, LCD screens are very hard to read under bright sunlight.
No Image Stabilization Lack of Image stabilization may result in blurry photos especially at long focal lengths.
28 mm Tele Lens 28 mm reach will not be adequate in many sports events.