The phrase "start a competition" is correct and usable in written English.
You could use the phrase in a variety of contexts, such as when you are proposing new ideas for a project or school activity. For example: "I think it would be a great idea to start a competition to design a new logo for our student organization."
It was not a good way to start a competition that is critical, though not absolutely necessary, to being named to the Olympic team for the Vancouver Games.
By putting up $5 billion, preferably more, you might start a competition as exciting as the race to the South Pole a century ago.
In 1958, just months after his Moscow victory, a group of music teachers and residents of Fort Worth announced their intention to start a competition named for Van Cliburn.
The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday that the Obama administration had decided to start a competition for commercial companies to ferry astronauts to and from the International Space Station, following a suggestion of the blue-ribbon panel, which was led by Norman R. Augustine, a former Lockheed Martin chief executive.
I had not originally intended to start a competition, but it comforted me to see that not only had my students learned the relevant historical material through this exercise, they were then quickly able to analyze and make arguments as to which historical factors provided lasting institutional legacies.
The agency had paid $32 million of the more than $200 million set aside through the commercial orbital transportation services project for Rocketplane Kistler, an aerospace company in Oklahoma City, and said it would start a competition to find a new recipient of the remaining $174 million.
Last year, Go started a competition called 'Cooling the Towers'.
The girl carried the contraption to the next table and started a competition there.
As it happens, the Federal Trade Commission has been pondering that very question, and last year it started a competition, inviting citizens to submit ideas about how this perpetual nuisance could be stopped.
Toward that end, he has started a competition that will award $50 million to the first U.S. company that, using only private financing, demonstrates an ability to fly people and cargo to low Earth orbit.
"When Obama, during the negotiations about the [nuclear deal], decided to do a favor to these men, he granted citizenship to 2,500 Iranians, and some officials started a competition over whose children could be part of these 2,500 Iranians," Zolnour said.
