Like many some Americans, I am tuning into China’s Gulag Olympics, but before I get serious about what it takes for most athletes to get there, I’ve got to exercise my funny bone a bit.
Very early on in life, I knew I was blessed with neither physical coordination nor great strength. My typing fingers were the strongest part of my body, and the part of my body that would give me a livelihood for my entire life, while athletes get just a few years.
If they are lucky. The average career for NFL players is 3.3 years.
Luge sledders can participate for decades but are they athletes? How much training goes into something that lets you lay down on the job and looks more like an accident than a sport?
I could see myself as a luger, but there’s something that requires even less effort — the second or third seat in a four-person bobsled.
The first guy steers, the back guy pushes, but the other two are just ballast.
I can do that.
I guess I won’t have a chance to find out.
Nor will I find out much about Olympic etiquette.
When an ice skater throws a big jump and misses it, hitting the ice with her fanny, the crowd politely applauds.
For screwing up? In Philly, she’d get booed. Really, isn’t that more appropriate?
Southern Californian figure skater Yi Zhu, skating for China, was getting torn apart on the Chinese version of Twitter, according to NBC analyst Johnny Weir, so we know Twitter sucks as much in the east as the west.
She took a flop that cost her a medal, but she got some supportive applause.
“How do I get me some of that?,” was the comment dropped by Eagles butterfinger wide receiver Jalen Reagor, who drops everything else.
Before leaving the topic of what’s a sport — curling. Like luge, I could do that. GQ says (with a straight face?) it is “sweeping” the nation. Get it?
Curling will offer mixed doubles this year — teams of men and women. There’s equity, inclusion and diversity for you.
Have you set your DVR?
I didn’t think so.
I think I could do cross country skiing. I have been on skis and was able to walk. I was much happier on a snowmobile, but for some incredible reason the Olympics has no event for snowmobile racing. Shall we start a petition?
For me, the hardest events would be snowboarding and figure skating, as the latter is actually ballet, and I can barely manage a waltz. No one wants to see me attempt a double axel toe luntz. Or whatever.
With figure skating, yes, one can have an argument about whether they are athletes, or something else.
Yes, they are “competing,” but they get their scores from judges and sometimes the judges can be, shall we say, subjective? Or blind, or bribed.
It’s not head to head like Greco-Roman wrestling, or tennis.
And it’s not a sport with an objective measure, against the clock, such as skiing or bobsled. (Actually called bobsleigh, except for the Jamaica team that calls it “ganja express.”)
For the competitors who require actual skills and arduous training — this is the serious part — I have real admiration.
Imagine the single-mindedness of purpose to devote long years to perfecting your skills in the long-shot hope that someday you will be pitted against the best in the world.
It’s hard to imagine pressure like that, but they have passed through countless competitions to get to the top, so they know how to handle the pressure.
Or so we thought until the overachieving Simone Biles bailed out on the Summer Olympics. She was is the best in the world and she cracked.
She had everyone’s sympathy.
Others crack with the butterflies of being in the global spotlight, like Zhu, who I mentioned at the top, and whose picture of failure I am using with this column.
Not to be mean, but to be real.
How must she feel about the endless days up at dawn to head for the rink to practice? Figure skating requires not just strength but grace, where every movement is planned and measured, every finger must be accounted for.
Many of the athletes forego education, or personal lives, because they are on an endless diet and a strict sleep regime. It can’t be what any normal person would think of as “fun,” yet they seem to get something out of it.
They are competitors and I salute them.
Even the luge guys.
HAPPY WEDNESDAY !!!
Stu,
Do you remember a famous athlete who said it all ? “Feet don’t fail me now” ! I forget the year that Bruce Jenner won the decathlon, but he is exactly what you’re talking about. Track and Field are events that never made money for the winner in the after life. Jenner made it to the Wheaties box. Then for him, there was/is life ever after.
The athletic world is in the shape of a Pyramid. Millions trying sports at the bottom levels, but eventually, room at the top for only one.
Tony
As is often true, you are correct
I read that the USA bobsled team named its bobsled ‘Biden,’ because they’re convinced nothing will take them downhill faster.
Stu, if you were an athlete, I see you competing in ‘chess to the death.’
Good joke. My Summer Olympics sport is the broad jump. I am waiting for competitive eating to be an Olympic sport. Or Laz-E Boy surfing.
First off Curling is not a sport. We have house cleaners in Philly who would be Olympic Champs if given the opportunity. Most Olympians are dedicated, hard working athletes, except Curling. Cold weather sports skiing, ice skating are high speed events that can cause some serious injuries when they fall. They put on a great show.
Your funny bone brought a chuckle or two to mine.
I’d try the men’s double luge with you Stu at about 15 mph.
I was never good off my own feet, like rollers, ice skates or skis. Now I can’t even count on those two.
My biggest fear is swimming or to me, sinking, ergo; drowning.
How about a new sport, like eliminating the water in polo. We can call it “Drain the Swamp!!”😉
HAPPY WEDNESDAY !!!
Tommy boy,
I’m with you. I’ll be the anchor ! 😊
T
Played water polo one time…my horse drowned.
How about Endurance Laz-E Boy Sitting?
I’m in, but only with pee breaks.
Had the pleasure of trying the Lake Placid Olympic bobsled course back in the mid-90’s. The bobsled experience used a oversized sled that had more in common with a barrel that one could use to go over Niagara Falls (think horizontal barrel with lots padding and flat metal skis) than the Olympic version. There were 4 of us (6 ft 20 something’s) crammed in the “sled” with crash helmets and NO way to steer or stop. After a gentle push and gravity took over, we started the slow slide away from the boarding area, the last thing I heard was the attendant scream “In the event you flip, tuck your head into the sled”.
That ride was 90 seconds of sheer excitement and terror! I can only imagine the adrenaline rush and courage it takes for the Olympic athletes, especially the luge.
The “courage” to sit in a sled, or push a stone? I am missing something.
In my world, life is all about perspective…
Traveling at 75+ mph, without a seatbelt, in a bobsled or a car TODAY, is likely considered dangerous/courageous/crazy. If I asked my parents, they’d say that was a normal drive on the roads in the early 70s. Shoot, as kids we sat in the front (bench) seat, without seatbelts (story for another day). So perhaps not courageous to “sit”. Then again, I’m a lifelong hockey player (30 yrs and counting), so that influences my risk/courage tolerance, changing with maturity.
The luge is whole different story in courage IMHO… the rider lays down prone, head first, inches above the ice, traveling at 90 mph towards the bottom… I call that courage (aka I wouldn’t do that now). Would you? 😳
Pushing a stone???? That’s not a sport to me, but more of a drinking endeavor, like golf. Fore!
Luge is feet first. Head first is skeleton (sp?)
It is as dangerous as a big roller coaster, to me.
Not a sport. Hockey is a sport. Two — skating and boxing.